Subject – 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong: Elvis’ Gold Records - Volume 2 – a 1959 recording by Elvis Presley, released on RCA Records and featuring design and art direction by Bob Jones.

With the marking this week of the 30th anniversary of the untimely death of Elvis Presley, this week’s Cover Story will be presented in a slightly different format, with the details behind the making of this iconic record cover coming from a variety of different sources, most notably the descriptive literature produced along with a series of lithographs produced in the early 1990s by a now-defunct publisher called “Record Art”.

Released just prior to Elvis’ return from his stint in the Army, this record was the first “Greatest Hits, Volume 2” rock & roll compilation (with his first Greatest Hits album coming out in early 1958, just before he entered into his military service) and consisted of all five of his Top 5 singles released in ’58-’59 (both “A” and “B” sides). His records sold so well that even the “B” sides charted in the Top 40!

Included in the compilation were a number of songs that showed just how mature a performer he had become while still being able to rock the socks off his competition. All the more impressive was the fact that these songs were recorded while Elvis was in the Army (when the set was re-released in the late 1990’s, the re-mastered recordings improved the sound dramatically), so you’d think that he’d have been slightly distracted, but cuts such as “I Need Your Love Tonight” and “A Big Hunk of Love” proved that he’d be even more formidable once he was out of the Army and back in the studio.

According to Bob Jones, who served as art director for RCA Records for this (and many other) recordings – “To the best of my knowledge, Elvis was indifferent to his image and to the graphics on his covers…the overwhelming number of Elvis Presley’s album covers were produced according to a formula – a large color photo of his head; a bold, horsey hand-lettered ELVIS, a title and the repertoire. During my brief and infrequent visits with him, the subject of covers never came up. It was just another matter of business that The Colonel (Tom Parker) took care of.

For several years during his career, the sales of Presley product accounted for well over 20% of all of RCA Victor Records’ gross income. At the time, RCA had at least one hundred contract recording artists on the label, and my department was producing over 400 LP and 45EP covers each year. The ‘man behind the man’ was Colonel Thomas A. Parker, and he was a far more interesting and complex character than his artist. As the music and motion picture industry knew, he was an aggressively shrewd and calculating man. He sensed from the beginning that Elvis was “product”. The Colonel was a master of promotion, merchandising and exploitation.

Of the more than 70 combined LP and 45EP covers I was responsible for, the only departure from the Parker formula was the 50,000,000 Elvis Fans cover. My final stab at trying to bring a fresh look to Presley’s covers came when I took samples of some big name illustrators to the Colonel in L.A. I took portraits by Bob Fawcett, Austin Briggs, Al Parker, Victor Kalin and even young Andy Warhol. I had hardly started my pitch when it was brought to a screeching halt. ‘Damn it, I’ve told you I don’t want any of your artistic stuff!’ However, The Colonel had been unable to come up with a single gimmick to promote the album. He then gave me a picture of Elvis in a gold lame suit and told me to come up with something.

While Tom and Harry Jenkins – the RCA V.P. – started discussing merchandising schemes, I started making a few thumbnail sketches for a cover. The Colonel looked over to me and asked to look at what I had been doing. With barely a glance at the sketches, he chose the one with the full figure surrounded by the six or eight smaller ones. He said ‘That’s it, but I want at least a couple of dozen of the little pictures in there’. I later sent him a mechanical and he approved the image with less than two dozen figures (ed. note – there are 16 pictures of Elvis on the record cover).

The album sold well over $1,000,000 worth of product. The Colonel loved that gold lame suit. He kept it in one of his closets in his home for years. Elvis Presley hated the damned suit from the first time he put it on…”

The now-famous cover photo montage of multiple Elvises (or would that be Elvi?) dressed in his gold lame’ “Nudie Suit” – as well as the record’s title - has inspired many knock-offs record packages, including (in descending order) Bon Jovi’s 100 Million Bon Jovi Fans Can’t Be Wrong, 1,000,000 People Can’t Be Wrong by Blues Traveler, 50,000 Fall Fans Can’t Be Wrong by The Fall, and Phil Och’s 50 Phil Ochs Fans Can’t Be Wrong!.

