Latest news with #Stuntman
Yahoo
19 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘They set a man on fire and scrambled the RAF': The mad stories of Pink Floyd's album covers
The story of Pink Floyd is a whirlwind of death, madness, bad blood, herculean guitar solos and towering egos. But one of the highest-profile casualties in the tumultuous history of the band that put the 'grrr' in progressive rock was the moustache of stuntman Ronnie Rondell Jr, half of which was famously singed during the 15 attempts it took to photograph the instantly iconic cover of the band's 1975 masterpiece, Wish You Were Here. As captured by regular Pink Floyd collaborator Aubrey Powell on the Warner Bros studio backlot in California, the image of a smiling Rondell with his business attire ablaze, shaking hands with another man, became immediately part of the band's mythology. There is an argument that it is just as well known as the band's music, which has gone in and out of fashion since the prog era drew to a close in the late 1970s. But now there is a bittersweet coda with the news that Rondell has died at the age of 88. For Rondell, Wish You Were Here was just one flashpoint in a life full of thrills and spills. His career spanned eras – from 1960s Westerns such as How the West Was Won to superhero movies like Batman & Robin. But Wish You Were Here is in the first line in his obituary – and with good reason, as he had a part in one of the greatest ever album covers. Typically for Pink Floyd, however, both the record sleeve and the album were accompanied by soap-opera levels of drama. Here we delve into the making of five of their most celebrated LPs. Atom Heart Mother, 1970 Pink Floyd would look back on their fifth studio album with a degree of ambivalence. Though it went to number one and was one of their biggest hits up to that point, they came to regret its shaggy, experimental quality (including the sound of frying bacon and a kettle coming to the boil). 'A load of rubbish,' is how guitarist David Gilmour characterised the record, which took form as the group were coming to terms with the exit of their original leader, Syd Barrett – shown the door after his out-of-control acid habit left him hollowed out and permanently frazzled. 'We were at a real low point… I think we were scraping the barrel a bit at that period,' said Gilmour. Scraping the barrel they may have been with songs such as the 13-minute Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast and Breast Milky (part of the side-one song cycle). But in one respect, the LP was boundary-shattering – and that, of course, has to do the sleeves designed by their regular collaborators, the aforementioned Powell and Storm Thorgerson, who worked as Hipgnosis (and who knew the Floyd from their early days in Cambridge). Thorgerson and Powell would later come to be regarded as masters of the art of album design, but in the early 1970s they still had the mindset of unruly undergraduates making it up as they went. Which is how they came to present Pink Floyd with the mocked-up album sleeve consisting of a photograph snapped by Thorgerson of a Holstein-Friesian named Lulubelle III. It was intended largely as a joke, but Pink Floyd loved its daring – no album or artist title, no band photograph. Their label, EMI, was less enamoured of the concept. 'Ah, Friesians,' said Len Wood, the boss of EMI Records. Still, he knew better than to get in the way of a band whose blend of artsiness and whimsy had already brought great success – and three weeks later, Atom Heart Mother was topping the charts. Dark Side of the Moon, 1973 Determined to improve on the botched and indulgent, as they saw it, Atom Mother Heart, Pink Floyd produced their masterpiece, Dark Side of the Moon. According to Roger Waters, it was the last time the band were all on the same wavelength, and tensions between him and guitarist Gilmour would be exacerbated by the success and fame that followed in the record's wake. But while the music was among the best the Floyd would commit to tape, part of the appeal also lay in the masterful artwork by Hipgnosis, then busy parlaying their association with Pink Floyd into a successful career designing album covers for everyone from Led Zeppelin to 10CC. Unusually for Hipgnosis, the famous image of a white beam of light passing through a triangular glass prism and splitting into a spectrum of colours is entirely a work of graphic design, with no additional photography. 'The idea itself was cunningly cobbled from a standard physics textbook,' Thorgerson said in 2003. Powell added: 'In this book was a photo of a prism on a piece of sheet music and sunlight coming in through the glass window. It was creating this rainbow effect.' The band loved it – to Thorgerson's chagrin, as it was the first of several mock-up album sleeves he had prepared. Didn't they want to see the other options, he wondered, at a meeting at EMI Studios in Abbey Road? Drummer Nick Mason would later dub him 'a man who couldn't take yes for an answer'. Wish You Were Here, 1975 Pink Floyd were slowly falling apart when they came to make their follow-up to Dark Side of the Moon. To the perpetually angst-ridden Waters, the title track was a lament both for the absent Barrett (unrecognisable when, bloated and confused, he visited the group during the recording sessions) and also for the fact that they were becoming strangers to one another. He was commenting, too, on how the record business turned musicians against one another while cheerfully ripping them off. That was the message that Powell and Thorgerson seized upon for the cover. 