AUBREY POWELL

Every month we get inside the mind of one of the biggest names in music. This issue it’s Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell. As co-founder of the design team Hipgnosis, who became synonymous with Pink Floyd’s best-known album art, his photography has played a significant role in providing the visual companion to prog adorning the covers of some of the genre’s biggest names from Yes and Genesis to The Moody Blues and Peter Gabriel. On the 50th anniversary of The Dark Side Of The Moon and with Hipgnosis’ iconic design back under the spotlight, Powell took time out of his busy schedule to share some of the secrets behind the team’s most famous work and his plans to keep Hipgnosis and Floyd’s flame burning.

Words: Mark Blake

Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell pretending to be clocks in a test shot, circa 1972.

Portrait: Joram Krol

Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell walked out of his first job with Pink Floyd in April 1967. He’d driven their lighting rig from the Netherlands to London’s Alexandra Palace, where Floyd were headlining The 14-Hour Technicolor Dream. “I think we’d all been up for 36 hours,” he recalls. “Everyone was exhausted.”

Pink Floyd were due onstage at dawn, and Roger Waters asked Po to fetch him a bottle of whisky. He reminded him that he wasn’t a gofer. “But Roger said, ‘Fucking go and find me a bottle of whisky.’ At which point I said, ‘Goodbye’, got in my van and left.”

Us And Them: The Authorised Story Of Hipgnosis is out now.

©HIPGNOSIS LTD

Fifty-six years later, Powell is employed as Pink Floyd’s creative director, a role he inherited after the death of his old friend, Storm Thorgerson. Throughout the 70s, he and Storm were the leading lights in Hipgnosis, the art house behind some of the world’s most famous album sleeves, for Pink Floyd, Yes, Genesis, 10cc, Peter Gabriel, Led Zeppelin and Paul McCartney. Interest in the Hipgnosis story has reached an all-time high. Their bestknown artwork,

The Dark Side Of The Moon, has just turned 50; their wild adventures are recounted in a new biography, Us And Them (“A rollercoaster of a book,” he says); their greatest hits are being exhibited in Netherlands’ Groninger Museum, and filmmaker Anton Corbijn’s Hipgnosis documentary, Squaring The Circle, is due for theatrical release later this year.

"When Yes fired Roger, the first thing Jon Anderson said to us was, “Can you do a Roger Dean cover?” Storm and I looked at each other and went, “Oh, God…”."

“There’s definitely something in the air,” says Powell, now 76 years young. “People are still fascinated, and I’m working harder than ever. I just wish Storm was here to see it…”

What surprises do Pink Floyd have planned for the 50th anniversary of The Dark Side Of The Moon?

The collective view is that the whole year will be a celebration. We’re still deciding when, but there will be playbacks of the album at planetariums around the world. I’ve been working with a wonderful team in Leicester, who have created films for each track. Some are psychedelic, some are narratives, some are like Kubrick’s 2001 [: A Space Odyssey], and some will have you zooming down the canyons of Mars and nearly puking out of your seat.