Storm Thorgerson on René Magritte

hi I'm Storm Thorgerson of Norwegian ancestry and I'm a designer of album covers I have done rather too many album covers to some people's liking predominate for Pink Floyd Led Zeppelin 10cc and more recently Muse cranberries Biffy Clyro good band etc etc I probably first came across from a grete fire my mother and I think my mother rather in dreaded couraged my interest in art particularly in painting and Magritte was probably an early interest I think because he dealt not with technique so much as with ideas and some of them are quite funny I'd like to look because it makes me smile I think that Magritte may have influenced other people because his ideas are quite easy to assimilate and not terribly complex I think I took away from agreed as sort of a love of oddity or oddness or rather juxtaposition or contrariness is to play with the reality you know so in a sense I have to set it up as a real thing which is being slightly twisted that's the contrariness the ordinance we often stays these things for real and don't do them in a computer because the reality has its own attributes what you see is what you get if you were to do it as a drawing or an illustration or in the computer it would always remain a fantasy not a real thing and it's really fun to do a real thing let me tell you I mean I'm very interested in intentional ambiguity you know what it is but not why it is you might know what it is but not how it is there was one particular cover that was vey consciously about Magritte it was a was a sort of homage is called wish you were here for Pink Floyd and we did four pictures and the four images included a man on fire a man diving into a lake a veil floating in the air in Norfolk and a man in a desert who had no features the one that was on the bad cover which was the man in the desert his way obviously and was supposed to be a Magritte thing so I think there is a set of Magritte feeling to the cover it does confound you a bit because you look at anything wrong is this real I mean I am predominant image makeup so I try and come up with images that will suit the music in the contemporary world rather than in a gallery I'm trying to persuade that the viewers look again to give the album cover a second look as they will give them so partly you look at it and say well that's pretty silly or strange or weird what does it mean