Read Part I >
 
I got home from my trip to London to find an absolutely hysterically funny phone message from Storm. It was a serious message but said in his own one-of-a-kind way. He was a bit in his cups which even made him sound more funny. I thought the message was so precious and so Storm that I even made a crude recording of it off my phone machine (perhaps I’ll share it with you guys one day).

He went on and on about how, I nor Sony, would have any right to use the Division Bell album cover unless he approved the final art first. He wanted the blue in the sky to really pop beyond normal. He thought it might need a fifth color added, like and extra blue (see former post explaining adding a “fifth” color to the normal four color printing process).

To his credit, he did say that perhaps our art department could pull it off using the standard four color process, but he wasn’t convinced. Here is a bit of his message to me:

“Hi Paul, Storm here, I want to make it perfectly clear that you nor Sony have absolutely no right to use any of MY artwork on this project unless I approve it. I believe the cover will need a fifth color, but perhaps it won’t—but I think it will, but… maybe it won’t. At any rate, if you print it four-color and it looks like ‘shite’ we won’t pass it—if it doesn’t look like ‘shite’ then we will pass it. Any attempt by you or your peers to have the manager Steve O’Rourke intercede will only result in him yelling at me and the situation will remain the same! But, who knows? Maybe it will look great. Cross your fingers, hasta la vista, and keep taking tablets! Byyyyyyyy!”

Ha, ha–God, I miss you Storm. I live for the true characters in the music biz, and they broke the mold that broke that mold when they made Storm Thorgerson, that’s for sure.

Well, as it turned out, Sony Music had a very talented head of the Art Department—Artie Uranian (great guy too). And wouldn’t you know it, some how, some way, Artie made that Division Bell album cover pop using the four-color process. Storm approved it and we were off to the races.

But Storm was also in charge of ALL things visual. He was working on a movie or two for the live show as well as the cover, booklet, posters, single art, and now David Gilmour wanted to press at least 10,000 blue vinyl LPs and some blue cassettes as well.

Storm called to explain to me, given that there was so much to be done, how we should accomplish all of this. “Rap, I’m extremely busy you see, so why don’t I send you the art, have your guys make their recommendations, then you pop over on the Concord, show it to David, then he’ll make his changes, then you fly back on the Concord, continue to work on it, then pop back over to us on the Concord…”, and so on and so on.

I said, “Stormy, I love you, I really do, but this isn’t 1975, and we don’t have endless money for me to keep flying back and forth on the Concord!”

Again, he spoke my favorite line: “But Rap, we’re Pink Floyd!” Followed by what was becoming my consistent reply: “I KNOW, and I’m your BIGGEST fan! But this one is just not gonna happen!”

I told Storm that as Pink Floyd’s chief of art he MUST come to the States to oversee everything and/or at least bring an assistant with him who could stay on after he completed the broad brush-strokes. He confided to me a fear of travel and that he might get lost. Kennedy is a very large airport and he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to find his driver. I assured him that there would be no way that he was going to miss his driver.

I had my assistant make up a special sign for Storm. When he arrived, as he walked past all the drivers holding their little black and white signs containing their passenger’s names he looked up to see one driver with a giant three foot by four foot poster with a huge “STORM” painted in bright blue with a big yellow lightning bolt splashing right through the middle! In fact, I think EVERYONE in the airport saw that sign. Ha, ha.

“Ha—ha—-ha” he evenly said to me over his phone as they were driving to Manhattan. But, inside I knew he must have loved it.

Upon arriving to my office I showed Storm at least 30 colors of vinyl that were readily available. Of course, none were good enough for him and he insisted on creating his own special version of “Pink Floyd” blue.

He enlisted his assistant Peter Curzon to help and stay in the States to oversee everything after he had to leave to resume his duties in the UK.

Now, anyone who owns or has ever seen a copy of the Division Bell blue vinyl LP knows that all of that meticulous fussiness was well worth it. I’ve never seen a prettier blue in all my life, so much so, that it’s hard to stop staring at it once you take it out of the sleeve—it has a true hypnotic vibe to it.

The funniest part of the story is this. When they first asked for colored vinyl I told them that while it certainly would look pretty, it wouldn’t sound very good and suggested they use black virgin vinyl since Pink Floyd was always so concerned with achieving state of the art fidelity. I even called their head recording engineer, Andy Jackson and had a word with him to be absolutely sure this is what they wanted. “Andy, you know this colored vinyl is going to sound like sh*t, right? What you really want is black virgin vinyl–it’s the very best quality vinyl.” But, I was told David desired a fun collectors item here.

So it was decided, and we created large chunks of “Pink Floyd” blue vinyl using Storm and Peter’s formula, which sat in a pile at our pressing plant in Atlanta waiting to be made into records. The Columbia Records sales staff pre-sold the coming blue vinyl to all of the record stores in less than a Dark Side Of The Moon heart beat!

Now, you must understand that Pink Floyd is like a giant family with all sorts of people working on different parts of the project at once—the album, the stage show, the effects, the sound, the movies, etc., etc., etc.. Sometimes it makes communication cumbersome, and one hand may not always know what the other is doing.

So,…about 3 weeks after all of this has been done, I get a call from my friend and legendary manager Steve O’Rourke. “What’s all this I’m hearing about colored vinyl Rap? We don’t want colored vinyl, it will sound like sh*t, right? We want black virgin vinyl! Don’t you know black virgin vinyl is the highest quality vinyl?!!”

AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! My brain exploded! I am usually a pretty mild mannered fellow, but with all the other added pressures mounting on this project, this surprise phone call, out of the blue (no pun intended) echoing my own exact words really sent me over the freaking edge! “Yes, Steve, of course I know that. And that is why I asked everyone on your team, including Andy Jackson, if they were absolutely S-U-R-E they wanted blue colored vinyl instead of black virgin vinyl. Now, that we have already pre-sold the colored vinyl to our accounts and we actually have manufactured A VERY LARGE PILE of blue vinyl now sitting on the floor of the pressing plant, where do you suggest I PUT this blue vinyl? BECAUSE I KNOW WHERE I’D LIKE TO PUT IT!!”

I think I detected a silent chuckle over the phone. My consternation was not lost on him and he quickly acquiesced, “Well, Rap, I guess we’ll be having blue colored vinyl, yes?” Ha, ha. Even though sometimes very frustrating, I had so much fun working with those guys.

Next installment, I talk to the two Chiefs of the American Indians and ask their permission to bless something on behalf of Pink Floyd. Could my job get any weirder? YES, IT COULD. And even beyond that!

Thanks for reading and stay tuned,

~Rap

© Paul Rappaport 2013