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Peter Saville: the epicenter of nowness.
Published: Oct 1, 2024.
“At the time, punk felt very modern in the sense that it distilled and epitomized a moment in the mid-seventies. It felt like the very epicenter of nowness. So, in ’76, it seemed, from my limited perspective, like the most important thing happening on Earth at that time.”
INTRODUCTION: The punk movement that exploded in England over the summer of 1976 was infectious. Up and down the country people formed bands overnight. They started magazines. They started their own fashion labels. And in Manchester, Granada TV presenter, Tony Wilson, was scheming to start his own record label, Factory Records.
Elsewhere in the city, Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook were starting their first band Warsaw. By 1979 Warsaw had transformed into Joy Division, one of the most important bands to ever exist.
Their legendary status however took a few years to take hold, but one man with an eye on the future and a belief in modernism was ready to give them the extra push they needed to get there.
In the first episode of “Destroy! The influence of punk” – we meet Peter Saville, one of the 20th century’s most influential image makers, and discuss the impact of his work on society and culture.
RICHARD SMITH: My guest today is someone I’ve known for a long time. The music packaging he created for all the bands I loved, I often loved more than the music itself.
We worked together for a number of years, and his mentorship and influence are what brought me to where I am today.
“For a period, for 12 or 18 months through ’76, ’77, ’78, it was like the back door of the venue was wide open, and anybody who wanted to be part of what was happening just had to go through that door and do things.”
Please welcome one of the 20th century’s most important artists, Mr. Peter Saville. Peter, thank you for being on the show. It’s an honor.
PETER SAVILLE: That’s very nice, Richard. Thank you very much.
RS: I’m so happy we got the technology under control in the end.
PS: We found a way around it in the end.
RS: So, how are you doing? Is everything alright?
PS: Good. Everything’s fine, Richard. Everything is fine.
RS: Good. I’m just going to jump right in because I know you don’t have a ton of time. You told me recently, growing up, that you were very interested in modernism, and I wondered whether you would consider punk a modernist ideal.
PS: At the time, punk felt very modern in the sense that it distilled and epitomized a moment in the mid-seventies. It felt like the very epicenter of nowness. So, in ’76, it seemed, from my limited perspective, like the most important thing happening on Earth at that time.
For a period, for 12 or 18 months through ’76, ’77, ’78, it was like the back door of the venue was wide open, and anybody who wanted to be part of what was happening just had to go through that door and do things.
In youth culture, arguably, it was. It can seem to have been like a coup d’état. It was a moment in 1976 when young people took back their culture. Young people took back the so-called youth culture in an entirely anti-establishment way.
My generation rewrote the agenda for pop culture. It had germination in music, but it extended beyond music and encompassed style, identity, attitude, opinions, and an awareness to question things, plus an awareness that, surprisingly, you could affect change and be part of what was happening rather than merely a passive recipient. That was the most profound change: to leave the audience and become part of the backstage.
People formed bands overnight. Others took photographs. Others reviewed what was going on. Malcolm Garrett and I went in and said, “Can we help visually? Can we be part of what’s going on?” There was this remarkable opportunity to be involved in a culture that had, by that time, become entirely commercialized and controlled by a handful of music-entertainment corporations who were distributing the product they saw fit to distribute.
Youth culture was on rails laid down by business, and the audience—or the market—was expected to be passive recipients of what was delivered to them. Punk upset that completely and reorientated the players, reorientated the status quo, and gave young people an opportunity to be part of what was supposed to be their culture.
It was a disruptive 18 months—like storming the palace and taking control of the radio station. Then the next question was, how are we going to govern now that we’ve regained control of pop culture? That interesting period in ’78, when independent labels began to be set up—of which Factory Records was one—was a revelation, to realize you didn’t have to be EMI or CBS to make a record. You could get together and make a record and release it.
This was astonishingly liberating. There was that period of independence. It’s interesting to think about that now because culture is again controlled by a handful of global corporations.
RS: I love that analogy you made about the back door being opened, etc., and the kids came in and stormed the building. It’s something I’ve believed for a long time, going back to context. So many of those events, particularly for me—seeing the Pistols on TV and hearing what they said—were inspiring, and empowering, because they weren’t like you yourself.
PS: By the seventies, pop stars were very remote from the everyday reality of their audience. That was the status quo that had settled, and it was invigorating and a revelation to see that could be overturned.
I asked myself, is this rock and roll? That closeness, that truly rebellious experience, was probably an echo of what had happened in the mid-fifties with rock and roll. It had drifted off to another planet, and suddenly punk brought it back. There was a sense of difference to the mainstream—you really felt involved in something countercultural, and you were part of it, which was motivating.
