PINK FLOYD - THE WALL @ 45

 

Released on November 30th, 1979, the eleventh studio album from Pink Floyd, The Wall, turns 45 years old today. Perhaps only second to Dark Side of the Moon in terms of defining a peak of the band's career, it also served as a harbinger of what would cause the band to splinter during its production and after its release.

The Wall, like many of the band's LPs, is a concept album, but for this release, the concept hit much closer to home than some others. By the end of the 1970s, Pink Floyd had reached a kind of status as a band that ultimately put them at odds with their fan base, something that would directly contribute to the creation of this record. Throughout 1977, Pink Floyd were on their "In the Flesh" tour to promote their album, Animals. Bassist and lyricist, Roger Waters, despised the experience – angered by the audience's rowdy behaviour (such as setting off fireworks in the middle of songs) and convinced that they were not really listening to the music. On July 6th, 1977, at the Montreal Olympic Stadium, a group of noisy and excited fans near the stage irritated Waters so much that he leaned over and spat on one of them.

For Waters, the experience was something of a wake-up call, highlighting how degraded the relationship with the audience had become. Instead of the crowds being a source of inspiration and an adrenaline rush, it was all feeling very adversarial and confrontational. The intimacy was completely gone, swallowed up in the grotesque size of the stadiums and driven by corporate profits over artistic merit. It ultimately felt
sadomasochistic, like some kind of perverse torture. Immediately after the experience in Montreal, Waters spoke with producer Bob Ezrin and a psychiatrist friend about the alienation and despair he was experiencing. He articulated his desire to isolate himself by constructing a wall across the stage between the band and the audience. The concept was an instant source of inspiration.

As far as the band were concerned, the situation internally was crumbling, with tensions exacerbated by the fact the band were in dire financial straights. They had hired an investment firm to manage their money, but the firm had put much of it in high risk ventures that did not pay off, so instead of helping with the band's tax burdens, they were facing severe tax penalties, which forced the band to leave the UK to protect what little money they had left. They urgently needed a new record to set their house in order again.

Waters produced a couple of demos with two distinct concepts, one was a 90 minute suite called Bricks in the Wall, dealing with the idea of an isolated rock star struggling with a corrupted relationship between him and his audience. The other demo was about a man's dreams on one night, and dealt with marriage, sex, and the pros and cons of monogamy and family life versus promiscuity. When presented with the two options, the band chose the first, with the second eventually developing into Waters' first solo album, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking (1984).

For production on The Wall, Waters insisted on hiring Bob Ezrin, who had previously worked with Alice Cooper, Lou Reed, Kiss, and Peter Gabriel, among many other high profile acts. Throughout the recording of the album, Bob would become a critical mediator within the band, as tensions continued to drive the members apart. He also helping develop the album's narrative. Ezrin presented a 40-page script to the rest of the band, with positive results. He recalled: "The next day at the studio, we had a table read, like you would with a play, but with the whole of the band, and their eyes all twinkled, because then they could see the album." Ezrin broadened the story-line, distancing it from the autobiographical work Waters had written and basing it on a composite character named Pink.

The Wall was recorded in several locations. Super Bear Studios in France was used between January and July 1979, and Waters recorded his vocals at the nearby Studio Miraval. Michael Kamen supervised the orchestral arrangements at CBS Studios in New York in September. Over the next two months the band used Cherokee Studios, Producers Workshop and The Village Recorder in Los Angeles. A plan to work with the Beach Boys at the Sundance Productions studio in Los Angeles was cancelled (although Beach Boys member Bruce Johnston does sing backing vocals on "In the Flesh?", "The Show Must Go On", the side 4 version of "In the Flesh", and "Waiting for the Worms").

As work continued on the album, the relationship between Roger Waters and Richard Wright became untenable. For a time, attempts to mend it had Wright taking more of an active role in the production, but the results were not satisfactory to Ezrin and Wright was initially consigned to working only at nights before Waters insisted he be out of the band entirely by the time they got to doing the final mix in LA. Wright ended up quitting the band in the end, only returning to tour as a hired musician, though he would eventually rejoin the band after Waters departed, following the tour for The Wall.

For the album's cover design, it was the first LP by the band not to have a cover by Hipgnosis since the band's debut LP. Waters had fallen out with lead designer/photographer, Storm Thorgerson, a few years earlier when Thorgerson had included the cover of Animals in his book The Work of Hipgnosis: 'Walk Away René', without consultation.

