Download or read book Us and Them written by Mark Blake and published by Nine Eight Books. This book was released on 2023-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive story of the Hipgnosis design partnership, their iconic album artwork and their rock 'n' roll life
Download or read book Us and Them The Authorised Story of Hipgnosis written by Mark Blake and published by Nine Eight Books. This book was released on 2023-02-02 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Hugely entertaining history' - Mojo Between the late '60s and early '80s, design house Hipgnosis created some of the most iconic and ubiquitous album artwork of all time. Their original lifespan coincided with the golden age of the 12-inch LP, beginning just as the Beatles' Sgt Pepper made the record sleeve the ultimate blank canvas and ending just as new technology looked set to usurp vinyl. Having originally been approached to design an album cover for their friends Pink Floyd, students Aubrey 'Po' Powell and Storm Thorgerson would go on to define the visual identity of rock and roll for the next fifteen years, swiftly gaining international prominence for their famed The Dark Side of the Moon artwork. This paved the way for other major musicians to set foot in the surreal photo-design world of Storm and Po, resulting in seminal Hipgnosis creations for the likes of Led Zeppelin, Paul McCartney, Genesis, Black Sabbath, ELO and Yes. In this authorised account, with access to previously unpublished material and exclusive contributions from David Gilmour, Jimmy Page, Peter Gabriel, Roger Waters, Robert Plant and even Aubrey Powell himself, Mark Blake goes behind the scenes of the Hipgnosis partnership to reveal the pioneering ambition and grand vision that led to their success, as well as the clashing egos and artistic differences that undermined it. The Hipgnosis story also offers hitherto-untold insight into some of music's most legendary bands, as viewed through the prism of the people who shaped their imagery and cultural legacy. With the work of Hipgnosis continuing to be referenced, reproduced and revered worldwide, Us and Them serves as a celebration, a cautionary tale and a compelling human drama, exploring the vital intersection between art and music.
Download or read book Magnifico written by Mark Blake and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-11-15 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An engaging mix of humor and detailed critical analysis…great fun.” —Mojo From the award-winning author of Bring It On Home: Peter Grant, Led Zeppelin, and Beyond and Comfortably Numb: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd comes this deeply researched alphabetical biography of Queen and each of its dynamic members. Addressing the phenomenal success of the movie Bohemian Rhapsody, acclaimed music journalist Mark Blake builds on the legend of Queen and their enduring audience appeal. Providing a fresh, unparalleled take on Queen’s music, story, and legacy, Blake’s complete portrait covers not only the major hits and bestselling albums, but also the inside stories behind the music. Via a series of essays, interviews, and biographies, the author shares a wealth of lesser-known details—gained from over thirty years of original material—and explores what the songs of Queen say about their creators. “You want it all? There’s not much missing here.” —Classic Rock
Download or read book Flaming Cow written by Ron Geesin and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2013-07-17 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Flaming Cow offers a rare insight into the brilliant but often fraught collaboration between Pink Floyd and composer Ron Geesin, the result of which became known as Atom Heart Mother – the Floyd’s first UK number one album. From the time drummer Nick Mason visited Geesin’s damp basement flat in Notting Hill, to the last game of golf between bassist Roger Waters and Geesin, this book is an unflinching account about how one of Pink Floyd’s most celebrated compositions came to life. Alongside unpublished photographs from the Abbey Road recording sessions (the only ones taken) and the subsequent performances in London and Paris, Geesin goes on to describe how the title was chosen, why he was not credited on the record, how he left Hyde Park in tears, and why the group did not much like the work. The Flaming Cow rose again, firstly in France, then in London in 2008. After 40 years Atom Heart Mother remains a much-loved record, and The Flaming Cow explores its new-found cult status that has led to it being studied for the French Baccalauréat.
