Wear your art on your sleeve
Words by Dan Jude
Four longhaired men in suits on a zebra crossing. A giant pig soaring over Battersea Power station. A submerged baby reaching for a dollar bill. Images so iconic that to many they are better known than the music inside the sleeves and boxes they adorn. Such is the power of the record cover that photographs are no longer just photographs; instead the images capture an essence of the band that words fail to, and even remain potent symbols when the music-makers themselves are six feet under.
Get your cover right and your record will be remembered forever. Get it wrong and it’s doomed to gather dust on the back shelves of record stores. So what makes an album cover great? Who better to answer this question than Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell, the man who, as part of visionary trio Hypgnosis, has been responsible for creating some of the most revered album sleeves of all time. Disappear Here… meets this living legend to talk us through the remarkable stories behind the making of some of his most iconic images of all time, and give us his take on some modern classics.
PINK FLOYD - DARK SIDE OF THE MOON.
Po: ‘In 1974 we got our break when we did Dark Side of the Moon. It sold 45 million copies, and it’s been labelled one of the most iconic album covers of all time. The band just came to us said they wanted something that was very simple, very plain, very brandy, very symbolic. We knew the title but we hadn’t heard any of the music. We came up with loads of different ideas, then one day we were flicking through an old photographic book and in there was one of the first colour photographs, and there was a picture of a prism sitting on some sheet music, and there falling across the sheet music, were all the colours of the rainbow.
So that was it. We came up with this idea and did it, and for whatever reason it’s just iconic, and everybody knows it. What’s that got to do with the music? What’s that got to do with the album? Absolutely fuck all, but somehow this very simple image just summed up Pink Floyd.’
LED ZEPELLIN – HOUSES OF THE HOLY
‘The phone rang one day and it was Jimmy Page. I’d never spoken to him and he just said ‘I’d really like you to have a go at doing the album cover for Led Zeppelin.’ I asked him if he could give us a clue of some sort and he said ‘no’. Then I asked if there was any music we could listen to and he said ‘no’. All we knew is that it was called Houses of the Holy, and that we had 3 weeks to put some ideas together.
So we did, and we went to the meeting and they loved the idea we had, and when we asked about a budget, they told us that money was no objective and that we could spend whatever we liked. So I went to Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, and it pissed with rain. Non-stop. For five days. And after five days of this absolute nightmare, and money just being haemorrhaged away, we finally shot the whole thing, took it back to London, and made a montage up of the children standing on the rocks. When we finished it, we went to meet Jimmy Page at Victoria Station. I drove up, opened up the boot, and there’s Jimmy Page in all his finery – long hair, beads, velvet trousers, looking like the rock star - and he said straight away that he loved it. By this point about 200 people had gathered around to see what was going on, and when he left everyone gave me a round of applause.
PINK FLOYD – ANIMALS
One day Roger Waters called me up and said ‘I’ve got an idea for an album cover’. We’d showed them some ideas already - one of them was a child discovering their parents fucking in bed, which the band had rejected. He said: ‘You know we’re building this big pig in Germany, how about flying that over Battersea power station?’. So he and I set off that afternoon, brought the pig down to Battersea, plated with helium. It was absolutely massive – about twice the size of your average Victorian house. We sent it up and it hung between the two chimneys.
The sky was fantastic when we got there - it was like a Turner painting. Then just as we were about to take the photograph, the anchoring broke and the pig sailed off up into the sky. As we watched it go, we realised it was heading up into the airspace around Heathrow, so in an absolute panic we phoned up the police, and within an hour, all aircraft to Heathrow were diverted to other airports. By this time it was starting to get dark, and they ended up stopping all flights from Europe to Heathrow; they even sent up jet fighters.