'There was a lot of anger, especially in Roger, about the record business,' said Powell. 'So we're talking about the absence of sincerity, about people being ripped off.' They had the perfect image in mind: two businessmen shaking hands, one on fire – symbolising the cynical nature of the music industry and how someone always ended up getting burnt in a deal. However, in the era before CGI or sophisticated animation, a picture of a burning man required a man to be literally set alight. This led them to Stunts Unlimited, where none of the resident stuntmen were up for the gig. 'Who wants to be on a record cover when we can be in The Towering Inferno?' said one. There was just one exception – veteran Rondell, who was excited to take part in what he knew to be a dangerous undertaking, staying on the spot while on fire ('You're standing still and fire moves'). A few days later, Rondell was on the Warner Bros set in Burbank, in a suit and wig. The clothes were covered in flame-retardant material while Rondell was smeared in gel. They took 14 shots, hoping to get the perfect image – but Powell wanted to press on. On the 15th time, the wind changed direction, setting ablaze one of Rondell's eyebrows and half his moustache. Animals, 1977 Hipgnosis had started to lose the run of themselves by 1977, and Pink Floyd's dark, uneasy Animals. They suggested a cover image of a child watching his parents copulate 'like animals'. Thanks but no thanks, said Waters, who had an idea of his own: a giant inflatable pig floating over the partly decommissioned Battersea Power Station in London. Tension was running high leading up to the shoot, though not for the traditional rock 'n' roll reasons. 'Storm and Roger's relationship by the time we did Animals was pretty fraught anyway,' Powell said, 'and actually not necessarily related to Animals. They were squash partners. And Storm was notorious for turning up late to every single meeting we ever had in our careers at Hipgnosis. And he did the same to Roger. He turned up later and later and later for squash games. In the end, one day, Roger left the squash court, walked out and said: 'That's the last time I'm ever playing with you.' That was a defining moment in Storm and Roger's disintegration in their friendship.' Undeterred, Floyd commissioned a 40ft inflatable pig – made by Ballon Fabrik, the German firm that had constructed the Zeppelin airships. On December 2 1976, they and Powell arranged for 14 photographers to snap the pig over Battersea Power Station. But having initially declined to inflate, the airborne pig then made a dash for freedom – when a cable snapped, it strayed into the Heathrow airport flightpath and two RAF fighters were scrambled to track it down (it eventually turned up in the field of a farmer in Kent). After all that, the images were judged unsatisfactory, and so the band used a montage of the porcine balloon and of the ominous skies above the power plant – a metaphor for the dark forces of capitalism tearing apart the now thoroughly unhappy Floyd. The Wall, 1979 Waters was fed up with being a rock star, and his 1980 opus, The Wall, was a meditation on the divide he felt had been imposed between artist and audience. There was also a wall between him and the rest of Pink Floyd, and he would leave shortly afterwards – imagining that he had called time on the group (Gilmour and his bandmates felt otherwise and carried on Waters-less). A sign of changing times was the fact that The Wall's cover was designed not by Hipgnosis but by cartoonist Gerald Scarfe. He had struck up a friendship with Waters, having collaborated on the stage design of the Wish You Were Here tour. 'Roger Waters and I got on pretty well. We had the same ironic/sardonic view of the world and we played a lot of snooker. I think he trusted me,' Scarfe would say. 'From my point of view, it was a happy arrangement,' Scarfe continued, 'because Roger in no way tried to impose himself on my work. He had the philosophy that if you employ an artist, you don't try to change what he does. We were working in separate fields – music and art – and yet the two helped one another. He saw the whole sleeve as being designed by me, but it was Roger's idea from the beginning that it should be a blank wall.' The words 'Pink Floyd' and 'The Wall' were scribbled out in a hurry. 'The writing on the front was just written by me, very quickly,' he said in 2022. 'I think I would have done it with a little more panache these days. We were actually worried about blemishing the purity of the cover, and almost wanted not to have a logo on the front.' The approach was the opposite of that of Hipgnosis. There were no elaborate photo shoots, no grand concepts. Just a cover as stark and blunt as the message of the album: that being a rock star wasn't much fun, and global fame was a hell from which there was no escape. All in all, it has weathered the years rather well. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more. Solve the daily Crossword
