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Hipgnosis is what it says.

Hip, cool and groovy.
Gnostic, meaning wise.

What I love
about vinyl is the artwork.

Great photography,

and graphic design,
and great imagination.

Incredible songs.
Incredible albums.

But synonymous
with so many of those records

is the artwork of Hipgnosis.

It was the
people who the work was for.

The megastars of the late '60s,
early '70s, Hipgnosis,

they were, in a way, a kind of
a lens of fascinating excess.

I'd been kicked out of school

and both my mother and father
lived abroad.

So I found myself
footloose in Cambridge

and I went to live in a house
in Clarendon Street.

And I kept seeing
these very cool-looking people

going in and out
of this one house.

And I thought, "Now they're
people I should get to know."

I went across the street,

went upstairs and went into
this extraordinary room.

I'd never seen anything
like it.

It was Bohemian,
to say the least.

It was full of graffiti.

You know, Nietzsche,
"God is dead".

A pair of army boots
drawn by Syd Barrett.

I didn't even know
who Syd Barrett was then.

Everybody was smoking dope,

sitting around,
listening to music.

John Coltrane,
something like that.

And I was introduced
to this guy with long hair

who was very brash.

"Hello, man." That was Storm.

Storm was, like,
the leader of this pack

of very nice boys and girls.

Um, but Storm
just wouldn't stop talking.

He had been freely educated,

and so he was very loud
and very free.

He was also very bright.
Very chirpy.

And he played rugby very well.

We played in the same rugby 15.

After the pub, we used to go
back to Storm's mother's house.

We used to pile in, about
eight or nine or ten of us.

Sometimes drunk, sometimes not.

Storm's mother, Vanji,
was very liberal

and didn't seem to mind
what we all got up to.

So, Pink Floyd were there,

but they weren't
called Pink Floyd.

And, well, we were all there
getting a bit drunk,

I don't know, or very stoned.

So, I sat around,
and we smoked some joints.

And the conversation
was full of laughter.

I felt at home there somehow.

I was kind of a loner, bit lost,
in a way. I was only 16.

Anyway, couple of hours in...

...big bang at the front door,
and it's the police.

Everybody ran out of the room,

shovelling pills, grass,
hash in their pockets.

Out the back door.

I stayed put.

Anyway, the police got in
the house and found nothing.

And we got a scolding.

And Storm sat there
and he said to me,

"Why didn't you leave
with the others?"

And I said, "I don't believe
in dumping a sinking ship."

"I believe in fighting it out
till the end."

And from that moment on,

we were in each other's company,
and never left.

And became like brothers.

Storm and Po worked for the
greatest artists in the world.

Whether that was Pink Floyd,
whether it was Led Zeppelin

whether it was Paul McCartney.

People that could have worked

with whomever
they wanted to work with.

And Storm was
a really difficult guy.

I'm described by some
as difficult to work with,

by others as a ponce,
by some as a narcissist

with an ego the size
a small planet,

by some as really awkward,
argumentative,

by others yet as grumpy.

Very few as handsome and sexy,
which is the way I see myself.

Somehow there was
a bonding between us.

And because he was bright
and so intellectually sharp,

I immediately gravitated
to that.

I thought this man...

I can learn something
from this man.

None of us were aware
at the time

that Pink Floyd
would come out of it,

or so much creative talent

would suddenly arrive
from that scene.

But there was definitely
the undercurrent

that we were
part of the hipsters.

Pink Floyd were
getting a lot of attention.

And suddenly everyone
was moving to London.

Storm would go into
the Royal College of Art.

And I thought, "Oh no,
I'm gonna be left behind."

And he said,
"Well, just come with me

in the autumn term and enrol,

like you're one of the students
in the photographic school."

I said, "I don't know anything
about photography."

He said, "Well, come on.
I'll teach you."

I said, "Well, what do I do?"

He said, "You point, shoot,
reload and repeat."

"Point, shoot,
reload and repeat."

And Storm was aggressive
like that. I thought, "OK."

Went down to the darkroom.

And I stood next to him
and watched the picture

I'd taken
some half an hour earlier

come through
on this white piece of paper

of this beautiful photograph
of a car.

And I got goosebumps
all over me.

I absolutely went,
"Oh, my God, this is alchemy."

And I knew instantly
that's what I had to do.

I need to be a photographer.
I wanna be a photographer.

I don't care what it takes,
that's what I have to do.

This is magic.

So, for six months, I attended
the Royal College as a student.

So already we're starting
to see the ducking and diving

that was to characterise
Storm and Po's

very successful artistic
business relationship.

OK, Po. How did Hipgnosis
first get involved

in sleeve design?

Er, through the back door,
really. Um...

We knew the Pink Floyd
in Cambridge. Um...

And when we came to London,

Floyd were starting
to do some things then.

Well, they were starting, flat,
and they came along,

and I suppose
because we'd been friends,

it was sort of the natural thing
to say, "You're in visuals,

why don't you have a go
at the album sleeve?"

And that was
the first thing we did.

Storm asked me.
He said... We're old friends,

even then, when I was 22
and he was 24,

if I could persuade the others
to let them do the album cover.

And they were young,
and I guess you'd say vital.

And that's what
I thought we needed.

Something a bit more unusual
and wilder, I guess.

We wanted to create an image

for Pink Floyd at that time

that was based on
what they called space rock.

We tried to simulate
on the picture

a kind of swirling cosmos
of images

that were supposed to represent

a kind of kaleidoscopic feeling
of a simulated drug experience.

Storm had the idea.
He said,

"Let's take a picture
out of this alchemical book,

let's take a picture out of a
Marvel comic of Doctor Strange."

"Let's do this,
let's do that. OK."

I got the Pentax,

and I shot these things
all in black and white.

Processed the film
in the darkroom,

and started to create,
through the enlarger

by shielding off different parts
of the paper,

and then changing the negative

and then doing it again, and
then this montage of pictures.

There were dozens
of different versions.

But then there was one
that just zinged out.

So then I knew how to hand tint
and hand colour.

But there was pressure
from the record company

to actually have a picture
of the band somewhere.

We then went to Hampstead Pond,

where we photographed the band
in infrared film.

And we placed a little picture
of the band

in infrared in there
from that session.

And that was the very,
very first album cover,

really, that we did.

There was some genius in there,

but there were times when
they weren't that professional.

But they were learning
as they went along,

and they had to work everything
out from the beginning.

It was such a simplistic
artwork, but it worked for them.

And it started Storm's
and my career.

They represent the golden age
of the music business

where people believed
that music was art

and it could change the world.

Whereas now,
music is a commodity

and it changes the share price

of whatever company
it's attached to.

Whereas back in the '60s,
rock stars were artists

and graphic designers
were artists.

All that work
has stood the test of time.

The name "Hipgnosis"
came from Syd Barrett.

He was living in our flat
at the time,

and one day, Storm and I
came up in the elevator.

And we had this beautiful
white painted door,

and somebody had written in biro
"hipgnosis".

Exactly the same spelling.

"Oh, somebody's written...
We gotta paint the door now."

Walked in, and there's Syd.

And Storm said,
"Did you write that?"

And Syd shuffled and looked very
sheepish, and sort of nodded

and sort of walked away
as he normally did at that time.

It wasn't Syd, who did all sorts

of extraordinary,
wonderful things.

Dave Henderson came up
with the idea of Hipgnosis.

A friend called Adrian Haggard,
he wrote on the wall

the word "hipgnosis"
with a "G" in it.

And if anyone says
anything else,

it was Adrian Haggard
that came up with the name.

We admired this pun
on gnostic knowledge

and being hip,

and Storm seized it.

Storm went,
"Hip, cool, gnostic, wise."

"Let's call ourselves
Hipgnosis." That was it.

We lived in a flat
that became fairly notorious

called Egerton Court,

which was in an area of London
called South Kensington.

And this is the height
of psychedelia,

height of the so-called
hippie revolution.

Now, Egerton Court
had its own history.

Roman Polanski had just made
Repulsion in it.

And I remember one day
Storm had all these...

theatrical lights in his room.

And he said, "They were
abandoned on the stairs."

Which was the beginning
of Hipgnosis's lighting

and camera equipment.

We started to hear
about this drug called LSD.

