Squaring the Circle: Superb, Starry Doc Chronicles the Album Covers that Made Rock History
By Kim Hughes
Rating: A+
The great thing about being legendary rock photographer Anton Corbijn is that, when you decide to make a feature documentary about the famed British design house behind some of the most iconic album covers in the canon, the surviving musicians who made those albums will take your call. And agree to sit down and share candid, hair-raising stories.
Powell, centre with Thorgerson, right.
Which means the great thing for viewers of Corbijn’s Squaring the Circle: (The Story of Hipgnosis) — Hipgnosis being the go-to art studio for Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and Wings in the late 1960s and early 70s — is hearing firsthand from Floyd’s David Gilmour, Roger Waters, and Nick Mason, Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Jimmy Page and Paul McCartney among many notable others.
And not just hearing from them but seeing them exquisitely lit and filmed in Corbijn unmistakable, sepia-toned style. Squaring the Circle is a gripping true story told with towering visual panache.
Hipgnosis was the brainchild of Cambridge natives Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey “Po” Powell, two smart, artistic, ambitious, drug-positive young dudes in 1960s England. Thorgerson and Floyd’s Roger Waters had played rugby as lads; Hipgnosis was launching around the time Floyd was gaining momentum, and they designed the album art for the group’s 1968 album, Saucerful of Secrets.
The spooky, ambiguous yet beguiling design was far outside the norm of the day — which typically just featured a still of the musicians on the cover. It distinguished both Floyd and Hipgnosis as innovative thinkers in step with the counterculture era.
While Floyd summarily rewrote the rock handbook, Hipgnosis launched the golden age of the album cover which was, in the words of Oasis’ Noel Gallagher, “the poor man’s art collection.” But it was art just the same, as the film makes clear.
From there, came Wings’ Band on the Run, Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, 10cc’s Deceptive Bends as well as classic covers for UFO, Black Sabbath, Peter Gabriel (spectacular), the Alan Parsons Project, and Yes.
(Sidebar for music nerds: Roger Dean, Yes’ designer for their equally impressive cover art, was friends with Thorgerson and shared his leftfield artistic sensibilities. Canuck-born former band manager Merck Mercuriadis, described here as “a friend of Storm’s,” ended up using the name Hipgnosis for his wildly successful music publishing investment company. Finally, the late Peter Christopherson, known mainly for his work with Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, joined Hipgnosis in a latter iteration).
For all their versatility and success, Hipgnosis’ most enduring and famous client was Pink Floyd. Covers included Ummagumma, Animals, Wish You Were Here and, monumentally, Dark Side of the Moon, its prismatic rainbow image a certified cultural touchstone that’s been seen and appropriated by millions around the globe.
At its most interesting, Squaring the Circle tells the sometimes breathtakingly difficult — and expensive — stories behind how these album covers were conceived of and executed. How the designers literally set fire to a man (!) to capture Wish You Were Here. How they maneuvered a giant, inflatable pig over the Battersea Power Station for Animals… and how the pig drifted perilously away. How Stanley Kubrick inspired the design for Zeppelin’s Presence from 1976. And on and on.
Many riveting details come via Hipgnosis co-founder Aubrey “Po” Powell, the highly reliable chronicler and keeper of the memories, who offers both context and logistical minutiae for their feats of photography and design which, like vinyl, succumbed to the rise of the CD and to a lesser extent, the rise of punk and the DIY aesthetic of the late 1970s, as Sex Pistol Glen Matlock contends.
Check out Bonnie Laufer's interview with Aubrey "Po" Powell
The brilliant and mercurial Storm Thorgerson died in 2013 which seems like a terrible shame on many levels, not least the added colour and insight his perspective would have brought to Corbijn’s phenomenal film, which serves as an important historical record from eyewitnesses at the scene who won’t be around forever.
The film necessarily (and fascinatingly) chronicles ancillary stories of rock debauchery, brilliance, and tragedy, notably via Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd’s deeply troubled erstwhile co-founder. But in the end, it’s the art that’s most persuasive. Like Mojo Magazine sprung to life, but with way better imagery. Unmissable.
Squaring The Circle: (The Story of Hipgnosis). Directed by Anton Corbijn. With Aubrey “Po” Powell, Paul McCartney, David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, Peter Gabriel, Noel Gallagher, Glen Matlock, and Merck Mercuriadis. In select theatres June 9 including Scotiabank Toronto, Cinema du Parc Montreal, The Vic Victoria, and opening in Hamilton, Waterloo, St. Catharines, Vancouver, Quebec City, and Charlottetown throughout June.