Album Artwork - Some Iconic, Some Personal...All Important!!!!
You know when you start something with good intentions then after a while you wish you hadn’t…this is one of those times. This topic is one that I have wanted to write about for a long time. When I was growing up I used to have every inch of my bedroom walls covered with pictures of album art, football and various scantily clad ladies (i’m sure i’m not the only one!)
This was my techno wall at Uni in 1996…anyone who can recognise what t-shirt I’m wearing gets a prize!!! This was a hard topic to write about without being drawn into my own bias towards the artist musically. After many hours of looking through album artwork I decided to stick to covers that I like personally…some iconic and some that I love for the sake of it. There will be people who will say “why didn’t he talk about (insert band name here) ?” and i’m sorry…but that’s the beauty of music and art…it’s all about opinions and what is important to one person may not be important to someone else. For example, I wanted to add ‘Rumours’ by Fleetwood Mac and ‘Nevermind’ by Nirvana to my list but the ones I have chosen mean more to me. Well…here goes.
Velvet Underground and Nico – Velvet Underground and Nico (1967) Design: Andy Warhol
The most famous drawing of a banana in the history of modern art was produced by Andy Warhol for his pet project The Velvet Underground and Nico’s debut LP in 1967. Early copies of the album featured a banana sticker that turned it into a sexually charged piece of art that invited the owner to ‘Peel slowly and see’ the nude skin-coloured banana underneath.
This effect took label owners Verve Records a while to perfect and because of this the albums’ release was delayed but as most of what Warhol touched seemed to turn to gold in the 60s the label went with it. By 1968 the label dropped the idea leaving the fully clothed banana on future releases. There were others that have suggested that the banana was there as a drug reference to the old rumour that smoking dried banana skins can get you high…trust me…it doesn’t work!!!
The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) Design – Sir Peter Blake and Joan Howarth
In the late 1960s Parlophone records commissioned an album cover that would become one of the most iconic images in music history…not to mention the most expensive at the time! It ended up costing £3000 when the usual top price for a cover was £50. The concept that Blake was given was that the band had just given a concert in a park and famous faces were all there to catch the show. McCartney had the initial idea of them standing in front of a floral clock with famous people hanging from pictures on a wall behind them. The famous people ranged from Karl Marx to Dylan Thomas and from Marlon Brando to Laurel and Hardy. Some famous faces that the band wanted didn’t make the final collage for political and religious reasons…Adolf Hitler (for obvious reasons)…Jesus Christ (didn’t help with Lennon saying that they were ‘bigger than Jesus’ however out of context he was taken) and Ghandi (left out so not to effect sales in India). There were others that were not in the final picture by accident…Einstein was blocked by Lennon’s shoulder and Bette Davis was by Harrison. American sex symbol Mae West struggled with the idea of being linked with a ‘Lonely Hearts Club’ so it took all four Beatles to change her mind to be added. There seems to be something dark and morbid…something more than just the political and religious controversy over this artwork. Many articles by fans around the world link to the fact that the cover is alluding to the death of the band, or the fact that they will never be the same after this record…or the most morbid of ideas is that it is the scene of Paul McCartney’s funeral. The first thing that jumps out is the way that the Beatles are stood in the middle of the scene in bright colours while the wax images of the young Beatles look on mournfully at the graveside. Looking at the Beatles again they are all stood side on except for Paul who is stood facing forward as if the others are supporting him. Also, the others are holding brass instruments while Paul is holding a cor anglaise (instrument like an Oboe) which is black (death) and is made of wood (coffin). A hand is seen over the top of Paul’s head like he is being blessed by a priest before being interred. If you look at the flowers beneath the Beatles name you will see a left-handed bass…as Paul would play it…with only three strings…as if one of the Beatles was gone. There are other crazy conspiracies out there on the internet…even involving audio from the album played backwards and lyrics from the album all pointing towards the death of Paul…for me just adds to how massive this album artwork already is.
Joy Division – Unknown Pleasures (1979) Design – Peter Saville
Peter Saville’s first commercial project after leaving Manchester Polytechnic was to base a poster on an industrial warning sign he had stolen from a door at college. This turned out to be the logo for the infamous club night in Manchester aptly named Factory…that went on to become the record label…Factory Records. With the logo being such a hit with Factory boss Tony Wilson, Saville was asked to design artwork for the records released.
