![]() Here, he and Hipgnosis co-founder Aubrey “Po” Powell dish on some key album covers. “Even though vinyl sales have surged again, it’s like a period that’s gone.” “The importance of an album sleeve will never be the same as in the ’70s, and to make a documentary about the most prominent album covers of the era that are all done by one design team is really important for people who have missed that period,” said renowned rock photographer Anton Corbijn, who directed the film. The new documentary “Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis)” - which opened at NYC’s Film Forum on Wednesday and rolls out nationwide later this month - goes inside the studio that created the visuals for some of the biggest acts of the 1970s. Pink Floyd’s Waters, Gilmour at war over ‘anti-Semitic, Putin apologist’ rantīefore the age of the internet and social media, it was all about album covers.Īnd London-based art design studio Hipgnosis created some of the most iconic art, for classic rock acts such as Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles band Wings. Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters fires back at bandmate, says David Gilmour, wife, ‘have no ideas’ ![]() Roger Waters dresses as Nazi: ‘Desecrating the memory of Anne Frank’ is history.Roger Waters defends Nazi-style costume after Berlin police launch investigation tour that proved their appeal before they even had a record out in the U.K. When he presented their completed disc to Atlantic’s Jerry Wexler, “I made a point of saying, ‘We’re an album band, we’re not doing singles.’ ” The rest - after a whirlwind U.S. Having witnessed the beginnings of FM radio in America on a Yardbirds tour, he foresaw the album-oriented aesthetic on the horizon. They went on a Scandinavian tour the Yardbirds had booked before disbanding (a legal kerfuffle over the group’s name is omitted here), and were fully formed by the time of a Denmark gig: We watch as a seated, middle-class audience wonders how to respond to the primordial rawk before them.Īs the film chronicles the recording and sale of their debut LP, Page provides a nice dissection of how he got their sound on tape and what tricks he used to give them some sonic mystery. Jones recalls his immediate rhythm-section bond with Bonham (“I was very much in love with John’s right foot”), and soon Page installed them in his Pangbourne boathouse for proper rehearsals. Meanwhile, Plant was making more conventional attempts at stardom, taking whatever singing gig he could get and honing the chops that would eventually attract Page’s interest: When the Yardbirds disbanded and Page was tasked with assembling a new version, he really wanted the “ballsy blues voice” of Terry Reid second-choice Plant would have to do.īy all their accounts, the four men had immediate chemistry when Page got them in a room together and suggested they play “Train Kept A-Rollin’,” a number the Yardbirds had covered. ![]() The filmmakers unearth adorable glimpses of teenage rocker Page, while Jones recounts the kind of always-say-yes work ethic that seemingly ensured success: At 14, he taught himself to play organ for a church gig later, he lied when producer Andrew Loog Oldham asked if he knew how to write orchestral arrangements. With boyish enthusiasm, the old men echo one another when they speak of these early encounters: Page was “infected” for Plant, after a concert whose staggering lineup ranged from Bo Diddley to the Stones, “the syringe was in the arm, forever.” We hear about their formative musical crushes, including non-household names like Johnny Burnette - seen here in a TV clip where the sanitized setting and photography contrast sharply with the singer’s raw delivery - and skiffle pioneer Lonnie Donegan, “a force of nature,” according to Page. (Get a sax and you’ll always work, he told the boy.) Both boys had families who happily supported their early musical tendencies - even if Jones’ father, a vaudevillian, warned his son that the bass guitar was “a novelty instrument” soon to be forgotten. But more enjoyable are stories of the musicians’ sometimes Gump-like early careers, which intersect with everything from bubblegum pop to Muzak to blues great Sonny Boy Williamson (at a urinal, where he understandably told fanboy Robert Plant to fuck off).įor those who don’t know, guitar god Jimmy Page and bassist John Paul Jones (born John Richard Baldwin) were workaholic session musicians from their teens onward, playing on classics like Petula Clark’s “Downtown” and Shirley Bassey’s “Goldfinger” (the only Bond song that matters, no matter what Duran Duran or Wings fans may tell you). Their pleasure is evident, and gratifying. The bandmates encounter some of this with us, largely for the first time: We watch their faces (each was interviewed separately) as they see material shot in the studio, for instance, or listen to Bonham describe them fondly. ![]() Screenwriters: Bernard MacMahon, Allison McGourty ![]()
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