The National
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The National
Why we made a new theatre show exploring male violence
He isn't keen to be specific about his first experience of violence, but it was bad enough for him to want the superpowers of Spider-Man to cope. He didn't quite manage that, but he did become an MMA (mixed martial arts) fighter, which later inspired him to collaborate on a fascinating theatrical exploration of men and violence. Pete LannonHis friend, colleague and collaborator on the project, Pete Lannon, says men can see violence as 'about a kind of taking power and having some kind of control, like being able to solve your problems in a simple way, as opposed to the more complicated, structural problems that exist in the real world that you feel powerless to do anything about'. He adds that a lot of the violence in modern media represents a 'fantasy that you can punch a bunch of bad guys and solve the problem. The complicated thing for me is that that's often the only way of expressing yourself or saving the day that you see, especially for men. 'I think those stories can be really enjoyable but also … is it really the only way that we can express ourselves as men? Is it the only way we can solve our problems? As much as I'd love to be able to just punch my way through the problems that I see around me, is that the best way?' These are just some of the questions asked by a powerful theatrical show put together by Lannon, Banks and the creative team around them and about to set off on a UK tour in a matter of weeks which runs until mid-October. READ MORE: MoD claims serious radioactive leak at Faslane 'posed no risk to public' Stuntman is a compelling mix of true-life stories of violence interwoven with highly choreographed stunt fights inspired by popular action movies in a package which serves as both a celebration and critique of that genre. It's thought-provoking, highly physical, a lot of fun and involves a lot of fake blood. It also encourages comments from and debates with members of the audience. 'I started competing in boxing at a really young age,' says Banks. 'At the time, you weren't legally allowed to fight in MMA until you were 18. It was regarded as human cockfighting. 'One week after my 18th birthday, I had my first MMA fight, and I won my first three fights in four minutes combined. I was terrified every time. I was ready to die when I went out there. 'One of the most complicated things about it now, when I look back on it, is in that first fight, when this man hit me, I realised I never had to be scared again. 'I think when you've grown up and you have maybe been attacked or assaulted or you've been afraid, it's with you everywhere, all the time. It's a constant threat, and you're constantly switched on. It took a lot of years to unpack that, move away from it and realise I was safe. 'One of the stories we tell in the show is an incident where I ended up in the cells for the weekend, and I was looking at a custodial sentence for fighting. 'My MMA coach, who was a European judo champion and the UK kickboxing champion, was also a musician. He encouraged me to go to drama school.' When he began studying at what is now the Royal Conservatoire in Glasgow, he met up with Lannon and the two began swapping stories from their lives. Lannon's earlier years were very different from Banks's but, again, violence burst through. 'I grew up in Berwick and my dad was a minister,' says the show's director. 'There was a very strict moral religious code. I grew up not really being allowed to watch any movies, but also with the idea that violence was something to avoid. To be the bigger man, or to turn the other cheek.' On his way to school one morning, he was attacked and assaulted by another pupil and his friends. Teachers who saw the attack did nothing to stop it. 'I thought, I'll not fight back and just try to protect myself and stop him hitting me. If I make it a fight, I'm in the wrong as well. Even in this moment of being punched in the head, I was trying to take some kind of moral high ground. 'I wasn't protected by any teachers who saw it but didn't come forward because they were scared of the families involved.' Banks and Lannon discovered a shared appreciation of a certain type of action film. 'Especially a bad action movie,' says Lannon. 'The kind of sweet spot where it's not a five-star film, but it's just bad enough that it's fun … the kind of eighties and nineties action movies that we grew up watching. 