THE PROG INTERVIEW 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.

Mark Blake

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.” 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…

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Prog (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 139

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