When the album was finally released, it became one of the group's biggest sellers. The album topped the US Billboard 200 chart for 15 weeks, selling over a million copies in its first two months of sales and in 1999, it was certified 23× platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It remains one of the best-selling albums of all time in the US, having sold over 19 million copies worldwide between 1979 and 1990. The Wall is Pink Floyd's second-best selling album after 1973's The Dark Side of the Moon.

The critical response to the album, on the other hand, was decidedly mixed. The Village Voice critic, Robert Christgau, regarded it as "a dumb tribulations-of-a-rock-star epic" backed by "kitschy minimal maximalism with sound effects and speech fragments", adding in The New York Times that its worldview is "self-indulgent" and "presents the self-pity of its rich, famous and decidedly post-adolescent protagonist as a species of heroism". It's an opinion that I very much agreed with at the time of its release, finding the "poor little rich rocker" concept indicative of a kind of bloated rock star life that had been exploded by the immediacy and poverty of punk rock.

It would take many years before I could give this record a second chance and actually discover myself enjoying it. Indeed, the critical reservations at the time of its release have since given way to a general sense of reappraisal and appreciation for its merits. After 45 years, it has stood the test of time to be secure in its place as one of the band's most important and recognized works.

PINK FLOYD - UMMAGUMMA @ 55

 

Released 55 years ago today, on November 7th, 1969, it's Pink Floyd's fourth album, Ummagumma, perhaps the strangest release in their entire catalogue. The album was one of their more unusual conceptual concoctions, being composed of a live album, and a studio LP that was split four ways for solo works by each band member.

The original idea behind the live album was to feature fan favourites that would subsequently be dropped from the set. Although the sleeve notes say that the live material was recorded in June 1969, the live album of Ummagumma was recorded at Mothers Club in Birmingham on April 27, 1969, and the following week at Manchester College of Commerce on May 2 as part of The Man and The Journey Tour. Keyboardist, Richard Wright, later said the recording of "A Saucerful of Secrets" was a composite from both gigs. A show at Bromley Technical College on April 26 was also recorded but not used.

The studio album was something of an experiment to allow each member to explore their own musical muse, unfettered by any collaborative concerns. Each member was given half a side of the LP to do whatever they wanted. While the initial concept was met with enthusiasm by the band, once they got into the recording process, their focus became considerably less assured, resulting in a fair bit of studio noodling, with little sense of intent or direction behind it all. The results were some of the most experimental compositions of the group's career, although it all felt a bit too self-indulgent, and even pretentiously contrived in its avant-garde awkwardness.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the album was the cover design by Hipgnosis, who were responsible for most of the band's LP covers over their career. The cover artwork shows a Droste effect, the effect of a picture recursively appearing within itself, featuring the group, with a picture hanging on the wall showing the same scene, except that the band members have switched positions, and this is then repeated two more times. The British version has the Gigi soundtrack album leaning against the wall immediately above the "Pink Floyd" letters. Storm Thorgerson explained that the LP was included as a red herring to provoke debate, and that it has no intended meaning. On the rear cover, roadies Alan Styles (who also appears in "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast") and Peter Watts are shown with the band's equipment laid out on a taxiway at London Biggin Hill Airport. This concept was proposed by Nick Mason, with the intention of replicating the "exploded" drawings of military aircraft and their payloads, which were popular at the time. The album's title supposedly comes from Cambridge slang for sex, commonly used by Pink Floyd friend and occasional roadie Iain "Emo" Moore, who would say, "I'm going back to the house for some ummagumma". According to Moore, he made up the term himself.

When the album was released, it performed well commercially, breaking into the lower reaches of the top 100 in the US and Canada, while peaking at #5 in the UK. Its critical response was also, initially, quite positive, though as time has passed and it has been contextualized by the group's subsequent output, it is now generally considered one of their lesser releases. Even the band themselves dismiss it as a failed experiment. Yet, personally, it was the album that got me interested in the band. As a teen who came of age during the dawn of "punk", I had disparaged Pink Floyd as one of the "dinosaurs" of '70s excess, a perspective that lingered until the late 1980s, when a friend played me the studio LP from Ummagumma. At the time, I was very much into the more abstract music of the day, so I was rather pleasantly surprised by the strangeness of the album. After that point, my attitude changed towards the band and I began to warm to their music in a much bigger way than was possible for me beforehand. In that sense, I will always have a certain fascination with the album.