'Die Hard feels like some kind of classic. Almost any movie starring Jason Statham is at that sweet spot.' Banks chips in with some more examples: 'Rambo, Commando, Big Trouble In Little China, Road House … we were really interested in looking at those films. It was interesting how our relationship had changed with those films since growing up as well.' Lannon adds: 'We went back and watched a lot of these films for the show, and I think we still do. A lot of the time, we're still texting each other. If one of the creative team has seen a good action movie, we're like, 'oh, we should put this bit in the show'. 'I think it also comes from this love of that kind of stylised violence, a kind of you could say glorified violence. And the tension between that and real life is very complicated. I'm not sure I really 'enjoy' action movies. 'There's always a part of me that feels very strongly that I don't like real-world violence, especially the kind of hyper-masculine aggression that you see on the street, especially when you are growing up and going out to pubs, or the kind of violence that you see in high school all the time. 'The tension between those two things – violence in films and in real life – is uncomfortable and is where the idea for the show started; what it says about men. Why are we like this? Or why are we told to be like this?' A few years after graduating from the Royal Conservatoire, Lannon and two former classmates created the performance production company Superfan. When they first thought of putting together a show like Stuntman, Banks was the first person they contacted. The early versions of the show were pretty much low-budget – or no-budget, as Banks describes them. 'In the beginning, we used sandwich bags of fake blood sellotaped to me. That was the kind of the production standard we had … very home-made.' An injection of funding in 2022 helped develop the basic idea into the version now about to tour. It now features impressive lighting and digital design, more focus on sound and music and high-impact input from fight choreographer EmmaClaire Brightlyn. Stuntman is a two-man show featuring Banks and fellow performer Sadiq Ali recreating action movie sequences in ways which challenge audiences to explore what they say about men's relationship to violence. A member of the Superfan team met Ali at the National Centre for Circus Arts in London. Lannon describes him as an 'incredible physical presence on stage'. 'He and David met through this project, but have instantly created this brilliant chemistry, and I think they are exactly the right people to be telling these stories and to be on this stage,' he says. Meanwhile, Banks likens bringing Al into the show to 'adding another instrument to the band'. READ MORE: English students could face automatic annual hike to tuition fees, report says Lannon was keen to add another voice to the show. 'Bringing in Sadiq, who has a totally other, different and very complicated relationship with violence in real life was kind of the beginning of this version of Stuntman, where it felt really exciting for the three of us in a room starting to share the experiences we'd had, and find where the kind of commonalities were and where the differences were. 'The way that we devised it then was almost like a kind of collage, like taking some of their stories, writing them and working them into something for performance, and then also a lot of staging deaths and fight scenes from movies or inspired by movies, and working on that.' The show leaves space for audience interaction, and they say they can get 'a bit rowdy'. Banks says: 'We get to experience together in that space, these acts of catharsis. It looks at the consequences, whether they're good or bad, and we wrap that whole thing up in a spectacle. 'A lot of the performances that we do are set about capturing that feeling of 'we're in this together'.' Lannon adds: 'We work really hard to find audiences who maybe wouldn't otherwise come to see contemporary theatre. It can be quite an intimate show, and the audience feel very close to the action. 'David said in another interview that it also felt like it was a message to men in the audience that felt really beautiful, 'where the one thing that you hope the audience, especially men in the audience, leave with, is that the feeling that they're not alone'.' They've had good feedback from men's mental health groups and the upcoming UK tour includes three performances at HMP & YOI Polmont, the only prison in Scotland to house young males aged 18 to 21. Banks, Lannon and Ali have all been involved with staging arts events in prisons. 'The audience that we're looking for is present in Polmont,' says Lannon. 'There will be a discussion afterwards, which we've made lots of time for.' Stuntman's exploration of the male relationship with violence feels even more relevant today than when the show was devised. 'There's more inequality in general than when we first made the show,' says Banks. 'The world's on fire right now from a couple of men, and people are idolising the individual in reference to acts of violence on a global scale. 