Pink Floyd have a strong association with Cambridge.
Founding members went to local schools.
This website unpicks some of the locations they are connected with as a sort of walking tour of the city.
Band members Syd Barrett, Roger Waters and David Gilmour were raised in Cambridge, and many of their Cambridge friends, including girlfriends, roadies and album cover designers Storm Thorgerson and ‘Po’ Powell, became part of the Pink Floyd extended creative family. In London they met up with Nick Mason and Rick Wright. But while students, here in Cambridge—they forged the unique Pink Floyd sound against the backdrop of the late ‘60’s counter-culture and succeeding decades.
There are connections with particular places in the city and songs:
King’s College Chapel, which has a lawn in back where Roger Waters said inspired “the lunatic is on the grass“, (from the song Brain Damage) and Pink Floyd played a May Ball gig—Which “... went down quite well. Everyone was pissed,”
David Gilmour went to the Perse School on Hills Road, and back in June 2022, Chris Kington led a tour for the local GA Cambridge Branch where he pointed out Syd Barrett's home - also on Hills Road.
One of the places where they are linked with is a pub called The Flying Pig - just further down the road.
Back in 2022, there were fears that the pub would be demolished.
Images: Alan Parkinson
For a long time there was a plan to try to save the pub. It is now in an incongruous position, dwarfed by the huge redevelopment behind it.
Image: Daily Mail
The final link of course is with the album 'Animals'. More to come on that in December...
I teach at King's Ely in Cambridgeshire. I've been there for 13 years now. Lots of trips to and from my home in Breckland across the Fens to Ely in all weathers.
Some years ago, in the Sixth Form centre of the school, which is housed in the old Bishop's Palace opposite the west door of Ely Cathedral, there was an exhibition of photographs that he had taken, with some original prints of classic album covers. It was wonderful to see these close up, just sitting in the corridor with students walking past them - often paying them no notice at all.
Amongst the album covers he worked on were covers for Peter Gabriel and Led Zeppelin.
I have an excellent book which I bought from the shop at the Pink Floyd exhibition at the V&A. This features album covers they designed as well as details of their creation.
He has also directed music videos, and been the creative director of music tours for artists such as Paul McCartney.
He directed a video of Yes's Magnification concert - complete with an orchestra.
One of the other links with Hipgnosis and Ely is the album cover for 'The Division Bell' by Pink Floyd. I'll post more about that in a separate post...
An A-Z of bands suggested by the Spotify algorithm.
Coming to the end now... still chance to share yours.
I've been listening to YES's music since the late 1970s.
I've had the pleasure of seeing them play live quite a few times over the years too in various line-ups, and also seen some of the various incarnations of the band, and also some of the spin offs including Anderson, Wakeman, Bruford and Howe (with Tony Levin), the Buggles version, and solo sets as well, such as Steve Howe in a church in York and Rick Wakeman in a theatre in King's Lynn where Shakespeare also performed.
YES has had a number of line-ups over the years, but the classic line-up featured Steve Howe, Alan White, Chris Squire, Rick Wakeman and Jon Anderson.
The last time I saw the band live was in Nottingham and it featured everyone apart from Rick Wakeman, who was replaced by Igor Khoroshev. I have my ticket stub from the gig which will feature on the blog too.
His parts are now played by Geoff Downes - which continues the Buggles influence.
The early albums included Tony Kaye and Bill Bruford.
For me, the classic album is 'Close to the Edge'. It features the most interesting musical arrangements of tracks, with real power and emotion.
Another great track is 'Soundchaser' from the album 'Relayer'. A great busy proggy song...
I'm a fan of the Rabin era albums with an 80s' feel... '90125' and 'Talk' (1994) - some good moments there. I remember playing it loud ...
Plus I like the fact that Eddie Jobson joined Yes. recorded the video for 'Owner of a Lonely Heart' and then left... and had to be edited out... although he can still be seen... Eddie will appear several times in the blog, as he's one of my favourite musicians.