PINK FLOYD - THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON @ 50

Fifty years ago today, on March 1st, 1973, Pink Floyd released their 8th and most iconic studio LP, The Dark Side of the Moon. It would become a career defining album and enshrine the group as one of the most significant rock bands of all time.

The album began life on stage as the group worked out their ideas live, in front of their audiences. The entirety of the album was even performed for an assembled press on 17 February 1972 at the Rainbow Theater, more than a year before its release, and was critically acclaimed. Structurally, the album builds on ideas which had been evolving over the course of the previous albums, but the major shift for this record was the restraint in regards to extended jamming interludes, which had often dominated their earlier works. As such, the album offers up a set of relatively concise songs, with many clocking in under four minutes, and the longest just shy of the eight minute mark. While the album employs many experimental elements, like tape loops and analogue synthesizers - including the EMS VCS 3 and a Synthi A (aided by engineer Alan Parsons), the end results remain accessible and melodic. The experimentation successfully augments the songs without becoming distracting.

The title for the album is an allusion to lunacy, rather than astronomy, as the basic theme that Roger Waters had proposed related to “things that made people mad”, a concept heavily inspired by the band’s experiences touring on the road plus their history with Syd Barrett and his mental breakdown. However, during production the title was temporarily changed to “Eclipse” because another band, Medicine Head, had released an album with the same title. When that LP failed to garner any commercial or critical notoriety, the band reverted the title back to its original form. Lyrically, the group were intent on offering more explicit content in these songs, rather than the vague suggestiveness of their previous works. As the songs developed, they fell together into suites which blend seamlessly together on each side. lyrical themes include conflict, greed, the passage of time, death and insanity. The five tracks on each side reflect various stages of human life, beginning and ending with a heartbeat, exploring the nature of the human experience and, according to Waters, "empathy”.

Various elements of musique concrète are interwoven throughout the record, often functioning as transitional interludes, like the voice recordings from interviews with the band's road crew alongside philosophical quotations. Other elements, like the cash register tape loop, form the underpinning rhythm of the song. Yet these are carefully integrated into the compositions so as to maintain the musical restraint which is a feature of the album’s compositions. This conservative production approach both highlights the album’s more surreal, psychedelic influences while preventing them from becoming overt self-indulgences. In the end, it’s a remarkable exercise in its meticulous balancing of elements.

The actual recording of the album began on May 31st, 1972, and continued until February 9th, 1973 at Abbey Road Studios. As previously mentioned, Alan Parsons was assigned as engineer as he had previous experience with the group, working as assistant tape operator on Atom Heart Mother in 1970. This was the first album where the group used 16 track recording tech, which offered far more flexibility than 8 track, but even at that, they still used so many tracks that 2nd generation sub-mixes had to be created to accommodate the arrangements. For the final mix, producer Chris Thomas was hired to provide "a fresh pair of ears". There are somewhat conflicting reports of various band members being at odds in terms of how the album should sound, though Thomas reports he witnessed no such conflicts while he was present. His input ultimately helped the band arrive at a balance of inputs, however, with his objective input proving invaluable in arriving at the finished product.

For the album cover, the Hipgnosis design house were again tasked with the job of coming up with something special, which they certainly managed in spades. Their past work with the band had been somewhat controversial in some cases as designers Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell opted for some less than traditional approaches, often eschewing basics like band names and titles on the front, which could lead to confusion for the record label. Richard Wright had offered the basic guidance that the band wanted something minimal yet impactful, elegant and refined. Several ideas were put to the band, but they all ended up agreeing on a concept inspired by a photograph they’d found of a light beam being refracted in a triangular prism. The final artwork was created by design assistant, George Hardie, who took that image and refined it into a precisely rendered masterwork of simplicity. It’s such a perfectly realized representation of both the album and the band that it’s since gone on to be one of the most instantly recognizable images in pop culture. For the gate-fold LP sleeve, the rainbow of light continues through the inner fold and then reverses back through the prism again on the back image, with heartbeat like wave forms overlaid on the inner gate-fold. This ties the graphic in with the heartbeat sound which opens and closes the album.

The album was a massive success upon its release, both commercially and critically. In fact, it has become something of a cultural touchstone in its half century on the planet, inspiring a plethora of tributes and cover versions, including two dub versions by the Easy Star All-Stars. Pink Floyd have also issued elaborate collectors editions of the album, vastly expanding it with alternate mixes, outtakes and live versions. Its legacy has made it regularly referenced when it comes to lists of greatest LPs of all time and it continues to inspire new generations. It’s likely to continue to do so for generations to come.
 