And we started to take it.

At this point, things
accelerated considerably.

When I first took LSD
at Egerton Court,

I thought,
"Well, I've gotta try this."

So one night, I'm with Storm
and a couple of other people.

You know, we dropped a tab.

Taking LSD
completely changed my life.

I could sort of see that nothing
was actually solid,

that the table was just all
colour, all sort of atoms.

I didn't experience any fear
at that time. Later I did.

And I just remember laughing.

Laughing and laughing
and laughing.

Everything was so funny,
so intense.

It was kind of magical.

At Egerton Court, we were
taking quite a lot of LSD.

And I began to notice there was
a change in the atmosphere

with the people
in the apartment.

In the Cambridge group,

it occasioned a great split,

LSD being the dangerously
powerful substance that it is.

First of all, Syd Barrett
came and joined us.

He'd been booted out of
Pink Floyd by that time

because he was
just too difficult.

He was frightening.
His eyes were black.

LSD had done him in.

And he lived in the room
opposite me.

And... there was a fear
that emanated from him.

And when you've taken
quite a lot of LSD,

you feel your senses
in overdrive.

So, I began to pick up on that.

It was horrible. And then other
people began to pick up on it.

And then we started
to get paranoid.

You couldn't look somebody
in the eye.

I began to have hallucinations
where I didn't want them.

I couldn't smoke dope any more.

It began to affect my brain and
set me back into an LSD mode,

which I didn't want.

You know, I was working.
I didn't have time for this.

Storm also had
some upsetting experiences.

And we both finished up
going to psychiatrists.

And it worked.
I talked through a lot of shit.

And I realised that, in one way,

LSD had given me
lateral thinking.

I could think out of the box.
It was really easy.

And I think that was part
of the success of Hipgnosis,

that both Storm and I
could easily adapt

to moving away from the norm.

Once I'm trying to do a design,

I don't mind where
the inspiration comes from.

So I will plunder any artist
I can possibly find.

I don't really care.

I don't feel thieving
is what I do, it's borrowing.

So, in that sense, you plunder

the art world willy-nilly,
as it were.

After the success
of Saucerful of Secrets,

Pink Floyd went on tour,
and they wanted some posters.

I took a photograph
of a cosmic scene

of stars and stuff like that.

And then I took a photograph
of a clock.

And then I took a photograph
of Storm's ear.

And then Storm
started to mix and match

and suddenly we had this poster.

These three posters,
they were impressive.

I was so knocked out with them.

It was an important
stepping stone because, again,

it was a second commission
from Pink Floyd.

And then other work
started to come in.

Storm and I then decided
to make a go of it.

We'd started a business.
We hadn't intended to.

If you'd said to me, "Were you
going to go into album covers?"

Absolutely no way at all.
I never even thought about it.

But we had.

We don't have particular roles.
I mean, they vary.

I would say that Po
is better at photography.

But I probably have
a few more ideas.

I tend to be much more
sentimental, romantic,

slightly old-fashioned.

Storm and I worked so well
together, we really did.

We sort of had a synergy.

Storm said,
"Let's just do a cover

that's completely meaningless,
has no meaning whatsoever."

"What's the most meaningless
thing we can do?"

"We'll just get
a picture of a cow

and we'll stick it on there."

All I did was
I drove out of London.

This is the first cow I saw.

We jumped over a fence,
took a picture of a cow,

got in the car and came home.

Lulubelle III, she was called.

And we photographed that,

showed the band,
and Roger went, "That's it."

"That's it." And Storm said,
"There's one proviso:

No name on the cover
and no title."

He went, "Perfect."

I was probably one of a great
chorus of voices that went,

"Oh, how fucking cool is that?"

"Putting a cow on
a record cover. That's weird."

When I showed it
to the managing director

of the record company,
he went apoplectic.

The veins in his neck stood out.

And he kept scratching his head

and getting redder and crosser,
and saying to me,

"What has a cow got to do
with Pink Floyd?"

"Are you fucking mad?"

So I said, "It's not my fault.
It's their fault. Blame them."

So this is another example of
getting away with blue murder,

getting away
with a hell of a lot

because what has a cow
got to do with Pink Floyd?

They're one of the few bands
who, at the time,

could get away with
this kind of rubbish.

They were so overwhelmed
by it...

...that, I mean, they were
absolutely surprised.

They said, um,
you know, "Great."

"We've gotta have multi-million-
dollar spending on this."

And they promoted it with large
inflatable pink cow udders

that went out
to all the dealers,

the record shops,
I mean, in thousands.

And I always remember
going to LA

and walking down Sunset Strip,
and there was the cow.

And I remember people saying,

"Have you seen that picture
of the cow on the Strip?"

Of course, it's a failure

because the cow itself
becomes iconic.

And it's not a nothing cover
in the end.

It seems like it has some sort
of special meaning or something.

It was very nice sometimes

just to make sure there was
something there that just said,

you know, this isn't really a
hundred percent full-on serious.

It's very difficult to tell
whether you're,

you know, doing art,

like, whether the picture
is what you want

or whether it's something that's
proscribed by something else,

ie, a client that's come along
and said,

"Can I have picture for
this jacket, for this record?"

The vitriolic quality
of reaction has,

to me, been a testament
of how effective it is.

- OK, Po.
- OK, Dave.

Being provocative
got us noticed.

We were keen to have a career.

We wanted to make it.
We were ambitious.

We started looking
for premises.

And what came up
was Denmark Street.

6 Denmark Street.

Oh, it was appalling.
It was terrible.

They didn't have a toilet.
I think they just had a sink.

You'd think,
how did such polished work

come out of such a dump?

It was a mess. Always was.

Disgusting place,
quite honestly.

I remember The Shadows
came there once

and said,
"Do you have a toilet?"

We said,
"No, we pee in the sink."

So they said,
"OK, if you pee in the sink,

we'll pee in the sink."

The studio was a shithole.

It was a dance studio.

And there was a guy there
living with a woman.

And they got a big grand piano
in the middle of the room.

And he said, "I need to get out
of here, now."

And he said, "Give me some
money, and we'll be gone."

And he said,
"And I don't want the piano."

So, literally, within two weeks,
Storm and I had a studio.

I didn't know what to do
with this piano.

So I walked up the road
to Heal's,

to their piano department,
and said,

"Are you interested in this?"

They said,
"This is a very valuable piano."

And they gave us enough money
for it

to buy all our first
camera equipment,

all our first
lighting equipment,

and to build a darkroom,
and all the darkroom equipment.

It was a gift from God.

And the biggest mistake we made

was we still used a bath,

a proper bath,
to wash the prints in.

And, of course, that was
a disaster, because...

not long after we'd been there,
the prints clogged up the bath,

it overflowed
over a long weekend,

and flooded the antique
Greek bookshop underneath us,

causing tens of thousands
of pounds' worth of damage.

Luckily we were insured.

They were rascals.
Yes, definitely.

Well, a little bit...
little bit shady.

Po did all sorts of things
untoward.

He sold a car that fell to bits.

London was lawless.
It really was in the late '60s.

And one was just part
of that whole lawlessness.

I remember throwing a sofa
off a roof

because it wouldn't fit
in the apartment,

and it landed on a taxi.
Nothing ever happened.

He did all sorts of things.
No, he's a crook.

I could hotwire a car.

I could hotwire a Mini
and steal it for somebody,

then sell it.

It was just extra money
and it was fun.

I'm sure Po
wouldn't mind me saying

that he would sell his
grandmother for the right price.

And he had lots of
laundered money!

When the '60s exploded,

people were getting rich
suddenly.

Everything was game.

Storm wasn't motivated
by money at all,

which must have been
a massive irritation to Po.

I just wanted to
make money and be successful

and do the things I loved to do,
which were creative things.

And Storm was the same, really.

We would get the number 50 bus
into town

to buy these records
when they came out

by The Smiths or The Jam.

And we'd sit and stare...

at the artwork all the way home,

and read it all before you
got home and even played it.

Where was it recorded,
who played on what,

what the sleeve notes were.

The lyrics to the album if they
happened to be on there.

And there's a great quote
from someone.

"Vinyl is like
the poor man's art collection."

You get these posh people
who've got art on the wall.