I was promptly arrested by the police, and it was broadcast on national television and radio everywhere that anybody who sighted the pig should phone in. It was on the front page of every newspaper and I was in deep trouble – I was charged with possession of a flying pig without due care and attention. Next thing, the phone rings and this country voice says ‘Hello, are these the people looking for a pink pig? That fucking thing is scaring my fucking cows’. It was a farmer down in Kent, and the pig had landed in his field. So we went and got it and went back to Battersea the next day, and there was a big police presence there. Thankfully everything was fine, but funnily enough the sky from the first day was the image that we wanted. So in the end, we took that picture and we put the pig from the final shot into the first shot – so it never was a whole picture. It’s made up of two photos. It was fun and of course Pink Floyd made a lot of mileage out of it, it was amazing how much publicity they got from that.
Po’s take on Modern Classics:
NIRVANA – NEVER MIND
Whoever came up with this idea is a genius. Babies, being taught to swim – they throw them under water – they seem to be totally intimidated and rather enjoy the experience, and lots of people have photographs taken of their babies going through this process. Whoever came up with the idea of putting a dollar bill at the end of a hook – it completely sums up the whole attitude of the Rock and Roll business, and what it’s like to be a rock and roll star. It’s basically an infant rock and roller swimming for the dollar and trying to make a living – it’s an absolute work of genius. And it’s got a willy on it, which is even more important – you could just about get away with that now, but only just.
RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE – RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE
It suited them because somehow their music is so intense, so violent and you get this sort of feeling from the flames that there is a lot of anger and protest and deep sincerity of rage. For somebody to set themselves on fire like that takes a tremendous amount of courage and I think it sums up the band really well. Courage and selfishness. It’s a shocking image, but it suits them. I have no problem with people putting shocking images on their album covers, and in this case I find it a very potent symbol for their kind of music.
THE STROKES – IS THIS IT?
Alan Jones - a painter from the 60’s - used to paint women on all fours with glass tabletops on the top of them and the lower part of their body would be swathed in leather – this album is the photographic version. Just the feeling of a beautiful curvy bottom with a latex glove - it gives you the feeling that something is about to happen. It’s sexy and perverse, without actually being so – you’re not seeing fisting, you’re not seeing some unpleasant sexual action, it hints at it. It just grabs your attention. I love the shape of the bottom. Graphically, it’s very striking, and it’s quite ambiguous too, because you’re not sure if it’s a man or a woman.
BLUR - PARKLIFE
It’s a great record, and with Blur having that London attitude – what’s more London than White City and the dogs? The image of dog racing is brilliant – it’s also a great picture, I don’t know who photographed this - it looks like a shot maybe taken from a library or from Racing Weekly, but it’s got a fantastic atmosphere to it, it’s a really great cover. It’s nothing to do with rock and roll, and that’s what I like about – it’s very typical Blur in that they didn’t write traditional pop lyrics, they wrote about social situations – boys who like girls who like boys who like girls – very sexual lyrics. Living in housing estates in London – these are not pop lyrics so it didn’t deserve a pop cover.
THE LIBERTINES – THE LIBERTINES
The thing I like about the Libertines is that they are expressing a social period of time, a cultural movement. ‘Parental advisory, explicit content’ - I mean that says everything doesn’t it. You look at the relationships there: Are they junkies? Have they been shooting up? They have tattoos, and they’re kind of hip and youthful looking. I love the quality of the hair and the red shirt and the red lipstick – it’s very sexually ambiguous – are they boys are they girls? There’s something about to happen or just has been happening. They’ve just been caught on camera and you want to know - where are they? I like it a lot, because you don’t really know what’s happening, but there is a story there.
SOULWAX – ANY MINUTE NOW
I’m a great fan of Bridget Riley and of kinetic art and that whole period that happened in the early 60’s. It’s so cleverly disguised. When you look at it gives you a false perception, we’re looking at it but at the same time it’s making your eyes kind of shift all over the place and you can’t look at it, you can’t concentrate on it. Somewhere there is some lettering, but it’s cleverly disguised.
BRAND YOUR BRAND.
10 Essential Tips
1) Avoid being a stereotype. A good idea badly executed is better than a bland idea. So whatever you think would be predictable to you, don’t do it. It’s one of the big things that I have about a lot of bands – some photographs are so uninteresting, bands just do things that have been done for donkey’s years.