Download or read book Through the Prism written by Aubrey Powell and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most intriguing stories of creative endeavor, volatile relationships, excessive lifestyles, and bizarre events from the world of rock, as told by Hipgnosis cofounder, creative designer, photographer, and filmmaker Aubrey Powell. Founded in 1967 by Aubrey “Po” Powell, Storm Thorgerson, and Peter Christopherson, graphic design firm Hipgnosis gained legendary status by transforming the look of album art through their designs for AC/DC, Black Sabbath, the Police, Genesis, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney, Syd Barrett, and the Who. In this lively volume, Powell presents brutally honest, entertaining, and revealing insider stories from the world of rock, featuring an eclectic cast of pop stars, comedians, actors, managers, gangsters, and inspirational world gures from 1966 on. His thrilling narrative is packed with anecdotes—from the founding of Hipgnosis to surviving drugs busts—and is richly illustrated with Hipgnosis artwork and Powell’s own photographs. Drama and creativity are the common threads throughout this unique account. With candor and insightful reflection, Powell reveals how the final color artwork for Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy was created; how the most iconic album cover of all time—Dark Side of the Moon—came about; and how the 2017 Pink Floyd retrospective became the most successful music exhibition ever mounted by the Victoria and Albert Museum, despite the deeply antagonistic and dysfunctional relationship between Roger Waters and David Gilmour. Throughout, Powell exposes how the trappings of fame and glory upset the balance of everyday life, bringing creativity and destruction in equal measure. Packed with exciting insider stories and anecdotes featuring famous musicians, managers, and actors, Through the Prism is a must-have for music and pop-culture fans.
Download or read book Hipgnosis written by Aubrey Powell and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The complete catalogue of design collective Hipgnosis, showcasing groundbreaking cover art created for iconic rock ’n’ roll giants, including the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd The complete, definitive, and never-before-published catalogue of album covers created by the legendary design agency Hipgnosis, this volume finally does justice to the work of the most important design collective in music history. Founded in 1967 by Storm Thorgerson, Aubrey “Po" Powell, and Peter Christopherson, Hipgnosis gained a legendary status in graphic design, transforming the look of album art forever and winning five Grammy nominations for package design. Their revolutionary cover art departed from the conventional group shots favored by record companies of the day, resulting in groundbreaking, often surreal designs inextricable from the major albums of many of the biggest names in the history of popular music: AC/DC, Black Sabbath, The Police, Genesis, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney, Syd Barrett, The Who, Wings, Yes, and XTC, to name but a few. Arranged chronologically, Vinyl . Album . Cover . Art features stunning reproductions of every single Hipgnosis cover—more than 300 in total—for the first time, along with pertinent insights from the rock ’n’ roll legends whose albums are featured and behind-the-scenes photography. The text, written by Powell, and with contributions by Peter Gabriel, Robert Plant, and Nick Mason, brims with information that illuminates the album art and the compelling stories behind each cover’s creation.
Download or read book 100 Best Album Covers written by Storm Thorgerson and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focuses on the stories behind 100 of the most memorable album covers in the history of rock and roll music, tracing the history of rock music and culture from Elvis to Blur. The collection has been personally selected by Storm Thorgerson, known for his work on Pink Floyd album covers.
Download or read book For the Love of Vinyl written by Peter Curzon and published by Picturebox, Incorporated. This book was released on 2008 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Hipgnosis was the design firm of choice for the biggest and best bands of the classic rock era. Formed by Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell in 1968, Hipgnosis was a graphic design studio specializing in creative photography and working mainly in the music business designing album covers for many rock 'n' roll bands including Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Genesis, 10cc, Yes, Peter Gabriel, Black Sabbath, Paul McCartney, Syd Barrett and Styx, amongst others. For a dozen years Hipgnosis created timeless rock iconography. This is the first book to document their output in detail, focusing on over 60 package designs - from cover to label - written about in entertaining detail by the men who created them. Also included are short essays by musicians (such as Pink Floyd's Nick Mason), artists (Peter Blake) and fellow designers (Paula Scher) on their favorite covers, plus a contextual commentary by Adrian Shaughnessy, as well as unseen photographs and ephemera."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book The Dark Side of the Moon written by John Harris and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2006-08-22 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) is one of the most acclaimed albums of all time. A stunning exploration of madness, death, anxiety, and alienation, it remained on the Billboard charts for 724 weeks--the longest consecutive run for an LP ever--and has sold 30 million copies worldwide. It still sells some quarter million copies every year. Besides being perhaps rock's most fully realized and elegant concept album, The Dark Side of the Moon was among the most technically advanced records of its time, perfectly blending studio wizardry and fearless innovation. The rich story behind The Dark Side of the Moon is now skillfully illuminated by acclaimed journalist John Harris's exploration of the album's many secrets and the band's fractured history, including the mental collapse of group founder Syd Barrett. Drawing on original interviews with bassist and chief lyricist Roger Waters, guitarist Dave Gilmour, drummer Nick Mason, keyboardist Richard Wright, and the album's supporting cast, The Dark Side of the Moon is a must-have for the millions of devoted fans looking for the definitive story of one of the most timeless, compelling, and mysterious albums ever made.