Working-class people
have got art on the floor,

stacked against the wall.

And I thought
that was a great quote.

It's so good, it must have been
mine, but I don't think it was.

The first time that we
really got publicity

about what we were doing was
when we did The Nice Elegy.

Elegy came directly
from the music.

I'd been playing the music
just prior to going to bed.

In my mind I saw this desert
populated with red footballs.

And when I told Po, he said,
"That's absolutely insane."

"What's it got to do
with anything?"

I said, "It's something
that felt like the music."

And somehow we managed
to persuade Keith Emerson

that it was a great idea.

I then went to the record
company who were Charisma,

and it was run by a guy
called Tony Stratton-Smith

who was a real character.
And he looked at us.

He was highly educated,

and he said,
"This is an amazing image."

"It's a piece of landscape art."

"But where
are you gonna do this?"

"Saunton Sands or something?"

So we both said, "Sahara,"
being the only desert we knew.

And that's what we did.

Storm and I had to get
60-ish footballs, deflated.

It was the only way
to ship them by plane.

And I tried to pump up
one of these balls.

It took 20 minutes.
And we had 60 of them.

But it made a stir.

And suddenly people realised

you could do anything
on an album cover

if it was interesting.

And to me, it's the
tipping point of Hipgnosis

whereby we realised we could do
a piece of land art

and sell it as an album cover.

And we learned from this

not only that we could do
something outlandish

but also that
if the musician liked it,

this was an absolutely
pivotal, crucial point.

Once you got into
Rolling Stone,

which everybody read
at that time,

it was the biggest-selling
rock paper there was,

people began to
sit up and take notice.

1973 was the tipping point
because during that year,

we worked for many big bands.

And suddenly
we were the go-to studio.

I have to say, when you get
a call from a Beatle,

it was a bit like a call
from God.

Admiring their work
that I'd seen with Pink Floyd,

I just rang 'em up,

and just said,
"I've got an album coming up,

and I've got a rough idea
for it."

"Are you interested
in working with me?"

"I like the idea of, um,
a group of escapees

escaping out of the prison.
What would you stage it like?"

I'm trying to think of those
things, those tableaus

they used to have
of ancient Greece, you know.

Anyway, this was, like, staged,
it was a prison escape.

He gave us a list
of people that he wanted

to be part of the prison break.

Hollywood celebrities
and stuff like that.

This is it. This is the cover.

Forget the prison outfits,
this is it.

He did also say,

"I'd like the people
in the photo

to be people you knew

but just people
you could pick out

and, "Ah, yeah,
that's that boxer, John Conteh."

Or, "Oh, that's that that guy,
you know..."

Which way are we
trying to escape?

We're all going thataway.

The light is coming
from the top of that lamp.

Some of you
will be looking up there.

Some will be more concerned
about getting away.

But you will be caught
in a position...

The whole thing had
a great sense of camaraderie

and fun about it.

Storm took on the role
of kind of maître d'

and bossing people about,
which he was good at.

Linda, can you go down?
Denny, can you go down?

Crouching. Like we're crouching
to get away.

Are we all up against the wall?

OK, we're reloaded now.

If you can all adopt
the same positions again.

You really must stay very still
for that one second, please.

It was the idea I'd had,

but brought to life
by Hipgnosis.

So, yeah, I was very happy
with what they'd done.

It was a very, very good
beginning of a relationship.

We like to do pictures
we get off on, primarily.

So that's what I was saying
earlier about relationships

between the music and the image

is that the relationships may be
private because they're ours.

And if people are gonna hire us,
or employ us,

or they like what we do,
it's because they also get off

on our private relationships
between the music and a picture.

The difference between us

is that you can put out
a wider variety of styles.

I mean, basically,
if a band comes to me,

they have to like what I do.

I thought they made a good team.
I mean,

in a way, Storm would go in
and set off a bomb

and Po would come along
and pick up the pieces.

That's how I thought
that relationship worked.

They came as a double act,
you know.

Between themselves,
they were like

kind of cussed brothers,
I think.

I don't know whether
we met them on the street.

There was a drug deal.

Maybe they actually
threw money at us.

I have not the slightest clue
how we came upon them.

Personally, I'd seen something
of Wishbone Ash

which was quite minimalist,
but it was like a Viking.

The challenge for anybody
to come forward

with any kind of artistic nuance
was to actually brave a meeting.

So a meeting was set up.
We went at the appointed time,

climbed up these
old rickety stairs

and walked into quite
a scuzzy office, you know.

Considering this was
the biggest band in the world,

I was quite surprised.

And in the corner, barely lit,
was this enormous man.

This is G. Peter Grant to you.

It was quite intimidating
to meet him

because his reputation
went before him.

Don't fucking talk to me.
It's my bloody act.

I'll leave you any time.

You couldn't even get
on the starting line.

You don't know
your fucking concession here.

Your mate's selling the T-shirt.

He was the gatekeeper
of Led Zeppelin.

You never approached
Led Zeppelin

without going through him.

I think it was
Robert Plant kicked it off.

Said, "So, what have you got?"

Right? So I had a book
by Arthur C Clarke

called Childhood's End.

And at the end of the story,

all the children of the Earth
go up to heaven

in this massive, fiery
sort of explosion.

They said, "Where are you
thinking about doing this?"

And I said "Well, I thought
about Giant's Causeway

because it's a very interesting
place to be."

And Robert Plant said,
"Why not the Isle of Staffa?"

"It's the other end."

So it seems like by some
cosmic means or another,

we both hit on this great idea.

So, we bat and balled it
for a few hours.

And there was lots
of chat and laughter

and it was all very good.

But nothing from Peter Grant.
Not a single word.

And then suddenly this
stentorian voice said,

"All right, that's enough.
Don't fuck up." That was it.

And that's how my relationship
with Peter Grant

and Led Zeppelin started.

We cast for models and we chose

Stefan and Samantha Gates,
brother and sister,

and their mother
who would chaperone them there.

We had to get these kids up
early in the morning.

And the idea was to spray them
with this hairspray.

Different colours. So we'd have
the cars all getting warmed up

because they'd have to lie
on the beds and be sprayed

and then we'd have to wait
for the paint to dry,

and then wrap them in blankets
when it was dry,

and put them in a warm car
and drive them to the Causeway.

I wanted them
covered in gold and silver.

Really to have a feeling
of alien, an alien race.

And I think the original
idea was to shoot it in colour.

But that was never gonna happen.

It was just pouring with rain.
It was just miserable.

The weather was appalling.

And on the north coast
of Ireland, it rains, it pours,

it howls with wind.

And after about three or four
days, we'd run out of paint.

I realised, in a flash, that I
was never, ever going to get

the picture
that I'd originally envisaged.

Now, we were
in desperate straits,

I had to get this picture.

So, all the rocks
were octagonal.

And I realised
that if I took a photograph

of an individual on each rock

I could actually cut round
the shape of the rock

and create my own collage

of what I believed
it would look like.

And I did it literally
in half an hour.

Bang, and we were done.

It was an epiphany
that I had about it.

And I thought,
we're gonna hand tint this,

and try and do something
with it.

We then went to Dunluce Castle,

which was further down
the coast.

And I had this image,

you know, giving-to-the-gods
kind of posture.

And I never sort of felt
in any way

this was a sacrificial image,

but it looked so bloody good,
you know.

So I just thought,
I'm gonna hand tint that too.

So we made the collage,
stuck it all together.

And then I sent it off
to a guy called Phil Crennell.

He was an expert colourist

who could do Victorian postcard
kind of colouring.

But he lived on
an old motor torpedo boat

way down the Thames
which he was restoring.

And this valuable artwork

I could see there
being retouched

amongst oil cans
and dirty old cloths

where he was fixing the engine.

So then I got a phone call
from Peter,

you know,
"Where's the artwork?"

He said, "Look, the band's doing
a tour of England."

"Pick us up
at St Pancras Station

and drive us to Victoria,
and we'll look at the artwork."

I had a Mini.
Peter Grant getting in a Mini,

a man who was sort of six foot
five and weighed 130 kilos.

He was an enormous man.

The car just barely moved along.
And Jimmy squeezed in the back.

And Jimmy was still
in his stage clothes.