About the artist - Bob Jones -

Bob Jones – Art Director, RCA Records – won a Grammy Award in 1965 for “Best Album Cover, Photography” for Jazz Suite on the Mass Texts, an RCA recording featuring a shot by photographer Ken Whitmore. Other credits include covers for Hall & Oates (Rock ‘n Soul: Part 1 – Greatest Hits) and many other RCA artists. He is considered one of the early pioneers of LP/45 cover design, working at various points with other classic cover artists such as Jim Flora and Alex Steinweiss.

To see more of the Bob Jones lithograph that is available for sale at the RockPoP Gallery, please follow this link.

About “Cover Stories” - Our weekly series will give you, the music and art fan, a look at “the making of” the illustrations, photographs and designs of many of the most-recognized and influential images that have served to package and promote your all-time-favorite recordings.

Every Friday, we’ll meet the artists, designers and photographers who produced these works of art and learn what motivated them, what processes they used, how they collaborated (or fought) with the musical acts, their management, their labels, etc. - all of the things that influenced the final product you saw then and still see today.

We hope that you enjoy these looks behind the scenes of the music-related art business and that you’ll share your stories with us and fellow fans about what role these works of art - and the music they covered - played in your lives.

Interview tex Copyright 1991 - Record Art

All other text Copyright 2007 - Mike Goldstein & RockPoP Gallery - All rights reserved.

“Elvis” and “Elvis Presley” are Registered Trademarks of Elvis Presley Enterprises, Inc.

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I saw this over at Rolling Stone.Com and I am still debating whether it is cool or sad. Check out Hair Metal Fashion 101 and you decide!

Later.

Mark

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Subject – “Hotel California” – a 1976 recording by The Eagles, released on Warner/Asylum Records and featuring designs, artwork and art direction by Kosh.

The follow-up to the successful 1975/early 1976 releases – the Grammy-nominated One Of These Nights and the huge-selling Eagles: Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975 - Hotel California was the first album to feature guitarist Joe Walsh, whose playing and song-writing influence brought the band from their more country-leaning efforts towards a more mainstream rock audience.

During the year and a half spent in the making of the record, drummer/singer/lyricist Don Henley emerged as the “featured player”, and much of the record’s tone and subject material reflected his commentary on success (and the excesses it can breed), love lost and just how strange life in California can be.

With their arena-rock-ready musicianship now well-honed (Don Felder and Walsh on guitars and Henley and Randy Meisner providing the rhythmic fundamentals), the band was now ready for the big time and Hotel California proved that they could create music that could both sell countless millions of albums (the record went platinum in 1 week!) and make a countless millions of fans in stadiums around the world cheer loudly as they sang aloud every word of every hit song. Hotel California won the Grammy in 1977 for Record of the Year and the songs “Life in the Fast Lane”, “New Kid in Town” and the epic “Hotel California” (which you can never leave) became enduring classic Eagles tracks.

As the designer of some of the most well-known album cover images in history, Kosh has always appreciated a challenge (and a nice production budget), and so when the Eagles’ manager and record label called looking for an image to properly illustrate the release of a record by a “new” Eagles band – and a band that needed no introduction – Kosh and his team braved the California winds in a death-defying effort that produced an iconic cover image and one very exciting Cover Story…

In the words of the designer, Kosh (interviewed July, 2007) –

“I had been designing album covers and promotional material in London for The Rolling Stones, The Who (Who’s Next?) and The Beatles (Abbey Road) at Apple and working closely with John Lennon on his ‘War Is Over’ campaign. Peter Asher was head of A&R at Apple Records at the time.