Download or read book Bring It On Home written by Mark Blake and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2018-11-27 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authorized biography of the most notorious rock manager of all time, Peter Grant, best known for his work with Led Zeppelin, by the author of Comfortably Numb Peter Grant is the most famous music manager of all time. Acknowledged as the "fifth member of Led Zeppelin," Grant has had his story appear in fragments across countless Zeppelin biographies, but none have explored who this brilliant and intuitive manager yet flawed and sometimes dangerous man truly was. No one has successfully captured the scope of his personality or his long-lasting impact on the music business. Acclaimed author and journalist Mark Blake seeks to rectify that. Bring It On Home is the first book to tell the complete, in-depth, and uncensored story of this industry giant. With support from Grant's family, new interviews with Led Zeppelin's surviving band members, and access to Grant's extensive archives as well as scores of unpublished material, including Grant's never-before-published final interview, Blake sets out to not only shed new light on the history of Led Zeppelin but also on the wider story of rock music in the '60s and '70s. Grant had a hand in the careers of Chuck Berry, Rod Stewart, Bad Company, Queen, the Rolling Stones, The Who, Guns N' Roses, and countless others, and his revolutionary approach to business, which included putting the band first, created a new industry standard that's still in effect today. Full of new insights into Grant's early life, new details about the formation of and his relationship with Led Zeppelin, an unrevealed plot by Jamaican gangsters to kidnap the band members' children, letters from police regarding threats made against the band by American Satanists, as well as Grant's seclusion late in life after the dissolution of the band and his recovery from substance abuse, Bring It On Home reveals a man who, after the extraordinary highs and lows of a career in music management, found both peace and happiness in a more ordinary life. It is a celebration, a cautionary tale, and a compelling human drama.
Download or read book Pigs Might Fly written by Mark Blake and published by Aurum. This book was released on 2011-08-15 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interest in Pink Floyd remains as intense as ever even 40 years after the release of Dark Side of the Moon, with lavish box-sets collecting demos and out-takes, and Roger Waters’ world tours of The Wall playing to packed stadiums. Now, Mark Blake’s superbly comprehensive and engrossing history of the group, rightly acclaimed as the definitive book on the band, has been fully revised and extended with new interviews to bring the story up to date with the recent appearances of David Gilmour and Nick Mason with Roger Waters at a London date on his The Wall tour.
Download or read book Freddie Mercury A Kind of Magic written by Mark Blake and published by Omnibus Press. This book was released on 2016-09-12 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freddie Mercury was rock’s most dazzling showman, a legendary entertainer who in 1991, at the age of just forty-five, became the first major music star to die of AIDS. Mercury’s soaring four-octave voice was a defining element in Queen’s unique sound, crucial to the success of the band’s fifteen studio albums, from Queen (1973) to Made in Heaven (1995). He was also a supremely talented songwriter and musician who wrote many of the band’s greatest hits, including ‘Killer Queen’, ‘We Are the Champions’ and their biggest triumph, the epic anthem ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. As a solo artist he released two acclaimed albums: Mr. Bad Guy in 1985 and the operatic 'Barcelona' with Spanish soprano Montserrat Caballé in 1988. Mercury’s extraordinary charisma was perhaps best seen in his imperious live performances, in which he’d hold vast stadium crowds to rapturous attention. His outrageous theatrics, physicality and over-the-top costumes led one commentator to describe him as ‘a performer out to tease, shock, and ultimately charm his audience with various extravagant versions of himself’. He pushed the limits of camp in everything he did. His extreme behaviour, in a society in which being gay was only starting to be accepted, just added to Freddie Mercury’s allure. With expert understanding, Mark Blake traces Mercury’s life from his childhood in Zanzibar and India to his untimely death, and charts his astonishing achievements including in Queen’s world-conquering performance at Live Aid in 1985. In the year that marks what would have been his seventieth birthday, Freddie Mercury: A Life celebrates a remarkable life, lived to the fullest. Featuring revealing interviews with fellow musicians, producers and collaborators, and a detailed discography and timeline, this is a memorable tribute to a unique recording artist and an irreplaceable performer who rocked the world.
