In 1975, Christopherson met Chris Carter, Cosey Fanny Tutti, and Genesis P-Orridge. According to Powell, Christopherson once even pitched Paul McCartney on an album cover featuring a naked dark-skinned man holding his own noose, which the slightly squeamish Macaw politely turned down. While there, he was involved with or directly responsible for the classic LP jacket designs of Led Zeppelin’s Presence, Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, and Peter Gabriel’s first three albums, amongst others. Christopherson started out as an assistant to Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell at the legendary rock design company Hipgnosis, eventually becoming a full partner by 1980. In his absence, music seems to already be a less interesting place, sonically, visually, and conceptually, but the outpouring of grief on Twitter of just about every musician that matters illustrates just how vast his influence spread and how his spirit lingers on in much of the vanguard music being made today.Ĭhristopherson is perhaps best known for his transgressive and avant-garde work in Throbbing Gristle and Coil, but as a young man the Leeds native actually had a hand in some of the most seminal pieces of commercial pop iconography. On November 24th, the world of music lost an immeasurable talent in the form of one Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson. Not only that, the same band expanded the musical palette in far vaster directions than punk ever would. Even more unlikely is the fact that the same man would soon after join a band that was far more extreme in its art-terrorist tendencies than anything punk would ever conceive. ![]() ![]() Oddly enough, the man who would take the first press photos of Lydon’s future band the Sex Pistols was probably the same one who designed the image on that T-shirt (not to mention a controversial window display at Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren’s SEX shop, where Lydon would often loiter). ![]() In late 1975, as legend has it, an angry young punk named John Lydon used to gallivant around town in a Pink Floyd T-shirt over which he’d inscribed the words “I Hate”, causing the shirt to inadvertently read “I Hate Pink Floyd”.
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