Every record collector of a certain age knows the album covers of legendary British design studio Hipgnosis. Now, thanks to a new book by Mark Blake, we can dive into the colourful history of the crew who gave us so many memorable record sleeves.

The author kindly agreed to talk to Vinyl Connection.

Vinyl Connection: Welcome, Mark. Your new book, Us and Them, is a trio of intertwined histories. Storm Thorgerson, Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell, and Hipgnosis itself. What were the challenges of researching and writing such a story?

Mark Blake: With any story going back sixty years, it is a challenge untangling the chronology. Two people will recall the same event, but differently –  “the Rashomon effect” – which I had experienced before.

A surprise to me was Jimmy Page’s story about the artwork for Led Zeppelin’s Houses Of The Holy. Jimmy is convinced Storm presented him with a photograph of a tennis racket to “imply Led Zeppelin’s music is a racket”. Poor Jimmy was outraged and told me he banished Storm and demanded to see Po, who suggested the children crawling over the rocks, seen on the final cover.

But Po is adamant the “unfortunate tennis racket incident” took place when Hipgnosis were pitching for the next Zeppelin album, Physical Graffiti – which is why they didn’t get the job. Mr Page won’t budge, though, so I ran both versions in the book. A good story is a good story – and we knew there was a tennis racket in there somewhere.

VC: Racquet or racket, it certainly serves up a great anecdote.

VC: Cambridge features heavily in the early parts of both the Hipgnosis story and that of their star clients, Pink Floyd. Having spent so much time immersed in that part of Cambridge history, any ideas ideas on what made it a special time in that special place?

MB: I think it was a case of right place, right time. The local university was a conduit for bright young people and new ideas, and I suspect those new ideas filtered down to other bright young people. Some of the characters in this story, including Storm, David Gilmour, Syd Barrett and Roger Waters, had parents who were teachers/academics and left their offspring to their own devices. David Gilmour is adamant that “the Cambridge thing” has been exaggerated. But I think it has a bearing on the story – there seemed to be a lot of precocious young people enjoying great freedom. Storm’s mum, Vanji, didn’t mind him and his mates sitting around in his bedroom all hours of the night playing records and smoking dope – and this was in 1964/65.

VC: There truly is a cast of hundreds in this story. What format/mechanism did you use for interviews? And how did you manage the mass of data?

MB: I had a lot of existing interview material, especially with Storm Thorgerson, conducted for previous projects. But a lot of the material is new. I spent hours off and on over a year interviewing Po – on Zoom during a lockdown, on the phone or at his house. Gilmour, Waters, Nick Mason, Jimmy Page and various members of 10cc all agreed to be interviewed for the book too. They were fully on board, and I was surprised how candid they were when talking about someone other than themselves. There was a lot of data, but if there were three versions of the same story, I tended to choose the most entertaining.

VC: A sound principle to follow.

I’ve always loved the beginning of chapter device, “In which Pooh and Piglet go hunting and nearly catch a Woozle”.  What led you to employ it for Us And Them?

MB: I had forgotten about A.A. Milne using this device, as I shamelessly ripped it off of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, by Peter Biskind, which is about Scorsese, Coppola and that ‘60s generation of new film makers. I just wanted to signpost the chapters and drag readers into the story. This comes from my magazine background, picking out big ‘pull quotes’ on articles and interviews.

I also noticed when I went through the interview transcripts, certain comments stood out – or made me laugh, like Jimmy Page saying to a young intern at Hipgnosis: “Do you know what this is? It’s Aleister Crowley’s fountain pen”. Or Roger Waters complaining that Hipgnosis’ overseas cover shoots were because “they wanted a free trip to Timbuk-fucking-tu!” So I decided to use these comments as chapter titles.

It made me think of eavesdropping on a conversation. Unfortunately I couldn’t include one of my favourites, as I didn’t have space for the anecdote in the final book. It came from Po – “… And I walked out to find Rita Marley and Nina Simone rolling around on the floor, fighting.” I’m saving that for another time. 

VC: Look forward to seeing that teaser expanded!

VC: Your Introduction to Us and Them is very entertaining and subtly showcases some of the obstacles to preparing an accurate and thorough text. Throughout the book, the rambunctious style of Storm Thorgerson is writ large. Could the book have been written while Storm was living?

MB: I’d like to think we could have written it if Storm was still with us (he died in 2013), but I suspect not. I’m not sure he would have co-operated. I had enough trouble getting Storm to co-operate when he’d actually asked me to work on projects with him. 

VC: A unique and headstrong individual. Did you get any feedback from Po?

MB: Po wrote the foreword but did not ask for copy approval and only read the book when it was published. He has been very positive about it, as have others who worked at Hipgnosis, and Storm’s widow, Barbie – which did surprise me a little as Storm doesn’t always come out of it very well.

VC: After immersing yourself in the substantial Hipgnosis catalogue, what are your favourite covers?

MB: Too many to choose, but in no particular order: Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon (an obvious choice but this book wouldn’t have happened without it), Wish You Were Here and Animals. Led Zeppelin’s Presence (the mysterious black object on the cover made a big impression on me as a teenager – “What does it all mean, man?” – and it fits the music, though I can’t explain why). Peter Gabriel 3 (the melting face, which I remember seeing on the side of buses and posters around London), UFO’s Phenomenon (a couple outside a bungalow in suburban Surrey faking a flying saucer photo), because it has a filmic quality and doesn’t look like a typical hard rock band’s cover. I also like the cover of Trees’ On The Shore, but the music is too folky for me. AC/DC’s Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap has a different style, a bit punk.

VC: I’m planning a follow-up post featuring Vinyl Connection favourites as well as some of your selections. There is sure to be plenty of variety.

                                        Plate from “Us And Them” courtesy of Hipgnosis

VC: Mark, you have published your own volume on Pink Floyd, written for the book accompanying Their Mortal Remains: The Pink Floyd Exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and now published a Floyd-intertwined opus on Hipgnosis. If the University of Cambridge establishes a Professor of Pink chair, one assumes you’d be a shoe-in, right?

MB: Ha! What a thought, but no, not for me, thanks. I actually wish I could plug my brain into an external hard drive and download all this stuff onto it – and then re-access the material as and when I need it. I’m uncomfortable with some aspects of Floyd-ology. I have the vinyl albums and a couple of box sets, but I am not a collector. I don’t own bootlegs, autographs, T-shirts or any of that stuff. I can’t tell you the catalogue number of the rare Martian pressing of Ummagumma or what colour underpants Nick Mason was wearing when he played on “Us And Them”. But I am sure someone on the internet can. I like the music (not all of it, obviously) but it’s the human interest angle that appeals. Really, this book is about friendship… as well as art, money, drugs, and rock’n’roll.

VC: The perfect shopping list for a music book. What’s next? A Syd Barrett bio?

MB: My next book is about Fleetwood Mac – another group of dysfunctional human beings. I’ve found my lane and I’m staying in it until they run me off the road. But – thank God – two of Fleetwood Mac were brilliant creative women. So there’ll be marginally less testosterone flying about the place than Pink Floyd and Hipgnosis. Here come the girls! At last…

VC: Mark Blake, thanks for your time.

MB: Thanks for the great questions!

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All album cover images designed by Hipgnosis. 

Plate from Us And Them: The Authorised Story of Hipgnosis (Mark Blake, 2023) used with permission of the author, with thanks (and admiration) to Hipgnosis.

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More on Mark Blake’s books, including this one, at his website.

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This is Part 2 of a three-part series.

Part 1: 10 HIPGNOTIC ALBUM COVERS

Part 3: 10 MORE HIPGNOTIC ALBUM COVERS

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