There is without a doubt a global cult built up around Unknown Pleasures and around this image. With it being the band’s debut album they knew what picture they wanted on the front cover, it was a picture they had found in the Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Astronomy. The image itself is essentially data — a visualisation of the frequency of a signal from a pulsar (the first pulsar in recorded history). For many, it was just an image that could be interpreted in many ways…was it a mountain range?…was it a layer of sound waves from a guitar string? The flat lines followed by jagged peaks then back to flat again possibly represents the music on the album…wandering, dormant atmospherics threatening to explode at any moment! Unknown Pleasures is a minimalist masterpiece and because of this I think it must be the most iconic cover for me that has ever been produced. I don’t say this lightly..what other album art covers have been used as :- …a tattoo
…pottery
…a chair
…endless t-shirts
…a pair of trainers
…my own personal favourite…as a condom wrapper
The Doors – Morrison Hotel (1970) Design – Henry Diltz
The Morrison Hotel was an actual hotel situated on Hope Street in Los Angeles. The band turned up in their VW Camper van to get some photos for their new album. Photographer Henry Diltz had asked the receptionist if he could take some shots from inside the hotel but was told “not without permission from the owner” who wasn’t there at the time. Not to leave empty handed Diltz waited until the receptionist had left her post before hurrying the band behind the window and taking a full roll of film from up close to the window to over the other side of Hope Street.
The whole event took just five minutes to do and turned out to be one of my favourite Doors album covers. The end product even had a reflection of their blue and white VW in the right hand corner.
The Stone Roses – The Stone Roses (1989) Design – John Squire
Not only did one of the most influential bands to come from the shores of England produce for me the best debut album ever..one of their band members created one of the best pieces of artwork! Yes you might say I’m biased as I am also a fan of the well known abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock but John Squire took his admiration to another level. His admiration did not stop there…the Roses song ‘Going Down’ (another favourite of mine) pays homage to the great man with the line “Yeah she looks like a painting, Jackson Pollock’s Number Five”. The piece made for their debut album though was named ‘Bye Bye Badman’ (same name of a song on the album) and was Squire’s rendition of the Parisian Riots of 1968. You can see the French tricolore on the left of the cover and the use of lemons on the image were used because they were known to counteract the effects of tear gas used during the riots. The story goes that whilst backpacking around Europe lead singer Ian Brown met a French man who was heavily involved with the riots.
Primal Scream – Screamadelica (1991) Design – Paul Cannell
The “Psychedelic Sunburst” was created by in-house Creation Records designer Paul Cannell who was allegedly inspired by a damp patch he’d seen on the Creation offices ceiling after taking acid. Bobby Gillespie the band’s enigmatic front man wanted a picture of the band sat with a sexy model as the cover…but Creation owner Alan McGee refused as he thought that no-one would buy it.
Instead they took the sunburst picture from their “Higher than the sun” single that was painted in yellow and blue…Bobby added the red and they had their cover.
My Bloody Valentine – Loveless (1991) Design – My Bloody Valentine and Angus Cameron
Artistic recognition went to Angus Cameron for ‘Loveless’ although the band will take most of the credit for the image. This was My Bloody Valentine’s 2nd studio album that went on to be one of the most influential albums of the 90s…and maybe still one of the most unique albums ever made. The band members recorded the album by playing their instruments at extremely high volumes, which, among other things, had the effect of blurring the boundaries between each instrument’s individual voice. Kevin Shields then used to tune two neighbouring strings to almost the same pitch, which he would then bend with the tremolo arm. But rather than give his tremolo arm an occasional tweak in the orthodox manner, Shields would keep it permanently in his right hand . . . and strum the strings as if he were combing a girl’s long hair. This sonic effect is perfectly captured in the album’s cover art. Consisting of a blurry, double-exposed picture of a guitar, the artwork suggests that the instrument is so much under pressure that it is close to disintegration…which is just like the music. When I asked Paul Smith (Maximo Park’s frontman) recently what his favourite covers were…he picked this as one of his as it “represented the music within really well”…the man is quite right!
Phew…well…if you have made it this far then congrats…as I said earlier there are loads of album covers I could have mentioned…I ended up with a list of about 50 but couldn’t write about them all.