“Somebody will be trying to do it differently somewhere, challenging that control. The internet did navigate the tyranny of record companies, film companies, and publishers. Suddenly you could do it yourself, but you were dependent on the network to reach anybody.”
RS: Do you think music or, let’s say, culture, will ever go through that level of change again? Interestingly, you bring up the fifties.
PS: There’s been phases of it. Some kids would climb to the top of a council block of flats and start a pirate radio station. It’s cyclical. Iterations of it are trying to happen somewhere all the time. But, of course, I’m nearly 70 now, and you’re 50-something, so how would we know? That’s the point: we don’t know because it’s not us. Somewhere in the world right now, some young people are trying to regain control of their destiny.
RS: I don’t know whether it’s Spotify or Apple Music or whatever’s driving that corporatization, but music, even fashion—everything is so instantaneous there’s no more expression.
PS: I know there is. Somebody will be trying to do it differently somewhere, challenging that control. The internet did navigate the tyranny of record companies, film companies, and publishers. Suddenly you could do it yourself, but you were dependent on the network to reach anybody.
RS: You look at Napster, which was putting music back into people’s hands, theoretically, but that fell apart and Spotify came along and realized, “We can do this legitimately,” and everybody signed up.
PS: I think the difference is the spirit of intent. Business picks up on something successful purely for profit, which ironically might have started with people doing it because it mattered to them, not to sell something. Then it gets accelerated by others who see an opportunity for profit, and that’s where the wheels come off the rails.
This cat-and-mouse struggle continues. The desire to do something else, something different because it’s necessary—not because you’re trying to make money.
It’s a much more challenging environment now because the safety net has gradually been taken away. If you’re 15, 20, 25, or even 30, it’s not easy to survive anymore. Doing something because you believe in it, with no intent of making a living from it, is real jeopardy. I think back to ’78-’79 when we founded Factory Records. None of us expected to benefit financially from it.
RS: I read how Tony Wilson was constantly calling Paul Morley, saying, “You’ve got to put us in the NME.”
PS: Tony would have done that because he felt it mattered. But I still feel the environment of survival was not as hazardous as it feels now. The last 30 years have taken that safety net away. It’s not easy. I sympathize with younger generations because being disruptive and rocking the boat is admirable, but you can’t just keep doing it.
“If you’re growing up in a small city, you’re very aware of what’s there in its entirety. When something isn’t happening, you know it’s not happening. You can be empowered to think, “No one’s doing that here, so let’s do it.”
RS: In the sixties, people protested war, but they had to be willing to give something up. We live in a society not quite on that level anymore.
PS: It’s not easy. It’s difficult. Even when you have a job and you’re earning something, it’s difficult to make ends meet.
So, trying to rebel is a high-risk strategy. There’s an urgency to see a return on your endeavor before long, or you can’t do it.
RS: The cultural zeitgeist then—you talked about Tony Wilson, Factory, the urban legend of the Lesser Free Trade Hall concert, and so many bands: The Fall, Cabaret Voltaire, OMD, etc. Then Malcolm Garrett, Neville Brody, and you all pushed design. Punk opened the door, but it seemed the North captured that spirit.
PS: A couple of things. If you’re growing up in a small city, you’re very aware of what’s there in its entirety. When something isn’t happening, you know it’s not happening. You can be empowered to think, “No one’s doing that here, so let’s do it.”
In comparison to a megacity like London, you never really know what’s going on. In London, you might assume someone else is doing it, so you think there’s no need to do it yourself. In a smaller city like Manchester, you think, “Let’s just do something.” It’s a smaller hill, not a mountain.
The other interesting thing is how Malcolm and I, moving from Manchester to London, found we succeeded fairly easily. We wondered how we’d come to dominate record cover design in the early eighties. One assumption: in capital cities, there’s a degree of complacency. You arrive from the outside, it’s daunting, so you must be special, and go beyond the call of duty. That gave us an edge.
“Music was the vehicle. I was interested in the mood, not illustrating music. Nick Knight was similar, someone open-minded about how we might make it work within a fashion photo. Nick is interested in image-making, not just photography.”
RS: I wanted to jump back to your long-term collaboration with Nick Knight. He seems to bridge that gap between challenging convention and making it a business, constantly challenging social norms.
PS: Nick created success within fashion. What is fashion photography? For 50 or 60 years, it’s the imaging of nowness. It’s a bigger conceptual sphere now. My own work was about the mood of the times.