We got to Victoria Station.
I opened the trunk of the car.

And I was completely
freaking out at this point.

You know, were
Led Zeppelin going to like

something that I
actually hadn't sold them on?

Po had the artwork
in the boot of a car.

And we saw it and I thought
it's absolutely magnificent.

The whole concept
of what that cover was,

relative to the music that was
inside it, was incredible.

By this time, there was about
20 or 30 people round the car

and they all gave me
a round of applause,

which I thought was very sweet.

They just made the grade.
They became a part of us.

It was
a very clever combination.

They obviously worked
really, really well together.

But they were like
chalk and cheese.

You were either, sort of,
drawn to one or the other.

Peter Grant was
a very imposing man.

I always called him
"the gatekeeper"

because you never met
any of his artists

without going through him.

Did he take Po under his wing?
I would think so.

And I should imagine that Po
was under there like a rocket.

I worked
for a lot of his artists.

They were all signed to
Led Zeppelin's Swan Song label.

We designed the label.

It was taken from an idea
from a pre-Raphaelite painting

of Icarus
flying too close to the sun.

In hindsight,
pretty appropriate.

In some ways, it's flattering

because people often ask me
about Dark Side of the Moon.

And it was very much down

to the keyboard player,
Rick Wright,

who had said to me one day,

"Storm, can we not have
one of your pictures?"

I said, "That's what I do."
He said, "We've had those."

"Can't we have something else?"

"Can we have something cool
and graphic? Neat and tidy?"

And he actually said,
"I'd really like it to look like

a Black Magic
box of chocolates."

Black Magic...

because she is.

This album was going
to be a big one for them.

They'd all realised that they'd
made something very special.

Storm and I were
actually depressed about it

because it really
wasn't our style.

One day, I was looking through

this physics magazine
about light

and about refraction of light.
And Storm was hovering over me.

He looked at me and he said,
"I've got it, Po."

And he went like that.
He made a sign like that.

I said, "What? What is it?"

And he said, "It's a prism."

We submitted it to the band

along with six other roughs.

They stood around and went,
"No, no, no, no, yes."

"No, no, no, yes."
And it took about two minutes.

It was unanimous
and instantaneous

and unequivocal and direct.

It just shone out
above anything else.

I think Storm wanted to
show us more things

but we just saw that one.
"That's the one. Do it."

Perfect. It has everything
and it's a great iconic image.

And that was it.

So they said,
"Go away. That's it."

"We're fine. We love it.
Take it away."

And Storm got the hump.
He said, "What do you mean?"

"We've got these other ideas
to show you."

And they all went,
"No, we don't wanna see those."

The reason it looks
like that is that...

I've got to get it from

a school exercise book.

Although there are plenty of
really quite good photographs

of prisms with rainbows
in them,

that don't have
that iconic look.

When we saw
what we were being offered,

we knew that that
was the right thing.

It just was beautiful
and iconic.

It was Roger's idea

to turn the light beam
into a heartbeat.

The individual
is able

to project
their own reading.

It can mean

what you want it
to mean.

There's a kind of
enigmatic sci-fi kind of charm

to both of those images.

They're scientific data.

As such, it doesn't date.

When I was
going through the archive,

I came across this letter
from our friends in India,

years before
Dark Side of the Moon.

And halfway down, there was
a picture of a triangle,

and underneath,
it said something like,

"Remember this?"

I remember
being on a train thinking,

"This is not enough.
Well, it's not enough for me."

So I suggested to the band
that we did a poster.

A picture of the pyramids.

I think Dark Side
was one of those lucky things

that is hard
to actually explain

because the band also
have never understood

why it was so successful.

We, of course,
know it was the cover, right?

If Dark Side of the Moon
was on a band's cover

that, say, sold 10,000 copies,

no one would know
that cover today.

Pink Floyd and Hipgnosis
made that a cultural landmark.

Pink Floyd selling 65 million

probably helped it
become the symbol that it is.

Dark Side of the Moon,
I think it's important

because it points
very, very directly

and poignantly
at the predicament

that the human race
found itself in in 1973,

and still finds itself in now.

It's come to be used
politically.

It's come to be used
as a symbol for enjoyment.

You find it in all sorts
of unsuspecting places.

I often see it tattooed
on people's arms.

Dark Side of the Moon
without any question

changed the course
of history for us.

Our career went stratospheric.

Suddenly we started
to earn real money

and that made a difference,

and a confusing difference, too,

because it pushed a wedge
in Pink Floyd.

Things were never the same
for them.

And the same thing sort of
happened to me and Storm.

We were courted
by advertising agencies.

The money was enormous.

Storm loathed and detested
anything to do with advertising.

He loved the money,

but he didn't want to know
about the rest of it.

My daughter, she was staying
at my house for the weekend.

And I was late getting home
from work.

And I said, "Sorry I'm late,
but I've been in a...

I got caught at a meeting
at the office."

And she's like, "Oh, right."

And I said,
"Yeah, I've been in a, you know,

meeting about the artwork
for my album."

She's like,
"Artwork? What's that?"

And I was like, "You know,
the artwork. The artwork."

And she's like, "I don't know
what you're talking about."

Because she's grown up
with the phone, right.

And I was saying,
"Well, the cover of the record."

And she's like, "A cover? What?"

And the only way I could explain
it to her, I said to her,

"You know the little tiny
little picture on iTunes?"

She said, "Yeah." And I said,

"Right. Well, I've been
in a meeting for that."

And she went,
"They have meetings for that?"

As I pulled out the cover,
and I said,

"Yes, and it fucking costs
a hundred grand."

Shall we dance?

This is fun.

I got another call
from Paul and he said,

"I've got an idea.
I want you to do it."

"Can you come to LA this week?"

We were very, very excited,
I have to say. Again...

it was working for a Beatle,
twice round. Amazing.

So Storm and I
jumped on a plane to LA.

We went to a studio
to see where he was recording.

The atmosphere
was incredibly jolly.

Lots of spliffs being
passed around, a few drinks.

It was really upbeat.

And then we got on to
talking about the album cover.

Me and Linda
had this idea

that we'd use
a couple of billiard balls.

A red and a yellow,
as Venus and Mars.

And, um, that would
kind of be the cover.

So it would be a really
good graphic image.

All right, you win.
I'm in love with you, yeah.

So Storm said,

"I'm not interested
in this, Paul."

"I'm not interested
in your idea."

"So I'm going to leave LA
and Po can do it."

There was
a slight stunned silence.

And then Paul said, "OK, man."

"That's fine. You go home,
Po can deal with it."

"He's the photographer anyway,
right?"

And when we got back
to the hotel, I said to Storm,

"Was that really the right sort
of approach we should have?"

And Storm said,

"If I can't do Hipgnosis ideas,
I don't wanna do it."

I seem to remember at the time

we had the slogan
"It's all balls".

I think, in fact,
I know we had T-shirts made.

"It's all balls."

He was the rudest person
I've ever met.

He's very bolshie.

- He was very blunt.
- He was irritating.

I mean, he really did set out

to make life very difficult
for people.

He was ever so rude.

He was just so annoying.

- Strutted. He was a strutter.
- Pain in the arse.

- Exceptionally awkward.
- Cantankerous.

- Difficult.
- He was pure, purely rude.

He could be really crabby,
old Storm.

"No, I don't think
that's any good."

Well, we're having it, Storm.
So shut up.

He's rude to everybody.

Every single human being,
he's rude to.

Storm Thorgerson was a man who
wouldn't take yes for an answer.

Well, he was very lovable
in spite of all of that.

- Highly intelligent.
- Full of ideas.

- One in a million.
- Total genius.

Work was just pouring in,

you know,
from all different quarters.

And the studio, after '73,
expanded.

We took another floor
upstairs in Denmark Street.

We needed other people
to work with us.

We were growing and expanding.

Graphics. We needed style.

So George Hardie delivered that.

Jill Furmanovsky joined.

And her first assignment was
to photograph Pink Floyd live.

Peter Christopherson
joined Hipgnosis

because he was brilliant
at lighting.

And eventually,
he became a full partner

because he was just
so damn good.

Then a tall young man
came into our studio one day

wearing a white linen suit.

And he spoke with a kind of
effete, very polite accent.