One of their later albums which divides opinion with fans is 'Union', particularly as some of the playing was done by session musicians and not the band, and it had a lot of different producers and messing around, plus a lot of session musicians augmenting the sound. Rick Wakeman apparently referred to the album as 'Onion' because it made him cry.
Having said that, the tour they did to support the album was excellent. I remember their circular stage at Wembley - which is a bit of a shed. I had a decent seat and the sound wasn't too terrible - that was the only time I saw Trevor Rabin shredding - missing out on the later tour with Anderson and Wakeman.
Mid-song in fact. A chicken vindaloo, pilau rice, poppadoms, a stuffed paratha, Bombay aloo and a bhindi bhaji to be precise. All laid out atop the Hammond, keyboards and Mellotron in front of the audience and a band of vegetarians…
The central inspiration for Tales From Topographic Oceans was Paramahansa Yogananda’s (1893-1952) book Autobiography Of A Yogi.
Jon Anderson was deeply impressed by Yogi’s biography, which also inspired Apple’s Steve Jobs apparently.
This album was one of many that had Roger Dean's logo and artwork on the cover - often featuring 'impossible' topography, such as the classic cover for possibly their finest album - I played my vinyl copy of this album a lot:'Close to the Edge'. This was released in 1972.
They have had their geographical moments as well.
The album 'Tormato' , released in 1978, had an image of Yes Tor on its cover, and a map of the Tor and other landscapes nearby printed on the inner liner.
There's a disputed story about the creation of the cover:
Howe pitched the album's original title of Yes Tor, referring to Yes Tor, the second highest hill on Dartmoor, an area of moorland in Devon, England. During the development of the album, a tomato was thrown at the artwork resulting in its title and cover being changed accordingly. RickWakeman claimed to have done this as he recalled the band were disappointed with the initial artwork despite finding it expensive. Steve Howe claimed it was a Hipgnosis employee who threw the tomato, which insulted him. This was corroborated by Alan White, who stated that the band was unable to decide on a cover and the tomato was thrown by Hipgnosis designer Aubrey Powell - who I've already mentioned:
"I think Po ... put a picture of a guy with divining sticks on the front. Po took the artwork home one night and decided it wasn't working. So he threw a tomato at it".
More Yes-related posts to come as the year progresses.... such as the Trevor Horn / 'Buggles' era...
I remember when albums came on vinyl and inside a large 12" square cardboard sleeve, perhaps with additional liners, booklets and other designs which opened out in different ways. The cover design was important as were all the notes, lyrics and other elements of the packaging.
CDs don't have the same magic, and of course many people now stream music rather than owning physical products.
Some album covers have geographical features on them, and there used to be a collection of these which I blogged about some time ago on my old Geography and all that Jazz blog. It's an idea that comes back from time to time.
Do you have ideas for examples of album covers which were quite geographical in their imagery.
This would make a good challenge for students - to find a suitable image and then label it with the feature, although you may need to provide them with some.
Here's an example.
Houses of the Holy (1973) - Led Zeppelin
This was designed by Aubrey Powell, an Old Elean (which means he was a pupil at the school where I currently teach in Ely) and features the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland.
More on his work with Hipgnosis later on the blog.
Here's one closer to home for me.
The Stranglers had an album in 2004 called 'Norfolk Coast' and the cover photo by Harrison Funk was taken on the Norfolk coast... at Hunstanton. It was mostly written by their bass player who retreated to Holme-next-the-Sea on the coast in 1999 when feeling disillusioned and wrote a lot of music which became the album.
The cover is shot on the carstone boulders revealed when the tide goes out at Hunstanton near to its famous stripy cliffs.
Sadly, the seaweed which used to cloak the boulders has largely disappeared over the years...
Maps also feature on lots of albums of course, and I shall certainly be sharing examples from the wonderful book 'Maps on Vinyl' by cartographer Damien Saunder which I have on the shelves of my GeoLibrary. More on this to come.
Can you share your favourite examples of geographical features on album covers?
Visit the Google Form here to make your suggestions and I'll add some of them in a later update post.