Music was the vehicle. I was interested in the mood, not illustrating music. Nick was similar, someone open-minded about how we might make it work within a fashion photo. Nick is interested in image-making, not just photography, which is recording something in front of you. He wants the idea behind it, where it fits in a bigger scheme, so he’s excited by possibilities.
RS: What is the relevance of the work you created with Trevor Key, the dichromatic work you created for New Order?
PS: On the dawn of digital, we made that work. If you look at it now, you’d think it’s a product of Photoshop, but it was done before that. We used a layering process prescient of what was to come. We want to do a book about it because it’s a specific photographic story.
There should be a more expansive book across Trevor’s whole practice. Trevor and Nick are comparable. Trevor, whom I met in ’79, was very receptive to solving problems. In that pre-digital era, you really had to bring everything together physically to get the image.
Trevor was motivated by a challenge. I’d know what image I wanted but not how to achieve it, and Trevor was receptive to finding a solution. The dichromats were the most conceptual and abstract.
“Having caught up with where we were by the late seventies, I felt a burden to move on. Where are things going? Someone has to pioneer. In the first part of the eighties, I went back to go forward. I referenced art and design history to reinstate possibilities.”
Around ’86 or ’87, I had a concept: a flower for the lobby of IBM in the year 2000—a science fiction date. How do we represent organic form in the future? Trevor devised a methodology to capture organic form and create non-photographic but light-based images. The process ended in a form of silk screening with light. That’s extraordinary.
The impetus was where things were going. Having caught up with where we were by the late seventies, I felt a burden to move on. Where are things going? Someone has to pioneer. In the first part of the eighties, I went back to go forward. I referenced art and design history to reinstate possibilities.
By ’85, I’d come full circle to 1965, to the last moment of modern. Then I wondered, what’s modern now? That was where the flower for IBM’s lobby came from. I felt the 20th century had been linear, but the future would be organic and curvilinear. That was the conceptual brief, how to see the form of something rather than just an image.
It didn’t have anything to do with the compilation album Substance it was on or with discussions I had with New Order. It was a discussion with myself about the now, which is what has concerned me throughout my career. The records are interesting in their complete uselessness.
RS: There’s truth to that. I think there’s one aspect of what you’re saying, which is true. But probably a vast majority see the record cover as a symbol or sign.
“The covers weren’t about selling music. As I said, we didn’t expect to sell any. Their complete non-functionality lets them exist in their own right. That is how they’ve become art for their audience.”
PS: Yes, it can do those things; they’re immensely powerful. But they have no burden of responsibility toward commerciality. Do you need a record cover to tell you what a musical artist looks like today? No. Does anyone do market research with a sleeve? No.
Meanwhile, look at how much anxiety goes into other forms of communication design—committees, gatekeepers, all that. With a record cover, the only question the company really asks is, “Is it done?” because they can’t release the record without it.
It didn’t matter what was on the sleeve, so it was a field of expression from someone to someone. I wasn’t about selling music. We didn’t expect to sell many anyway. Their non-functionality enabled them to become art for that specific audience.
It’s functionality that defines art; it doesn’t do anything, so it exists in its own right. The record sleeve is a playful version of that. It existed in its own right; it didn’t have a job. Therefore, for its audience, it could be their art.
RS: I think you just undersold your entire career.
PS: The covers weren’t about selling music. As I said, we didn’t expect to sell any. Their complete non-functionality lets them exist in their own right. That is how they’ve become art for their audience.
There’s no functional burden, so they can be seen as autonomous. That’s how they ended up in MoMA, the Tate, in the context of art. They were my intent, ideas about visual culture at the time, expressed in a free way. Ultimately, they fit in 12 inches of cardboard, but otherwise they were free-form works.
They’ve contributed to the art discourse. Some covers were influential to the next generation of artists. I hear from someone every week that it matters.
“My practice was a purposeful quotation of something from somewhere else, brought into this other place. That was the essence: retrieval and transposition, not appropriation just to have something to do.”
RS: Outside of record covers, I think you’ve been creating your own artwork.
PS: That’s been tricky. From the mid-seventies until the early nineties, record covers served me as a medium. By the early nineties, it lost potency for me. I had to make a living, so for 30 years I’ve been dealing with a professional environment that wasn’t so autonomous.
There’s no equivalent to record sleeves in communications design. Meanwhile, dealing with art as a discipline, I didn’t know how to do that. I’m still wondering what making art is. I didn’t do a fine art course. It’s highly intellectualized, and there’s a lot to know.
Some go mad, some run away. I’d rather be a great designer than a mediocre artist. My day job is what it is. Maybe what I do for myself is my art. It doesn’t look like art to me, but that’s the nature of it.