After a 6-month stint in New York, the family moved to LA in 1974 and I soon fell – with great enthusiasm - into the West Coast music scene. Heady times. I began working with Peter Asher again, who was now managing James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt in LA. This led me directly to Linda’s label - Asylum - and the Eagles. Irving Azoff, their manager, called me in to meet Don Henley and Glenn Frey (they were still friends at this point so the conversation was fresh and lively). Don Felder was also there, along with the amazing falsetto, Randy Meisner. It was a jolly affair - the Eagles were huge, enjoying hit after hit, and the California rock scene was burgeoning. Their producer and engineer, Bill Szymzyk, brought in an acetate of Hotel California - destined to be the first cut on, and the title of, their next album. It was an obvious hit.

For the album cover, Don wanted me to find and portray THE Hotel California – a hotel which would best-exemplify a classic ‘California hotel’, and to portray it with a slightly sinister edge. Photographer David Alexander and I set out to scout suitable locations. We photographed three hotels (including some with a rather ‘seedily genteel’ character) that fit the brief and large prints were made for approval. By now I was dealing mostly with Henley - the rest of the band would saunter in as we progressed and mutter their approvals – and he preferred more sumptuous images. The shot of the Beverly Hills Hotel against the golden sunset was deemed the favorite.

To get the perfect picture, David and I had perched nervously atop a 60′ cherry picker dangling over Sunset Boulevard in the rush hour, shooting blindly into the sun. Both of us brought our Nikons up in the basket and we took turns shooting, ducking and reloading. We used high-speed Ektachrome film as the light began to fade. This film gave us the remarkable graininess of the final shot.

Beautiful dye-transfer prints of the chosen frame were made by the great Ted Staidel. I designed and drew out the master Hotel California logo which was to become the theme of the package and the promotional materials. The script was almost impossible to bend in real neon and so, after many experiments, Bob Hickson was commissioned to airbrush the neon effect on the logo – which he did wonderfully - and it was pasted over the Beverly Hills Hotel sign on Ted’s print. The whole piece was then re-photographed, re-printed on the same stock as the original image and retouched to match the grain and hide the surgery.

Next we organized the gatefold spread – a photo of the band surrounded by friends in the hotel lobby. This was shot inside a cleverly re-decorated flop house, called The Lido, in Hollywood by David Alexander. Our combined rock ‘n’ roll friends were all invited. Nobody knows what the sinister figure lurking in the balcony window is doing - or who he is. I assume he must have been a benign spirit as Hotel California went platinum immediately (and then some!).

A lot of great talent contributed to this LP’s packaging. Photographer Norman Seeff was commissioned to shoot portraits of the band, which were arranged as a gritty black and white fold-out poster montage that was to be inserted in the package. Throughout the package (and the related promotional items), the graphics were carefully coordinated to retain the unique color and typographic schemes. It was, for its day, and expensive effort, but a very satisfying one.

It is interesting to note that I got tangled in the same heated debate with Asylum Records over the using of the band’s name on the cover that I had years earlier with EMI in London. I thought it unnecessary to use the words, ‘The Beatles’ on Abbey Road considering the album was so eagerly anticipated and The Beatles were the biggest band in the world at the time. Such was the case with Hotel California. By 1976 the Eagles were the biggest band in the world and eventually only the title, ‘Hotel California’ appeared on the original cover of the album.

Subsequently, as the sales of Hotel California went through the roof, lawyers for the Beverly Hills Hotel threatened me with a ‘cease and desist’ action - until it was gently pointed out by my attorney that the hotel’s requests for bookings had tripled since the release of the album.”

About the designer, KOSH –

As a designer and art director, KOSH became prominent in the mid-1960s with the Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera. He met up with the Beatles towards the end of the decade and, as creative director at Apple Records, was responsible for design, promotion and publicity for The Beatles. His clientele expanded to cover the cream of the British rock bands including the Rolling Stones, the Who, and many others. He handled John Lennon’s crusades including the “War Is Over” campaign in 1969 and art-directed and produced the world-renowned Abbey Road and Who’s Next? album covers, among many others.

