Only at the end of our interview does it dawn on both of us that Anton Corbijn has been sitting in front of his huge vinyl record collection at his home in Amsterdam the whole time. It is fitting: not just because Corbijn, now 68, initially made his name by photographing Joy Division and went on to shoot and make music videos for the likes of Depeche Mode, U2, the Killers and REM, but also because he has just directed a documentary, Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis), about the celebrated record sleeves of Aubrey “Po” Powell and the late Storm Thorgerson.
Hipgnosis was one of the trailblazers of album cover design during the golden age of the late 60s and 70s. It conceived the artwork for hundreds of bands and artists including juggernauts such as Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Peter Gabriel, 10cc and Paul McCartney, all of whom Corbijn has interviewed for this movie. Although they are often more identified with the pre-punk period, their dizzyingly inventive portfolio stretched into 1983, when the partnership ended.
Corbijn is relentless in his own creativity and deeply serious about his art. Along with his portrait photography and music videos, he is known for dramatic movies such as Control, about Joy Division’s Ian Curtis. This autumn, he’ll be shooting Switzerland – a drama about the author Patricia Highsmith, starring Helen Mirren – while also continuing to work closely with the resurgent Depeche Mode, designing the stage sets for their current Memento Mori world tour.
Variety is key to his longevity. “I’m so careful not to fall into a predictable direction,” he says. “After Control, I was offered countless biopics. I could have easily fallen into that trap and I am determined not to. I don’t like people calling my photographs rock photography. It’s the portraiture of musicians and many other disciplines. People like to pigeonhole because it’s easy. I like to be a multidisciplinary type of person.”
I ask about the inspiration behind the title of his latest movie. “Squaring the Circle means doing the impossible,” he says, “but it also represents the circular record going into a sleeve.” Doing the impossible is only a slight exaggeration. What Thorgerson and Powell pulled off in terms of design, long before the days of digitisation, was remarkable. Just take a look at Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy cover created at the Giant’s Causeway on the coast of Northern Ireland, or Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here sleeve where a stuntman was set on fire to get that brilliant cover shot.
Corbijn unfortunately never met Thorgerson before his death in 2013, although was clearly intrigued by his reputation for having brilliant ideas and a very sharp tongue. “I would have liked so much to have had a conversation with him,” Corbijn says. “I think [Pink Floyd drummer] Nick Mason summed him up perfectly: ‘Storm Thorgerson was a man who wouldn’t take yes for an answer.’ He seemed at heart a sweet man, just fighting for his thing with a singular focus.”
The genesis of Squaring the Circle came about with an approach to Corbijn, not the reverse, which is how most of his commissions happen. In this case, Powell visited Corbijn in his native Netherlands in late 2020 to sell the project to him. Corbijn describes Powell as having “the gift of the gab”. Powell adopts the role of narrator throughout the film (Corbijn calls him a “natural”). All the interviews are conducted in signature Corbijn black and white, with the animated presentation of the album artwork in vibrant colour, giving the design the spotlight it deserves. The opening and closing scenes are beautifully shot with a steely Powell, walking purposefully through bleak countryside, his art portfolio strapped to his back. As Corbijn points out, it’s a fine line between being celebrated for your art and being endlessly defined by it: “Po is carrying the past with him. He’s very proud of it, but maybe it’s also like a stone around his neck.” The scene was inspired by the famous cover of Led Zeppelin IV, depicting a man in a rural setting with a pack on his shoulders. Corbijn wanted this image to “come alive” in the documentary.
Thorgerson and Powell were very different individuals, but that difference worked perfectly. Corbijn explains their dynamic: “They loved making things,” says Corbijn. “One with great ideas and one with the technical skills to execute these ideas.” He knows first-hand how demanding it is to deliver album design in its entirety: “I have done a lot of record sleeves in my life, but I’ve not designed that many. I may have taken the photo on the sleeve. Hipgnosis however, did everything. It’s amazing they came from nothing in a way. Neither of them were educated in the visual sense. They found ways to do the impossible.”
Listening to the songs throughout the movie – Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, Led Zeppelin’s No Quarter, Wings’ Band on the Run – you wonder how vast the music budget for Squaring the Circle must have been. However, it seems the love for Hipgnosis and what they had achieved for so many artists made licensing the soundtrack possible. “There was an enormous amount of goodwill towards Hipgnosis,” Corbijn says. “People just wanted to make it [the movie] work. They were generous. Everyone was proud of their albums and the work they had done with them.”
The documentary is packed with dry English humour, but also moments of poignancy. Powell recalls the profoundly sad sight of an overweight and almost unrecognisable Syd Barrett arriving at Abbey Road studios in 1975 during the recording of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, seven years after he had left the band, an event that clearly upsets the band’s surviving (if estranged) members to this day.
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There are interviews, too, with Peter Saville, best known for his sleek and minimalist design work with Joy Division and New Order, and something of a counterweight to Hipgnosis who, after all, mainly worked in a time of great musical excess. And Noel Gallagher provides useful insight as a dedicated consumer and lover of the Hipgnosis album sleeve.
It is Gallagher who, citing his daughter, argues that there is a lack of recognition of the album cover among younger generations, blaming factors including reduced budgets and the smaller picture formats used by streaming platforms. Corbijn is in complete agreement. “The importance of the record sleeve has diminished. In the 70s, for young kids there wasn’t much else to spend money on. Yet you had to save up to buy something, so it was meaningful. Now nothing is meaningful because you can get it at the touch of a button.”
The majority of sleeves discussed during the movie required an enormous amount of thinking outside the box by Hipgnosis. According to Corbijn, much of their success results from their ability to deliver under severe pressure, something he can relate to: “You have your back to the wall and you make it work,” he says. “You become very inventive in these situations. Often, there is a better result than if the conditions had been perfect.”
Even with close to 50 years’ experience and a prime portfolio, Corbijn never wastes an opportunity to learn through his experiences. “I am full of admiration for the thoughts that go into making these album sleeves. It showed me that it’s very important to create a strong idea before you shoot. I normally shoot before I have an idea. I need to think more about what is achievable.”
Hipgnosis’ influence is still being felt in the music industry. The Hipgnosis song fund – unrelated, but named in honour of the studio – has been at the forefront of a £1bn march to buy up the rights to classic artists’ back catalogues. For all that Powell and Thorgerson’s relationship resulted in some amazing pieces of work, things ultimately broke down between the pair – in one of the film’s most moving moments Po breaks down in tears due to the fallout of his friendship with his late creative partner. “I didn’t see it coming,” Corbijn says. “It was a beautiful moment in the film. He clearly misses Storm terribly.”
Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis) premieres at the Sundance film festival on Friday, and is in cinemas and on-demand from 14 July.