I went round various record
companies and said I could draw.

And I've never
seen anyone

look so uninterested.

And then I went
to Hipgnosis

and showed them my drawings.

And, you know, they were,
there was a sort of...

mild mutters of approval,

which was quite a lot better
than what I'd had,

you know, earlier in the day.

He was the bass player
with Kilburn and the High Roads.

But he'd also been trained
by Peter Blake at art school.

So when it came to
Original Soundtrack,

at the time, 10cc were very much
what I'd call a pop band.

Storm and I wanted to do
something that was...

based on the movies.

We went down into
an editing suite in Soho.

And I said,
"This is fine, you know."

"Just leave me here for about
three weeks, or whatever."

And they said, "No, sunshine,
this costs £1,000 an hour."

I photographed
a whole load

of interesting bits
of cinema equipment.

Film cans, editing machines,

splicers, all sorts of stuff,
in an attempt

to sort of create an almost
impossible editing suite.

And I just went home
and did these pencil drawings,

funnily enough I learned...

That's one of the things
I did learn at art school.

The result was magnificent.

It was absolutely beautiful.

It mixed the ancient
and modern.

He'd sort of got the atmosphere

of what I call
old-time Hollywood there.

And at the same time, it gave
it a very different look

from something coming
out of the Hipgnosis stable.

The only thing
I'd had difficulty on...

real difficulty,

was the glove hanging down.

The, you know,
the editor's glove.

It just looked like
a blancmange.

Completely formless. I...

Anyway, I managed to draw it in.

I opened the drawing up
and everyone said,

"Wow, that's wonderful."

You know.
So I thought, ah, yeah...

And Storm just came over
and said,

"Yeah, shame about the glove."

I had no thoughts
of the work lasting,

or having any longevity
beyond the following the day.

There was not a spare minute
in the day to think about

what was gonna happen tomorrow.

It was just,
"Let's get the next job done."

And it was so exciting.

Suddenly Peter Gabriel would
turn up and wanna have a chat.

Or suddenly Wishbone Ash
would potter in

because they were buying
a new guitar downstairs.

It became a hub,
a meeting point for people.

They were busy all the time.
There was shouting going on

and people wanting things.
Cow Gum.

It wasn't the days of Photoshop.

Everything was stuck down
with Cow Gum

and then put on a copy camera
and then retouched.

It was a crazy place, actually.

It was chaos.

But out of that chaos came
the most extraordinary work.

At first, I didn't want to be
on the sleeve. So I thought,

"OK, if I'm gonna be on it,

it's gonna be in an
interesting and unusual way."

He said,
"I want to be on the cover,

but I don't want to be
on the cover."

So Storm came into the studio,
and he'd been in a taxi.

And it had been
pouring with rain.

And he'd observed the car
next to him

having rain droplets on a highly
wax-polished surface.

And he said to me,
"You know what?"

"Supposing we put Peter in a car

and yet we made more
of the surface

of the body of the car
than Peter?"

I took the photographs of him
sitting there. And then,

Storm suggested that
we paint it fluorescent blue,

and that we should scratch
every single water droplet

to enhance the reflection.

These little tiny kind of
crescent-shaped reflections.

And then we decided to take
some more pictures

around the car.

And I moved round to the side
to take a picture of Peter

through the side window,
and he opened his eyes.

He'd got silver contact lenses
and they bounced out like that.

It was really uncomfortable
to wear them,

because it was sort of...

they were hard contact lenses
and mirrored on the inside.

But I used to put them on
sometimes on aeroplanes

and that would freak people out.
So that would make me smile.

The work was the
most important thing of all.

To get the work out, get it
done, get it looking good

and to the very best
of our abilities,

and to go to the ends
of the Earth to get it.

I would not give up
until I had a picture.

I simply wouldn't.
I was relentless about that.

That's how we were. Aggressive,
relentless, difficult,

and obsessed, I suppose.

When Storm was trying
to do a piece of artwork,

there was just nothing
that would stop him.

He just went until it was done.

And people were collapsing
like flies all around him,

including himself.

I remember one year
we worked so hard,

we were doing a cover
every fortnight. Crazy.

We were very preoccupied
with the work.

So especially preoccupied
that,

according to my then wife,
it broke the marriage.

So she ran off with a neighbour.

He was devastated
when Libby left him.

He found that very difficult.

His wife left him

and left him
with a very young child.

Storm got custody,
so he took care of Bill, his son

and didn't go away.

So all the wonderful ideas
that we had going forwards,

shooting all round the world,
doing different pictures.

I always went away and did them

very much to his brief, but to
my composition and my style.

Come back, we'd review them,

and then the arguments
would start.

"I prefer this picture to that.
The sky is better here."

"The composition
is better there."

To Storm,
it was all about the idea.

No one's interested
in the covers any more.

There's no thought
behind what the album means,

or the story of...
any of the songs,

which is why the stuff
for Hipgnosis is so important,

particularly the one for
Wish You Were Here,

which has got a great story
behind it

about people being burnt
in the music business.

I was in Hipgnosis's studio
one afternoon

and there was a knock
at the door.

And Richard Evans, who
worked there, opened the door,

and there stood this dumpy,
fat man with a shaved head,

which obviously had been
shaved by himself.

It was all kind of raggedy
and all over the shop.

He said,
"Oh, is Storm here?"

And I said,
"No, he's not."

"He's up at
Abbey Road with Floyd."

And I called Po,
and Po came through

and looked at him and said,
"Syd, is that you?"

I said, "What can I do for you?
Come in."

He said, "No, are band here?"
I said, "No, they're not."

I said, "Do you want to come in,
a cup of tea?"

He said, "No, no,"
and disappeared down the stairs.

And of course then he showed up
at Abbey Road Studios

and nobody recognised
who he was.

Dave looked at me
and grinned, and went,

"You haven't got it yet,
have you?"

And in that moment,
I went, "Fuck me, it's Syd."

"That fat bald bloke
with a brown paper bag."

And of course it was.

The last time I'd seen him,
he was this...

you know, dark-haired...

springy, springy guy.

And then, suddenly,
there's this large morose bloke.

People were tearful,
it was such a sad sight.

And he was obviously
extremely discombobulated

and didn't really know
what was going on.

But it was...

What was magical for Pink Floyd,
there was...

they were actually recording
Wish You Were Here

at the time he arrived,
and so that was pretty weird.

Taking LSD is very dangerous.

Some people certainly
fell by the wayside

because there were casualties,
for sure.

Wish You Were Here
very, very well demonstrates

the schism in, in Pink Floyd,

coming as it did after
Dark Side of the Moon,

when it was over.

And this was
Roger's sort of take

on us being together
as a pop group

who were not really
communicating with each other,

and the absence of Syd,

and a much more general theme
of absence.

There's certainly a connection

when you don't have
a father figure.

Storm and I
were both single children.

Roger Waters lost his father
in the war.

David Gilmour's parents
decamped to America.

And Syd Barrett's father
died when he was 15.

So, it gave us
a kind of camaraderie

and an understanding.

And Storm and I certainly,
as individual souls,

were joined at the hip
like brothers.

You know,
I loved him like a brother.

We also understood
that there was a lot of anger,

especially in Roger,
about the record business.

So, we were talking about
absence of sincerity,

about people being ripped off.

And I think it was George Hardie
who actually said,

"People get burned
in this business all the time."

And Storm said, "Why don't we
set a man on fire?"

"He's being burned."

And this is in
the days before computers.

So, there was no fakery here.

The only way to set a man
on fire,

and make it look for real,
was to set him on fire.

We went to a place called
Stunts Unlimited.

"Who wants to be
on a record cover

when we could be in
Towering Inferno?", they said.

Like we were a couple of hippies
who, like...

"Who?
Pink Floyd? What?"

But there was one guy,
Ronnie Rondell.

And he said to me, "I understand
exactly what you wanna do

and what you wanna do
is probably one of the most

dangerous fire stunts you can do

because you're standing still
and fire moves."

He did it about 15 times in all.

And I was begging him
to keep going because I need,

you know, you never stop.

You push, you push, you push
to get the better,

best, best, best shot.

And then the last time,

a breeze blew up
as he caught fire,

and the wind whipped round
his head like that,

enveloped him in ames,
and bang!