Kosh became well known in the London avant-garde art scene, designing and producing exhibitions, posters and books. After garnering several awards with the London Design & Art Directors Club, he was elected to the British Art Directors’ Jury before moving to Los Angeles in 1974. A seven-time Grammy nominee, Kosh won three of the coveted awards for his work for Linda Ronstadt (Lush Life, Get Closer and Simple Dreams). He served as faculty member of Otis Parson’s Institute of Art and on the Board of Governors of the National Recording Academy.

Kosh’s client roster has included Capitol Records, Tri-Star, Disney Studios, Fox Television, CNN, MCA, MGM, NFL (he designed the Super Bowl XXI logo), Disney, Sony Records and Warner Bros., Records. Artist clients include The Beatles, Jimmy Buffett, the Eagles (including Hotel California - voted No.6 in Rolling Stone Magazine’s “100 Best Album Covers of All Time”), Humble Pie, Randy Newman, Pointer Sisters, Linda Ronstadt (Kosh has prepared all her graphics since 1974), Bob Seger, Electric Light Orchestra, Ringo Starr, Spinal Tap, Rod Stewart, James Taylor, 10,000 Maniacs, T. Rex, The Who and many others. A display of his more prominent graphics was exhibited at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Museum.

Susan Shearer and Kosh formed Ten Worlds Productions in 1995. Tenworlds achieved critical acclaim for their work on The Last Days of Kennedy and King for TBS and the ten hour documentary 100 Years -100 Movies for the America Film Institute and CBS. In 2006, Ten Worlds produced and directed DECLASSIFIED: The Rise and Fall of the Wall, which shed new light on the Berlin Wall for The History Channel.

Tenworlds is presently producing a 13 part series of DECLASSIFIED documentaries on subjects such as John Lennon, Fidel Castro, the Tet Offensive, Charles Lindbergh, Joseph Stalin and World War 1 for The History Channel, with Kosh directing. Aimed at younger audiences, these shows combine interviews with U.S. presidents, top echelon politicians and rarely seen archival footage, overlaid with innovative graphics and searing rock soundtracks. Ten Worlds is also in pre-production for a documentary celebrating the 40th anniversary of The Beatles’ Apple Corps.

To see more of Kosh’s work, please visit – http://www.tenworlds.com/.

To see more of Kosh’s images that are available for sale at the RockPoP Gallery, please follow this link – http://rockpopgallery.easystorecreator.com/items/john-kosh/list.htm?1=1

About “Cover Stories” - Our weekly series will give you, the music and art fan, a look at “the making of” the illustrations, photographs and designs of many of the most-recognized and influential images that have served to package and promote your all-time-favorite recordings.

Every Friday and syndicated the following week on The Rock and Roll Report, we’ll meet the artists, designers and photographers who produced these works of art and learn what motivated them, what processes they used, how they collaborated (or fought) with the musical acts, their management, their labels, etc. - all of the things that influenced the final product you saw then and still see today.

We hope that you enjoy these looks behind the scenes of the music-related art business and that you’ll share your stories with us and fellow fans about what role these works of art - and the music they covered - played in your lives.

Copyright 2007 - Mike Goldstein & RockPoP Gallery - All rights reserved.

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Subject – “Hotel California” – a 1976 recording by The Eagles, released on Warner/Asylum Records and featuring designs, artwork and art direction by Kosh.

The follow-up to the successful 1975/early 1976 releases – the Grammy-nominated One Of These Nights and the huge-selling Eagles: Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975 - Hotel California was the first album to feature guitarist Joe Walsh, whose playing and song-writing influence brought the band from their more country-leaning efforts towards a more mainstream rock audience.

During the year and a half spent in the making of the record, drummer/singer/lyricist Don Henley emerged as the “featured player”, and much of the record’s tone and subject material reflected his commentary on success (and the excesses it can breed), love lost and just how strange life in California can be.