'By creating a show that maybe bridges that gap between the micro scale of our own stories versus the grand scale of the spectacle of an action movie, we're hopefully allowed to bring people closer to their own truth.' Lannon adds: 'We don't have an answer necessarily to some of the questions that we ask about violence and masculinity. 'One of the questions the show asks is: how do we do this better? How do we be men better? 'We're trying to ask it in a way that hopefully makes the audience go away and try to find an answer. 'I'm not saying that this show will change the world, but we hope that the audience, at the very least, go away thinking about the relationship to violence and masculinity, and about what they can do to find a better way. 'We talk about a lot about the emotional violence that men do to each other, but we're not saying that men are the real victims in the way that a lot of people have been saying recently. 'There is a kind of anti-feminist movement that is really dangerous that portrays men as victims of modern society. 'There is a huge problem of violence men do and men have to be part of the solution.' But Stuntman isn't just a show for men. Although much of its content has been shaped by Banks, Lannon and Ali, most of the creative team are women and that has changed it too. Banks says that when he was growing up, before he went to the Conservatoire, all his friends were male. When he was going through difficult times, they would take him out for a drink, or a game of snooker, or a walk. But they would not talk about the problems. That only changed when he had friends who were women. The experience of creating and appearing in Stuntman has changed his relationship with movie violence. Has he even fallen out of love with his favourite superhero? Does he still want to be Spider-Man? 'I've had the privilege of being educated now, so I know a lot of those movies reinforce colonialism, racial hierarchies, patriarchy … so I'm a little bit discouraged from the superhero genre.' For more information on the show visit
Scotsman
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Award-winning Scottish company announce Stuntman UK tour
Award-winning Scottish company SUPERFAN are taking their high-octane smash hit Edinburgh Fringe show Stuntman on tour, supported by Creative Scotland. Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... The show uses a blend of dance, theatre and circus, to present a hilarious, and tender ode to the relationship between masculinity and male violence. The show creates cartoonish action-movie inspired fight scenes using the performers lived experiences. With dates across the UK the show will have a limited run at HMP YOI Polmont, Scotland's largest Young Offenders Institution which primarily houses young males between the ages 18-21. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad This explosive highly acclaimed performance showcases a duet in which two stuntmen wrestle with their relationship to violence on and off screen. Stuntman Told through a series of satirical stunts with high impact, Stuntman is not only inspired by classic and contemporary action movies such as Die Hard and John Wick, but also the performers' personal experiences of their relationships with violence and aggression. Through hard-hitting and entertaining theatrics, performers David Banks (Fox) (Stuntman, Summerhall) and Sadiq Ali (The Chosen Haram, UK Tour; Tell Me, UK Tour; The Unlikely Friendship of Featherboy and Tentacle Girl, Assembly Roxy) introduce an up-close and personal look into their lives in an intensely physical, funny, and moving production. With striking, film set-inspired design from Rachel O'Neill (Tounge Twister, UK Tour; Through the Shortbread Tin, Scotland Tour; The Show for Young Men, Edinburgh International Children's Festival), sound design from Richy Carey ({ stereo – type – music }, Art Night Dundee; wild tracks radio, BBC Radio 6; Åčçëñtß, Glasgow Short Film Festival 2019) and lighting design from Michaella Fee (Ginger, Tramway Glasgow; Childminder, Scotland Tour; Me and My Sister Tell Each Other Everything, The Tron Glasgow). Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Stuntman will immerse the audience in highly physical exaggerated fight sequences and challenge how we think about violence in the media and questions the impact that action-hero role models have on men and boys. Stuntman Director and Deviser of Stuntman Pete Lannon (Nosedive, The Barbican; Like Animals, UK Tour) comments: "It's great to be bringing Stuntman back to audiences around the UK, and to be touring to a lot of places we haven't taken work to before. This show is bursting with fun as well as tackling some really complex themes, and every time we perform the show it feels like those themes have just become more urgent and relevant. I especially can't wait to bring the show to my hometown of Berwick-upon-Tweed (the first time I've toured there) and to audiences in HMPYOI Polmont." SUPERFAN are an award-winning Scottish company who devise theatre for adults and young-people to take a playful approach to exploring the world using artforms that include contemporary circus, dance-theatre, autobiographical performance and physical theatre.
