Fleapit revisited:Squaring The Circle (The Story Of Hipgnosis).

In an age of streaming, album cover design isn't what it used to be. In Anton Corbijn's Squaring The Circle (The Story Of Hipgnosis), Noel Gallagher tells a story about coming home late from work one evening and explaining to his daughter he'd been in a meeting about the artwork for his new record. She had no concept of what he even meant. He had to explain that the tiny little square you see on iTunes when you download a tune used to be bigger.

It used to be a lot bigger. It wasn't the albums that got small, it was the devices that they were played on. The heyday of the album cover probably lasted from the mid to late sixties, Sergeant Pepper, into the eighties and perhaps early nineties before CDs saw the game get smaller and iPods and other MP3 players pretty much brought it to an end.

Some of the more famous album cover designers' names lives on. The likes of Roger Dean, Barney Bubbles. Peter Saville, and, of course, Andy Warhol but the biggest name of all was Hipgnosis, the duo that consisted of Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey 'Po' Powell. Squaring The Circle tells their story through the words of Po and via vintage recorded footage of Thorgerson who died in 2013.

Not just them though. There's a whole host of others lined up to tell their version of events. Pink Floyd members (David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Nick Mason), Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, Graham Gouldman of 10cc, Paul McCartney, Peter Gabriel, and Glen Matlock as well as Gallagher and fellow sleeve designers Dean and Saville.

Po met Storm when he started hanging out with a load of long hairs in a residential Cambridge house. They'd drink, they'd get stoned, they'd listen to John Coltrane, they'd read Playboy together, and they'd get busted by the police. Among the group were the guys who would go on to become The Pink Floyd and once they did, and they started to get big, Po and Storm suggested they could do their artwork.

All the members of Pink Floyd seemed happy with this and they produced the cover of Pink Floyd's second album, A Saucerful Of Secrets, released in June 1968. The two of them took the name Hipgnosis because they considered themselves to be both cool (hip) and wise (gnostic). Though there's some serious debate as to who actually coined the name, Syd Barrett seems to have played some small role in it.

The Hipgnosis guys were living a rock'n'roll lifestyle as much as the bands they were working with and though they enjoyed acid, Po admits he eventually took so much that both he and Thorgerson had to attend a psychiatric facility. It didn't stop the creativity though, and soon Hipgnosis were working with huge names.

Led Zeppelin, Paul McCartney, T.Rex, Wishbone Ash, 10cc, The Nice, The Shadows, UFO, Black Sabbath, Peter Gabriel, XTC, Styx, Status Quo, Wings, the list goes on and on. They worked, initially, from a grotty office in Denmark Street that didn't have a toilet (they used to piss in the sink and bands they worked with had to as well) but it wasn't long before they were flying around on Concorde, shooting in Hawaii or the Sahara, and living a full on jet-set lifestyle.

A lifestyle that ended, for Thorgeson, when his wife left him and he had to bring up their child alone. Thorgeson, it seems, was a hugely talented, creative, and intelligent man. But almost everyone in the film describes him using adjectives that are basically synonyms for unreasonable. Nick Mason puts it best when he describes Thorgeson as a man "who couldn't take yes for an answer".

Po seems to have been more level headed though does admit to the red mist coming down on occasion and also that he was once something of a huckster who'd hotwire cars and steal them and once threw a sofa off the roof of a building on to a taxi below.

It's not the only amusing story in Squaring The Circle. There's Led Zeppelin's man mountain of a manager Peter Grant riding shotgun somewhat uncomfortably in a Mini, there's John Lydon describing Pink Floyd as "cunts", there's Roger Waters' inflatable pig escaping its lead and flying off over Battersea Power Station during the Animals album cover shoot - an event that caused all flights in and out Heathrow Aiport to be delayed for a couple of hours, and then there's the time Po flew halfway across the world to take a photo of a sheep on a psychiatrist's couch only to scale it down to minute proportions for the cover of 10cc's Look Hear album.

There's the stuntman who actually set himself on fire for the cover of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here and then there are stories about the 2001:A Space Odyssey inspired monolith that featured on the cover of Led Zeppelin's Presence and later inspired a skyscraper in Dubai (as well as a doorstop at Robert Plant's house). Then there's Dark Side Of The Moon which, by selling over 65,000,000 copies became Hipgnosis' most iconic cover. One that has gone on to be replicated on everything from birthday cakes to tattoos. 

We hear of those who joined Hipgnosis on their journey. From Humphrey Ocean (a former member of Kilburn and the High Roads with Ian Dury who had studied art under Peter Blake) and photographer Jill Furmanovsky to Peter Christopherson who would eventually go on to join Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, and Coil under his nickname Sleazy.

There are a lot of laughs but there's a couple of sad stories too. When a fat, bald, and almost unrecognisable Syd Barrett, long since booted out of the band, turned up as Pink Floyd were rehearsing, of all songs, Wish You Were Here (mind you, Shine On You Crazy Diamond would probably have been worse) and when Hipgnosis finally ended and Po and Storm didn't speak to each other for twelve years.

The end had come slowly. Punk didn't kill them but they had become associated with the dinosaurs the punks sought to get rid off. New wave, synth pop, and new romantics didn't completely do for them - though their aesthetic was very different. If anything, it was MTV, and the dawning of the video age, that finally destroyed Hipgnosis. Christopherson and Storm wanted to move into videos, Po was less sure but agreed. It didn't go well. Storm, as was always his way, didn't think about money and so, soon, the money ran out.

But their run at the top had been long and incredibly fruitful. They made some tremendous artwork (and some that's not aged so well) for some very good (and some not quite so good) albums and, best of all - for viewers of Squaring The Circle, they've got some very very good yarns to spin about it all. Wish you were there? You will do.