He was thrown to the ground.

They sprayed the fire
extinguishers, put him out.

He got up and said, "That's it.
I'm not doing any more of that."

"That is it." He was all singed
down the side of his face.

The interesting thing
about Ronnie Rondell,

he said, "I've done so many
fire stunts in movies

and nobody remembers me
for that,

but everybody remembers me
for Wish You Were Here."

It was also just
an amazing thought

of a man on fire shaking
the hand of another man

not being perturbed
that he was on fire.

So, therefore, the fire
must be metaphorical.

However, the fire wasn't
metaphorical, it was real.

So, there was always an inner
contradiction to this picture.

The guy who is upright
in Mono Lake,

he's really there. He held his
breath for three minutes.

And he went up and it was
the most perfect shot.

I even have goosebumps now
thinking about it.

It was the most perfect shot
imaginable.

Bang, and we had it.

It's one of the shots
of my life.

The album cover, the story,
the narrative is inside.

So we suggested to Pink Floyd

that perhaps we should put
a black shrink wrap round it.

You can imagine being a record
company having to deal with that

and having to negotiate that,

"All right, yes,
there'd be a small sticker on it

with the name Pink Floyd on it."

It's hardly going to sell
a lot records on that.

In fact, what's inside
is some of his best work.

He's always off the wall.

Always different. I mean,
always doing the unexpected.

And, um, I think
that was very good for us.

I think that's
sort of the peak of the work

that Storm and Po did
with Pink Floyd is that package.

It's really beautiful, I think.

There are people I hear who have
never torn the shrink wrap off.

They've simply slit it
down the edge

so they can get the album out
to play it.

Therefore haven't seen the cover
in 37 years.

And to my mind,
that's a real success,

in terms of trying
to represent absence.

"Thirty-seven years,
you've never seen the cover?"

I don't think Storm
was ahead of his time,

I just think
he was a totally original man.

Storm and 10cc

really got on
like a house on fire.

They had the same kind of...

cynical, silly,
adventurous humour.

When they were
coming up with ideas,

they'd have the album
playing over and over again

in the studio.

So they were kind of getting
steeped in the...

in the lyrics in particular
of the album.

One of my jobs
was transcribing lyrics.

So we'd get a C60 cassette

and I'd sit on the floor
of the studio

with the headphones jammed in

and handwrite out these lyrics.

And trying to work out what they
were saying, it was really hard.

They would pick up on things
that we didn't pick up on.

On the way
to the recording studio,

there was a sign saying
"deceptive bends".

And I remember
we actually drew up a rough.

But then we thought of bends
being about the diving bends.

And that was
the whole point, really.

Just like 10cc's lyrics,
what's the story in there?

And I don't really like it.
And the reason being because...

graphics were put all around
the outside

in a kind of porthole shape.

And this was very typical
of the arguments

that would happen
between me and Storm.

Because I liked
the picture plain.

He always threw the kitchen
sink at everything, Storm.

I think it was his insecurity
about his ideas.

His ideas were so good, but he
was never certain about them.

He still had a vision, or he'd
keep adding to it, you know.

"Yeah, like that, but we could
just do a bit more."

Without that sort of desire
for perfection

and without that sort of
battle of egos, in a way,

we wouldn't have got to the
picture we had at the end.

I received a call again
from Peter Grant.

"There's a new album.
There's no title."

"Just come up with
an interesting idea."

And we started to talk about
the power of Led Zeppelin.

They were powerful.

Led Zeppelin
definitely had a presence

that was just channelling
out of, out of nowhere.

We started talking about
power of persuasion.

The psychology of how
you could draw people in.

That led on to a conversation
about what people need.

People need Led Zeppelin.

Storm said,
"Well, what about the image from

the end of Arthur C Clarke's
book 2001

that Kubrick
had in turn interpreted

as this black solid object
in space?"

"And supposing
one took something like that

and made it as a battery
that everybody needed?"

"Without this object,
you couldn't live."

"You had to have it."

George went and hunted around
Charing Cross Road,

in the libraries there

for stills that were
out of the '50s

that we could place
the object in

in sort of a normal setting.

The situations were a catalogue
of important things in life.

We were trying to displace it
in time.

We were looking at a time past

in which this black object
was important.

I put the object
on the table

in the middle of the room.

Jimmy walked in and he took
one look at the object.

He said, "Is that it?"
I said, "That's it."

And he went, "That's it. Great."

He felt the power
of that black object.

But when
I saw the object, I said,

"This is great,
but can we put a twist in it?"

And then they did it
and they came back.

And it was like, "Well,
this is it. This is great."

The whole idea of the object:

Creative, imaginative,
and very unusual.

The way it actually moved
through its phases

to become what it is
was just fantastic.

No two sides alike,
nothing parallel, nothing...

You know, it was just
a unique piece of work.

It was the right decision.

Crikey, it got emulated
on a building in Dubai.

Peter instructed me.
He said, "Make eight."

"I'm gonna give four to
the guys, one to you and Storm,

one to George Hardie,"
and one for himself.

There were a myriad
of different scenarios

which they were
placing the object in.

It was a really fantastic way
of establishing this object

as being an accepted part
of normal life,

as was our music.

On the front cover

was a family sitting around a
table at the London Boat Show.

I went to the boat show,
shot the background,

shot the rest of it
in Hipgnosis's studio.

And this is one of the original
eight that was made.

And, as you can see,
it's very pure in its shape,

and it's very beautiful.

This is the twist
that Jimmy suggested.

And this is the sort of...

it's got this matte feeling
to it.

And funnily enough,
if anybody ever sees it

in the studio
or something like that

people often say,
"Can I touch it?"

Particularly fans,

because they feel that
somehow it gives off some...

you know, something.

I've actually got
three of these.

They've all come from different
collectors over the years.

Um, I'm not sure
if all three of them are real.

But I like having three of them.

I'll like to have seven of them

just as much as I like
to have three of them

or ten if I can find them.

I do think I've still got
one of those somewhere.

It's a doorstop, I think.

But I must find it.

I'm sure Po's got a few
in his garage.

By the mid '70s,

money was really rolling
into rock stars' pockets.

The albums
were selling in millions.

The money was gushing in.

You know,
whether it was Paul McCartney

or Led Zeppelin, or...

or Pink Floyd, or Peter Gabriel,

they wanted their image to look
right on the album cover.

This album cover was a very
important asset to them.

And so our fortunes changed too.

Fees accelerated.

You were looking at $50,000
spent on an album cover.

I felt a bit like
the fifth wheel on the car.

You had the four members
of the band

and then there was this guy
who was attached to the car

that went with them
everywhere they went.

Peter Grant would say,
"Well, you better get Concorde."

"Better get there
tomorrow morning."

Suddenly I was becoming this
kind of transatlantic merchant.

I was living the life of Riley.
It was wonderful.

This was the heyday. This was
the salad days of album covers.

I have put graphic designers...

weeping out of meetings

because
that tiny little thing there

is not in the right place.

And I've let go...

while I was high, covers...

like the most famous record
I've ever made,

Morning Glory?

Has literally
the shittest cover of all time

because I glanced at it.

"Yeah. That'll do."

And then it came out.

And then, a few years later,

you're going,
"Who the fuck OKed that?"

It's like, "Well, you did."
And, um...

So I take a lot more interest
in it now.

If there was any bad feeling
in the studio,

it was between Storm and me.

He would always turn up late,

dressed in tennis shorts
and a smelly T-shirt.

I would have done a
photographic print, beautiful,

and he'd come in and he'd say,
"Bit too light there."

He'd take his thumb,

and he'd rub on it until
there was a big mark on it.

"Oh, dear, you can't use that.
I think you better do it again."

And I'd be, "Storm."

I threw a Hasselblad at him
a couple of times

across the studio because
he pissed me off so much.

So, Po and the red mist.

Yeah, I mean,
we called it the red mist

because he would get
seriously angry.

When it came to arguing
about the work,

it was with the intention
from both of us

to get the best out of it.

A lot of that
was because of the...

banging of heads
between him and Storm.

You know, this constant
running over budget.

Storm didn't care about money.