Download or read book Long Drawn Out Trip written by Gerald Scarfe and published by Little, Brown Book Group. This book was released on 2019-09-26 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Long Drawn Out Trip: My Life, Gerald Scarfe tells his life story for the first time. With captivating, often thrilling stories, he takes us from his childhood and early days at Punch and Private Eye, through his long and occasionally tumultuous career as the Sunday Times cartoonist, to his film-making at the BBC and much-loved designs for Pink Floyd's The Wall and Disney's Hercules. Along the way he has drawn Churchill from life, gone on tour with The Beatles and thoroughly upset Mrs Mary Whitehouse. It is a very personal, wickedly funny and caustically insightful account of an artist's life at the forefront of contemporary culture and society.
Download or read book I ve Always Kept a Unicorn written by Mick Houghton and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2015-03-03 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I've Always Kept a Unicorn tells the story of Sandy Denny, one of the greatest British singers of her time and the first female singer-songwriter to produce a substantial and enduring body of original songs. Sandy Denny laid down the marker for folk-rock when she joined Fairport Convention in 1968, but her music went far beyond this during the seventies. After leaving Fairport she formed Fotheringay, whose influential eponymous album was released in 1970, before collaborating on a historic one-off recording with Led Zeppelin - the only other vocalist to record with Zeppelin in their entire career - and releasing four solo albums across the course of the decade. Her tragic and untimely death came in 1978. Sandy emerged from the folk scene of the sixties - a world of larger-than-life characters such as Alex Campbell, Jackson C. Frank, Anne Briggs and Australian singer Trevor Lucas, whom she married in 1973. Their story is at the core of Sandy's later life and work, and is told with the assistance of more than sixty of her friends, fellow musicians and contemporaries, one of whom, to paraphrase McCartney on Lennon, observed that she sang like an angel but was no angel.
Download or read book Pretend You re In A War written by Mark Blake and published by Aurum. This book was released on 2014-09-18 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A definitive tome for both Who fans and newcomers alike’ ***** Q Magazine Pete Townshend was once asked how he prepared himself for The Who’s violent live performances. His answer? ‘Pretend you’re in a war.’ For a band as prone to furious infighting as it was notorious for acts of ‘auto-destructive art’ this could have served as a motto. Between 1964 and 1969 The Who released some of the most dramatic and confrontational music of the decade, including ‘I Can’t Explain’, ‘My Generation’ and ‘I Can See For Miles’. This was a body of work driven by bitter rivalry, black humour and dark childhood secrets, but it also held up a mirror to a society in transition. Now, acclaimed rock biographer Mark Blake goes in search of its inspiration to present a unique perspective on both The Who and the sixties. From their breakthrough as Mod figureheads to the rise and fall of psychedelia, he reveals how The Who, in their explorations of sex, drugs, spirituality and class, refracted the growing turbulence of the time. He also lays bare the colourful but crucial role played by their managers, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp. And – in the uneasy alliance between art-school experimentation and working-class ambition – he locates the motor of the Swinging Sixties. As the decade closed, with The Who performing Tommy in front of 500,000 people at the Woodstock Festival, the ‘rock opera’ was born. In retrospect, it was the crowning achievement of a band who had already embraced pop art and the concept album; who had pioneered the power chord and the guitar smash; and who had embodied – more so than any of their peers – the guiding spirit of the age: war.
Download or read book Is This the Real Life written by Mark Blake and published by Da Capo Press, Incorporated. This book was released on 2011-03-22 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Draws on interviews with producers, managers and ex-girlfriends and boyfriends to provide a history of the band, including how lead singer Freddie Mercury's untimely death from AIDs challenged the band to reinvent itself.
Download or read book Stone Me written by and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-05-05 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his own words-from rock's most legendary bad boy. Rock 'n' roll legend and Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has quite a few things to say: about Mick Jagger, the Stones, sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, and life itself. Sample these nuggets of wit and wisdom chipped from the tablets of Stone: On etiquette: "I've never turned blue in someone else's bathroom. I consider that the height of bad manners." On Mick Jagger: "My aim is always to try to introduce a bit of levity into his life." On the police: "There was a knock on our dressing-room door. Our manager shouted, 'Keith! Ron! The Police are here!' Oh, man, we panicked, flushed everything down the john. Then the door opened and it was Stewart Copeland and Sting." On family: "My father. I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow." On dental care: "Miraculously, due to abstinence and prayer, my teeth grew back."