RS: Yet many artists don’t look like art until it’s in a gallery. It’s about context—like Marcel Duchamp putting a urinal in a museum.
PS: Exactly, or Hans-Peter Feldmann collecting hats. So, it’s difficult to know who we are. I’ve done plenty of things every day, without the distribution channel of a record. Maybe it is my art because it didn’t look like art, but it was a continuous expression of ideas.
RS: You’ve often been accused of appropriation, but ironically, you yourself have been appropriated—Julian Schnabel or Disney with the Unknown Pleasures Mickey Mouse T-shirts.
PS: There’s a difference. My practice was a purposeful quotation of something from somewhere else, brought into this other place. That was the essence: retrieval and transposition, not appropriation just to have something to do.
Schnabel? I don’t really know. He made Ornamental Despair, referencing Closer, but who knows? Robert Longo was very motivated by Joy Division. Many were. Some question why I “copied” Yves Klein, but I can explain exactly why.
If someone’s desperate for an idea at 5 p.m. and just copies it, that’s different. Disney T-shirts were just an error of creative management. People say, “You influenced me,” and that can validate your sense that you were signposting something, and you see it come to pass.
“The gap between pop culture and real life is closed. It’s a pop society.”
RS: It’s like six degrees of separation. From ’76 to the ’80s to MTV to John Hughes to now. There’s a multicolored wiggly line connecting it all, design everywhere. It’s become ornamental.
PS: We live in an ever-speeding era of assimilation. Forty-five years ago, it might take months or years for a cult niche thing to enter the mainstream. Now it’s compressed to moments.
That nowness can be mainstreamed almost instantly. The gap between pop culture and real life is closed. It’s a pop society. If I’m nearly 70, I’m in the upper echelons. Our generation is the aging establishment, so every day, pop references appear in serious editorial. It’s universal now. Balenciaga was once a rarefied house; now it’s mainstreamed. That’s where we are.
RS: One key question: where do you see that nowness going? Or the future?
PS: I like being the old guy on the hill. People come for wisdom, not the latest news. I’m techno-tired, and distanced from computers since ’88, so I can’t give a practical answer.
I don’t have a website, no social media. It’s not that I’m a Luddite, but I’m uninterested in it.
The last 20-30 years, I’ve cared about something else, and I’m aware our aesthetics are shaped by tech-minded individuals. It’s brilliant yet blinkered. One step forward, one step back.
There are amazing things, and there are some appalling life-wasting things, so there’s a problem with digital communications design. It’s not my work to fix it. Where is art going in the next 40 years? It’s never over—it’s usually when you think it is that something radical is happening out of sight.
“People come up and speak to me, thank me or sometimes criticize me, but they affirm something. I can see, in a sense, that circumstances allowed me to be me, to be seen. It’s hard for me to be objective. I know I affected the look of things.”
My contribution is from Brian Cox’s book The Quantum Universe: Everything That Can Happen Does Happen. That might define the next 40 years. Everything that can happen does happen.
RS: There’s a quote I read: “I don’t have much, but I’d rather be Peter Saville than anybody else.” What do you see as your legacy?
PS: People come up and speak to me, thank me or sometimes criticize me, but they affirm something. I can see, in a sense, that circumstances allowed me to be me, to be seen. It’s hard for me to be objective. I know I affected the look of things.
When I was 20 at art college, I wanted to do something that affected the world around me, and circumstances let me do that.
RS: Is that what you’re doing with Jony Ive?
PS: Jony’s interesting. In the last 10 years, many who were touched by my early work became significant decision-makers. They bring me in, not to pitch but to do what I do—Jony at LoveFrom after Apple, or Marek Reichman at Aston Martin, or Raf Simons at Calvin Klein. They want me specifically. That’s a new phenomenon in the latter part of my career, letting me have that sense of self in my work for others.
RS: Which ties to that multicolored line from ’76 to now—your cultural significance?
PS: Tony Wilson used to call what we did “the art of the playground.” When I was 25, I didn’t want to hear that. Now I see how far-reaching it was. Music was a universal experience for people, no matter their background. It delivered me unwittingly to them at a critical age.
They wanted to understand the visual if they liked the music, that was delivered to them before they’d decided who they were. I’m still surprised at how far that music took my pictures, and how it influenced people—bus drivers, parliamentarians, artists, architects. That’s the playground—it’s everybody.
Pop music washes over everyone between 10 and 20. They might cast it off later, but you reach them at that critical age. That was the magic of record covers.
RS: Peter, thank you.
PS: I’m going to go and finish the day.
RS: All right, well, again, thank you for being on the show.