PINK FLOYD - PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN @ 55

 

Released on August 5th, 1967, Pink Floyd’s debut LP, Piper at the Gates of Dawn, is celebrating its 55th anniversary today. It’s the only album by the group which was fronted by co-founder, Syd Barrett, who disintegrated into an LSD fueled state of mental illness within a year of the album’s release, necessitating his departure from the band before they could complete their second album. However, Syd dominates the songwriting credits for this debut with his otherworldly & whimsical take on psychedelic pop taking up all but three of the albums songs.

Prior to their debut LP, the group had been playing together under various configurations and alternate names since about 1962, beginning like most British bands of the times from an American blues influenced foundation. By the time the mid 1960s were beginning to shift into the rear view mirror, the group had begun on a trajectory which included extended live improvisations and solos. Part of the reason for this evolution came from their lack of songs to perform and a desire not to repeat pieces during their sets. They realized that they could avoid repetition simply by extending the duration of the songs through solos and improvisation. As the psychedelic influence of LSD began to take hold, the groups sound began to be associated with the movement, even though by most accounts, it was only Barrett who was a true aficionado of the drug.

By 1967, the group had reached the status where they went professional by signing a record deal with EMI. They released a few singles earlier in the year before heading to EMI Studios in London’s Abbey Road between February and May to record the album. They made extensive use of the facilities more advanced production tools including EMT plate reverberation, automatic double tracking (ADT), and the studio’s vintage echo chamber. Next to The Beatles Sgt. Pepper, recorded at the same facility around the same time, the production of the album set the bar for cutting edge experimental engineering techniques for the times.

After signing to EMI and even before the album came out, the press were getting hyped up about the group. The sensationalism surrounding the psychedelic LSD movement resulted in numerous salacious tabloid stories from the likes of the News of the World paper and others. The label did their best to try to disassociate the group from this scene, but their reputation had been well established by then from their ongoing live residencies at London’s UFO Club. As the recording sessions for the album progressed, Barrett’s own indulgences began to escalate and impact his ability to function in the studio and within the group.

Upon its release, the album quickly garnered critical raves and, with the help of relatively successful singles paving the way, was a hit for the band, establishing them as prime movers of the London psychedelic scene, often lauded as its most sophisticated and articulate exponents. While some felt the LP hemmed in the more extreme experimentation of their live shows, the restraint in the studio ultimately helped to make the album more accessible to a larger audience and more marketable for the label. Subsequent to its release, it has become an essential document of the creative genius of Syd Barrett before his ability to function was derailed by his mental illness. Within their overall catalogue, it may be something of an outlier and atypical of the music they’d produce without Barrett’s influence, but it remains a fundamental cornerstone of the band’s mythos.

PINK FLOYD - OBSCURED BY CLOUDS @ 50

 

Released on June 2nd, 1972, Pink Floyd’s seventh studio album, Obscured by Clouds, is celebrating a half century on the shelves today. It was recorded over the course of a couple of rushed sessions at Château d'Hérouville, France, between February 23rd and April 6th while the band were on break from touring. It was commissioned as the soundtrack for the film, La Vallée, by Barbet Schroeder and continues their work in that arena along with prior soundtracks for the films, The Committee (1968), More (1969) and Zabriskie Point (1970). Production of the album pushed back work on Dark Side of the Moon briefly as they had already begun to record sections for that album prior to beginning work on Obscured by Clouds.

Musically, the album focuses a lot on short acoustic guitar heavy songs rather than the longer, more expansive compositions the group were known for. The film’s themes of love and romance became central to the lyrical direction of the album and, while the group originally set out with little concern for creating concise “songs”, aiming more for loose motifs which could be cross faded across the film’s various scenes, the resulting material is surprisingly coherent. The cover image was inspired after seeing rushes of the film where, in one instance, the film became jammed on an out of focus image. Thus the shot of a man in a tree, blurred to the point of being unrecognizable, was created by Hipgnosis for the album.

The album was reasonably successful, but is seen mostly as a stopgap project prior to the release of Dark Side of the Moon, which would solidify the group’s position as megastars in the world of rock music.