With their arena-rock-ready musicianship now well-honed (Don Felder and Walsh on guitars and Henley and Randy Meisner providing the rhythmic fundamentals), the band was now ready for the big time and Hotel California proved that they could create music that could both sell countless millions of albums (the record went platinum in 1 week!) and make a countless millions of fans in stadiums around the world cheer loudly as they sang aloud every word of every hit song. Hotel California won the Grammy in 1977 for Record of the Year and the songs “Life in the Fast Lane”, “New Kid in Town” and the epic “Hotel California” (which you can never leave) became enduring classic Eagles tracks.

As the designer of some of the most well-known album cover images in history, Kosh has always appreciated a challenge (and a nice production budget), and so when the Eagles’ manager and record label called looking for an image to properly illustrate the release of a record by a “new” Eagles band – and a band that needed no introduction – Kosh and his team braved the California winds in a death-defying effort that produced an iconic cover image and one very exciting Cover Story…

In the words of the designer, Kosh (interviewed July, 2007) –

“I had been designing album covers and promotional material in London for The Rolling Stones, The Who (Who’s Next?) and The Beatles (Abbey Road) at Apple and working closely with John Lennon on his ‘War Is Over’ campaign. Peter Asher was head of A&R at Apple Records at the time.

After a 6-month stint in New York, the family moved to LA in 1974 and I soon fell – with great enthusiasm - into the West Coast music scene. Heady times. I began working with Peter Asher again, who was now managing James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt in LA. This led me directly to Linda’s label - Asylum - and the Eagles. Irving Azoff, their manager, called me in to meet Don Henley and Glenn Frey (they were still friends at this point so the conversation was fresh and lively). Don Felder was also there, along with the amazing falsetto, Randy Meisner. It was a jolly affair - the Eagles were huge, enjoying hit after hit, and the California rock scene was burgeoning. Their producer and engineer, Bill Szymzyk, brought in an acetate of Hotel California - destined to be the first cut on, and the title of, their next album. It was an obvious hit.

For the album cover, Don wanted me to find and portray THE Hotel California – a hotel which would best-exemplify a classic ‘California hotel’, and to portray it with a slightly sinister edge. Photographer David Alexander and I set out to scout suitable locations. We photographed three hotels (including some with a rather ‘seedily genteel’ character) that fit the brief and large prints were made for approval. By now I was dealing mostly with Henley - the rest of the band would saunter in as we progressed and mutter their approvals – and he preferred more sumptuous images. The shot of the Beverly Hills Hotel against the golden sunset was deemed the favorite.

To get the perfect picture, David and I had perched nervously atop a 60′ cherry picker dangling over Sunset Boulevard in the rush hour, shooting blindly into the sun. Both of us brought our Nikons up in the basket and we took turns shooting, ducking and reloading. We used high-speed Ektachrome film as the light began to fade. This film gave us the remarkable graininess of the final shot.

Beautiful dye-transfer prints of the chosen frame were made by the great Ted Staidel. I designed and drew out the master Hotel California logo which was to become the theme of the package and the promotional materials. The script was almost impossible to bend in real neon and so, after many experiments, Bob Hickson was commissioned to airbrush the neon effect on the logo – which he did wonderfully - and it was pasted over the Beverly Hills Hotel sign on Ted’s print. The whole piece was then re-photographed, re-printed on the same stock as the original image and retouched to match the grain and hide the surgery.

Next we organized the gatefold spread – a photo of the band surrounded by friends in the hotel lobby. This was shot inside a cleverly re-decorated flop house, called The Lido, in Hollywood by David Alexander. Our combined rock ‘n’ roll friends were all invited. Nobody knows what the sinister figure lurking in the balcony window is doing - or who he is. I assume he must have been a benign spirit as Hotel California went platinum immediately (and then some!).

A lot of great talent contributed to this LP’s packaging. Photographer Norman Seeff was commissioned to shoot portraits of the band, which were arranged as a gritty black and white fold-out poster montage that was to be inserted in the package. Throughout the package (and the related promotional items), the graphics were carefully coordinated to retain the unique color and typographic schemes. It was, for its day, and expensive effort, but a very satisfying one.