2) Be funny. In the 60’s there was a Captain Beefheart album called Trout Mask Replica, and on the cover there was a big trout made out of Papier Mache, over a man’s face. That was far better than having a photo of him. Fuck knows what it was about, but it was humorous. I’d rather see that than I would a photograph of a rock and roll band. Of course a lot of young girls and guys want to see their heroes, but is it really necessary? No.
3) Be different. An interesting picture beats a boring old picture any time, and the problem is there are very very few great portrait photographers. There are some, like Anton Corbijn who did U2. But a lot of pop group photographs just leave me cold. Be innovative, intuitively take something that’s totally off the wall for your cover. I’d rather have a picture of a cabbage than I would a boring rock star’s face.
4) Avoid the group shot. Bands want to be on the cover for one reason – ego. They want to be seen and recognized, but it’s all bollocks. The exception being if you’re a Lily Allen or Amy Winhouse – they’ve got a great image, and when you buy their album, it’s them you want to see.
5) Keep some mystery. One of the greatest things about Pink Floyd is that nobody ever knew what they looked like. Seek out the unobvious image. Something striking which doesn’t necessarily relate to the music, but somehow its catchy. Take Prodigy’s Fat of the Land – the crab has fuck all to do with them but it sums up the music perfectly.
6) Look for new techniques. With modern day graphics, it’s only too easy to go on the computer and bash something off. Don’t do that. Be original.
7) Learn how to take a good photograph. Learn lighting techniques. Study great photographers. Mario Testino takes the greatest fashion pictures - go and study the work of the greats.
8) Who you know is everything. You need to nurture relationships - with the band, with their friends their record companies. Without that, you’ve got nothing.
9) Look at the world around you. Look at architecture. Look at drawings. Look at stars, paintings, textures, plants, trees. Things that can make a difference in terms of oddness or abstractness. Images that have textures that will somehow overlay or give a feeling of the band; they’re all important.
10) There are 3 Golden Rules. Talent, a little bit of luck and finally you need to know somebody. If you’ve got those, then the world is your oyster.
Lessons from a legend - JOHN PASCHE
You’ve got one minute to think of a band that can be summed up by a single logo. Go on. Can’t do it? Didn’t think so. That’s because there aren’t many. Scrap that, there aren’t any. Bar one. The Beatles may well be widely considered the best band of all time, but it’s their cooler adversaries The Stones who won that particular battle.
The Rolling Stones’ ‘Tongue’ regularly tops polls of the most recognisable logos of all time. So who better to advise you on how to brand your band than the very man who created this incredible image. John Pasche was 25 when he got the call. ‘Someone rang up the Royal College of Art and said ‘Mr Jagger would like to talk to somebody about doing a tour poster’, so I was selected to go along to his office, this big boardroom.’
So how much was he paid for creating such an iconic image? ’50 quid. It took a week to do, and I used that 50 quid to do an art show.’ Has he seen any royalties since? ‘I didn’t get anything for a long long time, and then in 1984 they paid me £24,000 for the copyright, which was a lot of money then. After that, I didn’t see any more for a while, until I sold the original artwork to the V&A museum for about £50,000 a couple of months ago.’
So what is it that makes this particular image so iconic? ‘Iconography is a very organic process, it just kind of happens. People see that logo as a representation of the time, not just the band. I think it represents that period, the birth of that particular musical genre.’
Here’s some more wise words from the man himself on how to create the perfect logo for your band…
1) Talk to the band. Try and get inside their heads. If you know the direction they’re going in musically, you’ll find it a lot easier to know which direction you’re going in.
2) Know your fan-base. Know what they like, and know what they don’t like.
3) Do your research. Check out similar band’s logos so you don’t end up copying them. You might think you’re being original when all you’re doing is ripping off something that’s already been done before.
4) Know the music. Try to come up with a concept that encapsulates what the band and the music are about.
5) Do something you love. Chances are, if you love it, others will love it too.
Posted Thu, December 04, 2008