He wanted the design, the
photograph, whatever it was,

to be absolutely
as he saw it in his head.

Scratch,
that record, came out of

Storm's second-hand box.

And this is a famous box. But it
was basically the reject box.

All the ideas that he liked
but no one else wanted.

I've got a great story
about Robert Plant,

when I went to see him with
some ideas for Led Zeppelin.

He turned over an idea
he was looking at,

and on the back it said
"Judas Priest" crossed out.

It said "Wishbone Ash"
crossed out.

It said "Nazareth" crossed out.

He said, "Have you shown this
idea to all these people?"

And I said, "Yeah."

I said,
"A good idea's a good idea."

He said, "You and Storm
are just a couple of chancers."

I mean, they're hucksters.

Everybody's trying to float
an idea. It's great.

If Pink Floyd didn't take them,

three weeks later, they'd appear
on someone else's record.

Yeah, there's a picture
of a lobster

being walked along the pavement,

and I think Paul McCartney
used that one.

It's one of mine? Hmm!

What Paul McCartney didn't want,
who was gonna have that?

10cc, perhaps.

Well, now...

I think I'll have to talk
to someone about that.

Wait a minute. Lobster, yeah.
OK. It's coming back now.

You never quite knew
when he brought in the box

whether you were gonna get all
these second-hand leftover ideas

or something fresh.

He was a master at passing off
the rejects as originals.

He'd done a piece of promotion
for Lumiere & Son.

But it had torn paper.
And I just...

I thought,
"This is so powerful."

I took a photograph
of Peter like this,

with his hands
like he's clawing at himself.

And then we got strips
of paper, white paper,

stuck them down
over the top of the print

so it looked as though
he was tearing himself

out of the picture.

He was then mixing
and recording in New York.

And he wanted
Peter Christopherson

to come and take
the pictures of him.

He and Peter get on really well.

And then Peter photographed
Peter Gabriel

walking around New York

making these strange gestures
with his hands.

You know, very dark.

You don't know what's happening
in the narrative,

but it's definitely something
uncomfortable and weird.

And only Peter Christopherson
could get that intimate with him

doing those kind of shots.

I didn't really know Peter
when he joined at all.

I got to know him
some months later

when I was travelling
in a car with him

through the deserts of America.

And I happened to be talking
about his portfolio

and how impressed I was

with the images of the people
he had there.

He said, "Oh, I was working
in a mortuary at the time,

and I twisted the bodies around
till I liked the shapes of them

and then I lit them
and photographed them."

I was absolutely horrified.

I said,
"Well, how did you do that?"

He said, "I only worked
in the mortuary late at night,

so I could do what I wanted."

I realised there was an
extremely dark side to Peter.

And this dark side
went on further

when he joined
Throbbing Gristle

and then went on
to form his own band,

Coil and Psychic TV.

He was highly regarded
and he's still a cult figure.

I know he has
this very dark reputation,

but he didn't come across to me
as a particularly dark person.

He was more like
a sort of professor,

or academic in a way, I think.

What he'd brought to Hipgnosis
was this element of darkness.

And we kind of needed that.

In a flippant world, and a
fickle world of rock 'n' roll,

to have somebody
who had this undercurrent

of presenting things
that were very real, very raw.

Denmark Street had a rehearsal
studio right behind Hipgnosis.

When we first moved in here,

there was a guy
out the window there...

kind of peering all the time,

and it was a bit off-putting
and a bit weird.

Didn't really know

what went on
there originally.

And it became
very disconcerting.

So in the end,

we got some net curtains
to put up here,

which was not very Sex Pistols
and more little old lady,

to stop the guy
peering in at us.

But it turns out it was a guy
called Peter Christopherson

who ended up
in Throbbing Gristle.

He was like the young guy
of Hipgnosis.

And he wondered
what we were all about.

And he befriended us.

And he even did
some photo sessions with us.

He put John in a straitjacket,
Steve in handcuffs.

He did Paul
with all bullet wounds.

And he took me down the YMCA
into the locker room.

So I didn't quite know
what to make of that.

But it was kinda cool.
But the other guys were also

the enemy in a way, I suppose.
They did all the covers

for... what we saw as
a dinosaur rock band.

One day, I walked into
Hipgnosis's front door

and there coming towards me
down the corridor

was John wearing an
"I hate Pink Floyd" T-shirt.

And I said, "Oi, what's that?"

And he said,
"They're all cunts, Pink Floyd."

"That's what they are."
He walked out the door.

The megastars
of the late '60s, early '70s,

they were living lifestyles...

that were entirely
irrelevant to young people.

They didn't really talk to us
about stuff that kinda concerned

where we were at.

It's about something
that connects to your reality.

That's the marked difference

between the kind of pre-punk
and post-punk moment.

By the time you're oating
huge inflatable pigs

over Battersea Power Station,

you really are not talking to,
sort of, 15-year-olds any more.

Storm came up
with an idea of a small child

standing in a doorway watching
his parents fucking in the bed.

Animals.
It was... they laughed, but...

Thank you, no. Next.

So I got a phone call
from Roger.

He said, "You know that I'm
having a big plastic pig made

to go on our live shows?"
And I said, "No, I didn't."

He said,
"Well, come over to my house

and have a look
at a maquette of it."

And looking out the window,
he said,

"There's Battersea
Power Station."

I looked at the
power station, and then I went,

"I know what I'll do."

"I'll finish the pig
and we'll fill it with helium

and fly it over the thing
and take photographs of it,

and that will be
the album cover."

Storm was kind of grumpy
about it.

And he and Roger were having

a little bit of a contretemps
at this time.

Considering they used to play
squash together,

tennis together, good friends,

there was definitely
something in the air.

I can't remember ever thinking,

"No, this is too big,
too elaborate, or whatever."

We were in full prog-rock mode.

Our egos were all
in pretty good shape.

I got permission.
There was no health and safety.

No demands for anything else.

Yeah, you turn up, you...
park your trucks and fly it.

It's almost a mystery
to me that I went at all

'cause I remember it was
a very cold morning.

But I was friends with
some of the band, and...

I grabbed my camera
at the very last moment

thinking I was gonna go out,
just sort of see it,

and come back to bed.

And I have to say,
I'm really glad I didn't.

So on the day,
everybody's in position.

Amazing clouds that day.

It looks like
a Turner painting.

Absolutely something
out of this world.

The gas cylinders went wrong

and couldn't inflate the pig.

"OK. Everybody home.
Back again tomorrow."

So, we came back the next day.
We inflated the pig.

It goes up between
the chimneys.

It looks amazing.

There was only one actual cable

connecting us to it.

And at one point
the ring went ping!

There was a loud bang like that.
A crack.

And bits of it fell down
onto the ground.

"Oh, my God! Oh, look,
it's broken away."

And the pig sailed up
between the chimneys.

And then, vroom, it was gone.
It was gone within seconds.

And as it went up,
I saw a 747 jet fly across.

And I thought, "Oh, my God,

that's going straight into the
air lanes of Heathrow Airport."

I'm sure there was a lot
of rueful grinning going on.

"Did you get it?" "Er, no."

"Oh, fuck me."

We had organised for day one

to have
a police marksman there.

Where was the police marksman?

I heard that there had been
a marksman the day before

and he hadn't been paid.
So, he wasn't there that day.

It was the only thing
that was asked of us.

In case the pig flew away,
it would be shot out of the sky.

The police arrived.

They closed all the air lanes
into Heathrow Airport.

Fighter jets were sent up
to look for it. It was plastic.

It wouldn't appear on radar.

Police helicopter pilot
who was sent to chase it,

he said there was no way
they could catch it.

It was climbing faster
than the helicopter could go.

Nine in the evening,
our phone rings and...

this voice, in a very
country accent, says to me,

"Are you the people
looking for a pig?"

And I said, "Yes." He said,
"Well, it's in my field,

and it's frightening my cows."

So in the end it was a collage.

It wasn't the real picture
of the event.

But nobody was to know that
until later.

The relationship with Storm
and Roger was already tense.

When Roger learnt that Storm

was claiming design
for the cover,

which was
a very foolish thing to do,

Roger cut him out of his life.
Bang.

I remember being
royally pissed off

at the time,
because they didn't ask me.

I thought,
"Why are you doing that?"

