Storm Thorgerson, whom I had known since my early teens, died three weeks ago after a long struggle with cancer. Storm was a legendary graphic designer specialising in album sleeves. He is responsible for the artwork on all the Pink Floyd albums and, with the Hipgnosis and StormStudios team, has produced memorable imagery for Led Zeppelin, Peter Gabriel, 10cc, Black Sabbath, Muse, Biffy Clyro and many other groups and artistes. I was asked by Storm’s wife Barbie to deliver a eulogy at the funeral. I have reproduced it below.
This post is part of a series. Please start reading at ‘Stage & Screen 1’ below.
In the ‘Essays’ section of Strength Weekly is a piece titled ‘What We Talk About’ in which I write about a series of experiences I had at the Anti-University of London (see the ‘1968’ entry here) in the late 60s. I supply a link to the essay here in order to develop the idea, raised in the previous post, of the schizogenic society – one which makes some of its denizens schizophrenic. The essay is largely concerned with an article that Patrick Schofield – a ‘schizophrenic’ inmate of a British mental hospital – wrote for the hospital magazine. The article was the product of a fierce and lucid intelligence focused on an analysis of hospital life. Patrick was mad therefore whatever he wrote was worthless. This handy rule of thumb fell apart so spectacularly that Patrick was abruptly ejected from the hospital in order to preserve the sanity of its staff.
I invite you to read the essay before considering some extracts from Patrick’s article.
It’s a shock when you go to the pictures to see ‘The Reader’ because there, on the screen, albeit heavily disguised, is Kate Winslet doing her day job. So ubiquitous is she in the prints and matrices that it is easy to equate her with those whose day job is simply being seen, at night, entering and leaving clubs, unbaggaged by any previous history of achievement. In a banal inversion her work as an actress in movies becomes a way of getting her photographs in newspapers. If, therefore, you want to get into newspapers, all you have to do is become a successful actress. How hard can that be?
Kate, as I like to think of her, is an actress of substance yet, as a denizen of the least important pages of any print publication currently in existence, becomes readily interchangeable with Peaches and Kelly and is thereby strongly associated with the fascination (I use the word guardedly) of pure presence. This isn’t something clever: it involves being without doing (i.e. breathing) and is the product of a process of deracination launched in the Thatcherist 80s when ideas about the nature of individualism, borrowed in part from 60s notions of ‘the beautiful person’ (i.e. one whose (imagined) essence is more apparent than their personality) were hystericised to the point that distinctiveness was valued more than value.
This baldness of being was the cynical complement to the process of asset stripping the employment future that young people had previously assumed was theirs to negotiate. In the absence of conventional markers for identity it became important to provide an economy version that licensed the user to ‘be somebody’ merely by stating that they were somebody. In one sense, of course, we are all somebody. In the hypnotised version that isn’t enough: we must feel that we are special despite the fact that we might just be disposable. It isn’t just that you become somebody by telling people that you are somebody – you must believe that they believe you. A deal can be struck: I will believe that you are somebody if you will believe that I am somebody.
I gave a talk at ‘The City Wakes‘ the other day. This is the week of events in tribute to Syd Barrett currently underway in Cambridge. Syd was a founding member of the Pink Floyd who lost his mind, probably due to an excessive intake of LSD, then spent the rest of his life in seclusion in his home town until his death in July 2006. I’ve written here and there about what Syd was like and some of the circumstances of his demise. For this occasion I decided to go wide and try to place him in a context of social aspects of the 60s that might have destabilised him. It’s titled ‘Roger, Syd & the Batman – the Dark Night of Cool’.
is the title of a Cambridge-based festival celebrating, from October 22nd to November 1st, the pre-London years of Syd Barrett, one of the founder members of Pink Floyd. Syd died in 2006 after many years of reclusiveness that followed his withdrawal from the band as a result of a slow but irreversible breakdown that was probably precipitated by an excess of LSD.
I grew up in Cambridge with Syd from about the age of 14 and went on to share flats with him in London in the Swinging and Delirious ’60s. A number of his friends, including myself, will contribute to the city-wide programme of tributes, exhibitions and events in his home town. I’m doing something I’ve always wanted to do in a parallel universe, namely conduct guided tours of something. In this case and universe I shall be guiding enthusiasts around ‘Syd’s Cambridge’ – an excellent opportunity to revisit the Hallowed Hippy Havens that mapped out the angel-headed youth that many of us were sure we were navigating. I’m doing a talk at Borders and also presenting an Especial Cooch. The latter is an extension of what has rather rapidly become a London must-have occasion: David Gale’s Peachy Coochy Nites, details of which can be found here.
If I were pressed to make one useful comment about Syd it would be that before the surly craziness came he was a delightful, delighted, sunny, beautiful and amusing man. This photo from The City Wakes site finds him in typical shape at the age of 19.