PINK FLOYD - ANIMALS @ 45

 

January 21st marks the 45th anniversary of the release of Pink Floyd’s tenth studio album, Animals. Inspired by the novel, Animal Farm by George Orwell, it’s an ambitious concept album which looks deeply into the brutality of capitalism through the class metaphor of the ruling “pigs”, their obedient and domineering servants, the “dogs”, and the subjugated masses, the “sheep”. While it is often overshadowed by albums like Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall, Animals is deserving of attention as one of the groups last great recording achievements.

The roots of the album begin back in 1974 with a couple of live jam songs, You've Got to Be Crazy and Raving and Drooling. These were originally intended to become part of Wish You Were Here (1975), but plans changed as that album took shape and they ended up getting shoved to the back burner until it was time to start working on Animals.

After Wish You Were Here was completed, their contract with their record label for unlimited studio time expired, so the group decided to invest in their own recording facilities. The band purchased a three story block of church halls at 35 Britania Row in Islington, north London, and converted the building into both recording studios and storage facilities for their gear. By April of 1976, the studio was ready to begin recording of the new album, which went on until December.

The two live jams from 1974 were resurrected and the lyrics were updated for the album’s concept. You've Got to Be Crazy morphed into Dogs and Raving and Drooling became Sheep. A new song, Pigs (Three Different Ones), filled out the core conceptual triptych and the whole thing was book-ended by a short song split into two parts for the intro and outro, Pigs on the Wing (Pts 1 & 2). With the exception of a co-writing credit for David Gilmour on Dogs, the entirety of the album was credited to Roger Waters, something which was a bit of a signpost for the split that was developing within the band as Waters began to feel he was carrying most of the creative burden.

As the album progresses, it becomes apparent that the prime narrator is a “dog”, representing a ruthless, predatory businessman, who is manipulated by the elite “pigs” to prey upon the “sheep” for their benefit. It sets up a perfect analogy to the dominant class structure in capitalistic societies with the wealthy ruling class over the adversarial middle class subjugating the subservient lower classes. Eventually, the “sheep” rebel and overthrow the “dogs”, but their ignorance only leads them to replace the dogs as oppressors, perpetuating the class system while the “pigs” remain unscathed. It’s a deeply cynical outlook which is only mildly lightened by the dog’s realization that “love” and caring for others is the only way to ease the suffering & loneliness of this seemingly hopeless cycle of social struggle.

Musically, the album came about at a time when the “punk” zeitgeist was starting to become prominent and there’s a certain rebellion against that on this album, though you can hear how it would eventually shift the group away from the sprawling double digit run-times of Animals into the more concise radio friendly songs that would appear on The Wall a couple of years later. In that sense, the album feels a bit braced against the tides with its indulgences, but the performances still hold up as masterful and impactful and there’s an engaging flow to the arrangements and the narrative that carry the listener along for the ride.

The cover for the album is worthy of a dramatization on its own as it became somewhat notorious for its comical, absurdist disruption. After rejecting a few concepts from design firm, Hipgnosis, one of which included the idea of a child bursting in on parents having animalistic sex, Roger Waters came up with the factory concept since, at the time, he lived near Clapham Common, and regularly drove past Battersea Power Station, which was by then approaching the end of its useful life. They concocted the concept of flying a massive 40’ inflated pig over the factory and contracted a firm to custom fabricate the beast. In anticipation of any potential problems with the giant balloon on the day of the shoot, they hired a marksman to be prepared should they lose control of it, but because they had to reschedule the shoot for the next day due to bad weather, they forgot to re-book the marksman. The pig was finally launched and, as feared, it broke free of its moorings and took off into British airspace, making it to Heathrow airport where it caused quite a stir with mass panic and cancelled flights as authorities tried to figure out what on earth was going on. It eventually landed in a farmer’s field in Kent where it continued to provoke outrage as the farmer complained of it startling his cows. The inflatable was eventually recovered and a third shooting day was booked, but the resulting shots didn’t quite cut it and they found they had better shots of the factory on its own. So the decision was made to simply “cut & paste” the pig into the picture, something which seems easy enough today, but was a bit more hands on then as there was no such thing as Photoshop and such effects literally meant cutting up a photograph and pasting it to another one.