It is interesting to note that I got tangled in the same heated debate with Asylum Records over the using of the band’s name on the cover that I had years earlier with EMI in London. I thought it unnecessary to use the words, ‘The Beatles’ on Abbey Road considering the album was so eagerly anticipated and The Beatles were the biggest band in the world at the time. Such was the case with Hotel California. By 1976 the Eagles were the biggest band in the world and eventually only the title, ‘Hotel California’ appeared on the original cover of the album.

Subsequently, as the sales of Hotel California went through the roof, lawyers for the Beverly Hills Hotel threatened me with a ‘cease and desist’ action - until it was gently pointed out by my attorney that the hotel’s requests for bookings had tripled since the release of the album.”

About the designer, KOSH –

As a designer and art director, KOSH became prominent in the mid-1960s with the Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera. He met up with the Beatles towards the end of the decade and, as creative director at Apple Records, was responsible for design, promotion and publicity for The Beatles. His clientele expanded to cover the cream of the British rock bands including the Rolling Stones, the Who, and many others. He handled John Lennon’s crusades including the “War Is Over” campaign in 1969 and art-directed and produced the world-renowned Abbey Road and Who’s Next? album covers, among many others.

Kosh became well known in the London avant-garde art scene, designing and producing exhibitions, posters and books. After garnering several awards with the London Design & Art Directors Club, he was elected to the British Art Directors’ Jury before moving to Los Angeles in 1974. A seven-time Grammy nominee, Kosh won three of the coveted awards for his work for Linda Ronstadt (Lush Life, Get Closer and Simple Dreams). He served as faculty member of Otis Parson’s Institute of Art and on the Board of Governors of the National Recording Academy.

Kosh’s client roster has included Capitol Records, Tri-Star, Disney Studios, Fox Television, CNN, MCA, MGM, NFL (he designed the Super Bowl XXI logo), Disney, Sony Records and Warner Bros., Records. Artist clients include The Beatles, Jimmy Buffett, the Eagles (including Hotel California - voted No.6 in Rolling Stone Magazine’s “100 Best Album Covers of All Time”), Humble Pie, Randy Newman, Pointer Sisters, Linda Ronstadt (Kosh has prepared all her graphics since 1974), Bob Seger, Electric Light Orchestra, Ringo Starr, Spinal Tap, Rod Stewart, James Taylor, 10,000 Maniacs, T. Rex, The Who and many others. A display of his more prominent graphics was exhibited at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Museum.

Susan Shearer and Kosh formed Ten Worlds Productions in 1995. Tenworlds achieved critical acclaim for their work on The Last Days of Kennedy and King for TBS and the ten hour documentary 100 Years -100 Movies for the America Film Institute and CBS. In 2006, Ten Worlds produced and directed DECLASSIFIED: The Rise and Fall of the Wall, which shed new light on the Berlin Wall for The History Channel.

Tenworlds is presently producing a 13 part series of DECLASSIFIED documentaries on subjects such as John Lennon, Fidel Castro, the Tet Offensive, Charles Lindbergh, Joseph Stalin and World War 1 for The History Channel, with Kosh directing. Aimed at younger audiences, these shows combine interviews with U.S. presidents, top echelon politicians and rarely seen archival footage, overlaid with innovative graphics and searing rock soundtracks. Ten Worlds is also in pre-production for a documentary celebrating the 40th anniversary of The Beatles’ Apple Corps.

To see more of Kosh’s work, please visit – http://www.tenworlds.com/.

To see more of Kosh’s images that are available for sale at the RockPoP Gallery, please follow this link – http://rockpopgallery.easystorecreator.com/items/john-kosh/list.htm?1=1

About “Cover Stories” - Our weekly series will give you, the music and art fan, a look at “the making of” the illustrations, photographs and designs of many of the most-recognized and influential images that have served to package and promote your all-time-favorite recordings.