Anybody
who knew Storm will tell you

he was insufferable.

But among being one of the most
annoying people in the world,

he was also one of the most
lovable people in the world.

And one of the bravest people
in the world.

I loved Storm.

I still love Storm.

Pink Floyd themselves were
going through huge upheavals.

Rick Wright got fired
from the band.

David and Roger
didn't get along any more.

There were huge rows
about this, that and the other.

And we were just part of that
whole process, you know.

Those '60s characters,

they just became kind of
victims and casualties

of their own success,
you know, and excess.

And of course Hipgnosis
are intrinsically linked

to that period of rock excess,

which we kind
of laugh about now.

Paul McCartney
had called me up and he said,

"Listen, man,
I've seen this statue

that I want to buy
at Christie's."

"Do you think you could get it?"

"I want to put it somewhere
really special."

And I said, "Where?"
He said, "On Everest."

I suppose we must have
had a meeting and said,

"Oh, wow, it should be at
the top of a Swiss mountain."

You know, there was a lot
of that in those days.

So, we took a helicopter up,

which could only land
on the edge like this.

We had to jump off,
take this 70-pound statue,

and there I am, stuck on an area

about the size of an
average person's sitting room

with a 10,000-foot drop
all round me.

And I hate heights.

I completely have a phobia
about heights.

And I was stuck up there
for about six hours.

We loved it. It looked great.

But then someone said, "You
could've just gone in a studio,

in London,
just got a big pile of salt

and just stuck the statue
on top of it."

But, you know,
that's just too easy.

Well, I know Hipgnosis
were expensive.

We had this idea to
recreate a complete juke joint.

So I did this tour
of the Caribbean,

taking photographs as a recce

finishing up at New Orleans.
I went to the Old Absinthe bar.

And this is the one. I mean, it
hasn't been washed in 60 years.

There's old ties, there's...

All kinds of artefacts
everywhere. It's just amazing.

And we built an exact copy of
it in a studio in West London

because this was
an expensive operation.

The sort of set was better
than the album.

Then Storm said to me,

"If we put six characters
in a bar,

why don't we have
the point of view

of each of the six characters?"

"We make six different
album covers."

Then, as money was no object
for the inner bag,

we thought
we'd do something fun.

On it, it doesn't say anywhere
that there's any trick at all.

But, when you put water on it,

it changes colour.

Peter Grant said to me,

"The only problem
with your Hipgnosis covers

is you're so bloody expensive."

He said,
"I could sell Led Zeppelin

in a brown paper bag."

And I said, "Well, why don't you
then?" He said, "Let's do it!"

So the whole thing came out
in a brown paper bag.

It was probably the
most expensive album cover

that we did
because it was so complex.

Po would come down, throw the
Yellow Pages at me, and say,

"Drew, I need a sheep,
er, I need a psychiatrist couch,

I'll probably need a vet,

and I'm shooting it in Hawaii,

so can you book me a flight
to Hawaii on Friday?"

I'm thinking, "It's Monday,

and all I've got is
a dial-up telephone

with a curly wire
and the Yellow Pages."

I got to Hawaii. Well,

there were no
psychiatrist couches.

And even worse still,
there were no sheep.

I discovered one sheep
at the university farm.

And I managed to persuade them
to let me take it to the sea

and put it on the psychiatrist
couch I had to have made.

Then trying to persuade

a sheep to lie on the couch
while these waves rolled in

proved to be difficult.

The veterinary advisor gave
a shot of Valium to the sheep,

which calmed it down.

It was a whole fiasco.
It took two days to do.

When Po came back
with the photos,

we were all just in awe
of this incredible scene.

And then Storm said, "We're not
going to use it full cover."

"We're going to print it
35 millimetres in size,

and then I just want
big typography

that says 'Are You Normal'."

Because that's not
a normal thing to do, is it?

To spend all that money, go to
Hawaii and do this big shoot,

then just print the picture
really tiny.

The record company,
who happened to be Welsh,

asked us why we didn't do it
in Wales. OK?

He said, "Listen.
We've just spent £2,000

sending you off to Hawaii,
you creeps."

"Why didn't you do it in Wales?"

The irony of it is,

that it finished up that size
on the front of the cover.

I'm still not
quite sure what's going on

or what it means.
But then, do I need to?

I just know that there's
something great happening there.

Although you may not think it,

and also maybe the rest of the
world doesn't think it either,

it's supposed to be
a little bit funny.

It's supposed to have
slightly humorous,

or what we call dry humour.

That font layout came back to me

when Katharine Hamnett,
a fashion designer,

rang up and asked me
to design some T-shirts for her.

And she said she wanted them
big and bold.

And so I did a whole range
of these T-shirts for her,

which then got picked up
by George Michael.

And it became a viral hit.

I think Are You Normal
probably represented

one of the last
really collaborative efforts

with Hipgnosis and a band
where the budget was unlimited.

I think that from 1968 to 1980,

Hipgnosis are so ubiquitous

with the most important artwork
in the world for music

that it had to change.

Pop culture moved on.
Ss it does.

It's a young-people thing.

1980 comes in in its bright
colours and padded shoulders.

This was probably the moment

when things started to, sort of,
disappear for us.

There was this progression

to dumping lavish and expensive
album covers.

Bonzo,
Led Zeppelin's drummer, died.

And after that,
Peter Grant went to pieces.

He almost had a breakdown.

And the mighty Led Zeppelin
just fell apart.

Last question.
What are your projects?

- Our future projects?
- We're gonna get married.

- Yes.
- We're going to get married.

- We're gonna start a double act.
- Yes.

Storm turned up
at my house one day

with Peter Christopherson,
with a bunch of flowers.

This had never happened before,

and I was immediately
suspicious.

We sat down. He said,

"I wanna have a serious talk
about Hipgnosis."

"I don't think we should do
album covers any more."

"We should knock it
on the head."

"It's old-fashioned. It's out
of date. We need to move on."

I think Storm and Peter saw that
the MTV generation was coming.

And Storm was a film grad
from the RCA

so I think he'd always fancied
being a film director.

So he saw this
as his opportunity

to fulfil that ambition.

Well, I was very loath to get
rid of Hipgnosis in that sense.

I thought we were really
at the peak of our careers.

And I wasn't very forward
looking, I have to say.

Peter was younger
than Storm and me,

and he was saying to me,
"Listen, Po, the time has come."

"You need to let it go."
So we did.

And we decided
that we ought to branch out

and become movie makers.
Do something else. Do videos.

It started off great.

But Storm began to take over
as master of the universe

as a director, believing that he
could have what he wanted

regardless of what
Peter and I said.

With too much money involved,
allocated amount of time,

Storm ran so over budget that
I couldn't control him any more.

Because Storm was so extreme.

He didn't care two hoots
for money.

He just did
what he needed to do.

This film company collapsed
after about two years

due to very poor management
on behalf of all of us.

We were financially
deeply in debt.

We each had to put in money.

And they wanted the money
the next morning at ten o'clock.

This is the bank.
And I said, "Here's a suitcase."

"My cash is in there.
Where's yours, Storm?"

"I don't have it."

"I might have to borrow it
from David Gilmour."

I said, "Peter, where's yours?"

He said, "Well, I'll have to
remortgage my house."

"I'm not quite sure."

They hadn't dealt
with the reality of it.

"Tomorrow morning
at ten o'clock,

the bank is calling the tune
and we're out of business."

"If you don't have your money
by ten tomorrow morning,

I resign from the company."

Ten o'clock tomorrow
morning came,

they didn't have
the money organised,

I resigned from the company,

and Storm and I
stopped speaking.

And I didn't speak to him
for 12 years.

It was a tragedy.

From all the good things
we'd done for 15, 17 years,

we're fucked.

Absolutely fucked.

They created some of
the best covers ever.

And they were highly original.

And they took the art seriously.

It wasn't
a piece of merchandise.

To be able to come up
with so many ideas,

not just for Led Zeppelin, but
for all of the artists they did

right across the music industry,

keep coming up with these
wonderful ideas,

time after time after time,

that takes
a very special person,

or people,
to be able to do that.

With such a great reputation,

why didn't you use Hipgnosis
for your album covers?

I couldn't afford them.