After the album’s release, the band went on tour to support it and the onstage rapport between Waters and the audience ended up taking a contentious turn throughout the tour, a situation which ultimately resulted in Waters being inspired to write The Wall as a reaction to that situation. Despite this, the album was a hit and, along with their back catalogue, helped the band beat out ABBA for most weeks on the charts in 1977. Critics were somewhat uneven in their response, with NME raving about it being extreme, relentless & harrowing while Rolling Stone’s critic was unimpressed. It’s legacy, however, has born out the warnings it gave about the nature of capitalism. When we look at our civilization at present, the cynicism that is steeped throughout its grooves is more than warranted and its message is even more disturbingly on point. It’s an album that I have taken a long time to warm to, but researching it and giving it a proper deep listen again has certainly given me a new appreciation for its complexities and depth.

PINK FLOYD - MEDDLE @ 50

 

Celebrating half a century on the planet today is Pink Floyd's sixth studio album, Meddle, which was released on October 31st, 1971. It's an album which represents a bridging period between the early Syd Barret era psychedelic rock band and the prog-rock super-group which would emerge with the landmark release of Dark Side of the Moon in the spring of 1973.

While the group was making definite movements towards a much more accessible sound after the challenging obscurity of the prior two albums, Ummagumma & Atom Heart Mother, they weren't quite settled on the conceptual underpinnings which would form the framework of the albums that came after Meddle. The fact is that there's no overriding theme to integrate this album and it was produced over the course of the preceding year in fits and starts between live performance commitments around the globe. As such, the recording process was often fragmented, drawn out and frequently unproductive. It's actually quite surprising how accessible this album is given that the group indulged in so many esoteric experiments in order to try to spur on their creativity. Most of those ended up yielding very little, like the idea of each member recording their part without any reference to the other member's recording, only a rough outline of what they should play.

Yet, in the end, they managed to craft a lovely and entirely listenable collection of music, one which has become one of my favorite albums in the group's canon. The hooks and structures, while offering an aura of expansiveness, remain grounded and avoid any overt experimental self-indulgences. It has a dreamy sound that's never disturbed by uncomfortable awkwardness.

While the music itself was a rousing success and garnered critical praise, though modest sales, the cover, provided by legendary '70s design house, Hipgnosis, could be considered one of their weakest efforts. Lead designer, Storm Thorgerson, initially suggested a close-up shot of a baboon's anus, but the band wisely (or not?) vetoed that suggestion and instead offered the idea of a shot of an ear underwater, which is what he went with. Storm always felt it was a lackluster effort and considered it his worst contribution to the bands album covers.

Middling cover graphics aside, it's a thoroughly enjoyable listen from start to finish and an album I return to quite frequently when I need a Floyd fix.

INFLUENTIAL ALBUM - LED ZEPPELIN, PRESENCE

While we're on the subject of influential albums and their covers, I wanted to talk about one of my favorites from one of the most important design houses of the 1970s, Hipgnosis. Hipgnosis was stared in 1968 by friends Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell. The duo was later joined in the mid 1970s by a young Peter Christopherson, who would go on to gain acclaim and recognition making his own music as a member of Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, Coil and Soisong, as well as releasing solo work as Threshold Houseboys Choir.

Hipgnosis was responsible for many of the most iconic covers of the decade, working with the likes of Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel and Led Zeppelin, just to name a few. It's their 1976 cover for Led Zeppelin's Presence which I want to bring to your attention today. 

 

One of the common traits of Hipgnosis covers, which always drew me to them, was that they usually had some sort of subversive "twist" to them. They were generally photo-real artworks that often relied on in-camera effects to create their surreal auras, though they would also use collage cut-&-paste techniques, something common with Photoshop these days, but much more demanding back then when it was done with physical photographs, blades and glue.

The "hook" with the Presence LP cover was the "object". Designed by Christopherson, it was an enigmatic looking black twisting obelisk type form that appeared to defy normal geometry. Its shape and proportions looked to be at odds with physical space and the cover depicted it in a variety of seemingly benign, mundane contexts of superficial, idyllic mid-century, middle class life. Yet its presence in these scenes lends each of them a nebulously sinister edge. It's obtuse, but it sinks in, almost subliminally, suggesting some kind of conspiratorial plot is taking place. Like some sort of "invasion of the body snatchers" scenario, normality is being subverted here. 

 

I recall seeing this in the shops and being constantly drawn to it. I'd stare at the photos and try to imagine what could be going on. Why was this thing in all these pictures? What was it? What did it do? Its blackness and confounding shape only implied something nefarious. A truly ingenious concoction for an album cover. The record itself wasn't Zeppelin's best, though I find it often unfairly criticized as I quite like most of it, but it's a cover that stays with me after all these years contemplating that "object" and its mysterious purpose...