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 were the leading lights in Hipgnosis, the art house behind some of the world’s most famous album sleeves, for Pink Floyd, Yes, Genesis, 10cc, Peter Gabriel, Led Zeppelin and Paul McCartney.
Interest in the Hipgnosis story has reached an all-time high. Their best-known artwork, The Dark Side Of The Moon, has just turned 50; their wild adventures are recounted in a new biography, Us And Them (“A rollercoaster of a book,” he says); their greatest hits are being exhibited in Netherlands’ Groninger Museum, and filmmaker Anton Corbijn’s Hipgnosis documentary, Squaring The Circle, is due for theatrical release later this year.
“There’s definitely something in the air,” says Powell, now 76 years young. “People are still fascinated, and I’m working harder than ever. I just wish Storm was here to see it…”
What surprises do Pink Floyd have planned for the 50th anniversary of The Dark Side Of The Moon?
