By the 1970s, the rock music business was minting so much money that touring bands found themselves awash in, among other things, pharmaceutical-grade drugs, luxury-loving female idolators, and their own private jets, some of which, like Led Zeppelin's, featured onboard piano bars. Inevitably, many non-musicians started getting rich off all this abundance, too. Among these lucky folks were two young graphic designers: Englishmen Aubrey Powell, an imaginative photographer, and Storm Thorgerson, a complete loon with an endless supply of brilliant ideas for eye-grabbing album art. These two started a London-based boutique design company called Hipgnosis, and anyone who ever bought an LP by Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Peter Gabriel, Wings, Genesis, 10cc, Electric Light Orchestra, T. Rex, Bad Company, or Emerson, Lake & Palmer, among many other acts, has probably gazed upon a sleekly surreal Hipgnosis album cover at one time or another.
The intoxicating amounts of music-biz money sloshing around back in that time allowed Powell (known as Po) and Thorgerson to execute even the wildest ideas for their well-heeled clients. As Andrew Ellis, another of the company's graphic designers, recalls in the new documentary Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis), "Po would come down and say, 'I need a sheep, I need a psychiatrist's couch, I'll probably need a vat—and I'm shooting in Hawaii, so can you book me a flight on Friday?' And I'm thinking, 'It's Monday, and all I've got is a dial-up telephone with a curly wire and the Yellow Pages.'"