Every Friday and syndicated the following week on The Rock and Roll Report, we’ll meet the artists, designers and photographers who produced these works of art and learn what motivated them, what processes they used, how they collaborated (or fought) with the musical acts, their management, their labels, etc. - all of the things that influenced the final product you saw then and still see today.

We hope that you enjoy these looks behind the scenes of the music-related art business and that you’ll share your stories with us and fellow fans about what role these works of art - and the music they covered - played in your lives.

Copyright 2007 - Mike Goldstein & RockPoP Gallery - All rights reserved.

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I see that Max Yasgur’s old farm is for sale for a cool 8 million bucks. While you get 103 acres of land you do not get the actual Woodstock festival site as that is part of the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts. Either way, this would be an excellent HQ for The Rock and Roll Report so I am starting up a Rock and Roll Report HQ fund. Kick in a couple of bucks and the place is as good as sold!

Later.

Mark

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By Michael Goldstein

Pink Floyd’s “rock opera” The Wall (released on Columbia Records in the U.S. and on Harvest Records in the UK), is the best-selling multi-disc recording of all time, having sold well over 30 million packages since its 1979 release. The record reached #1 in the U.S. (topping at #3 in the U.K.) and included the #1 hit single “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)”, along with the hits “Hey You”, “Run Like Hell”, and the epic “Comfortably Numb”. It was voted #87 of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” in the 2003 survey published by Rolling Stone Magazine.

It was after this record that founding keyboardist Richard Wright departed, to return as a paid player when the band performed The Wall on tour, finally re-uniting as a full member in 1987.

According to the legend, songwriter/lyricist Roger Waters was inspired to begin writing The Wall while on tour in 1977 promoting their Animals record. Near the end of the tour, an angry Waters spat in the face of an audience member who was trying to jump up onto the stage with the band. Whatever the motivation, the record required 8 months in the South of France to complete.

All Pink Floyd records since their 1967 release The Piper at the Gates of Dawn had featured cover designs/packaging by Storm Thorgerson and Hipgnosis. For The Wall, the band chose U.K. cartoonist and illustrator Gerald Scarfe, who then also designed the giant puppets of the ‘Mother’, ‘Wife’ and ‘Teacher’, as well as the animations that were projected around the theater and onto the Wall constructed during the public performances of the opera. The selection of Mr. Scarfe as illustrator was inspired, as he creates “drawings that are often a cry against that which I detest, and in showing my dislike I have to draw the dislikeable. To horrify people with a drawing of the waste of war I must make a horrific drawing of war, and when I come to draw people, their bodies become vehicles for their emotions – greed, lust, cruelty.” Considering The Wall’s subject material, the story behind the making of today’s Cover Story image is particularly compelling….

In the words of the illustrator, Gerald Scarfe (interviewed July 2007, with additional quotes and info provided by Julie Davies and the nice folks at geraldscarfe.com) –

“In 1973, the BBC sent me to Los Angeles to work on a twenty minute animated film about all things American – a psychedelic stream-of-consciousness work featuring Mickey Mouse, Black Power, Playboy Magazine, the Statue of Liberty, Nixon and John Wayne. We used a new animation system called the ‘De Joux’ system. In full Disney-type animation there are twelve drawings to one second of film. The ‘De Joux’ system cut that number to only six or eight by mixing photographically between every drawing and producing the illusion of extra movement. This still meant an immense amount of work, drawing every second of a twenty minute film. I worked, ate and slept that project for six weeks, drawing every cliché I knew about America straight onto 70mm film - from Coca Cola to John Wayne. I called the film Long Drawn-Out Trip.

Two members of Pink Floyd (Roger and Nick) saw this film when it was shown on the BBC and asked me to make an animated film for their next series of live concerts, based on their LP Wish You Were Here. I didn’t take up the offer for some time – it seemed like a lot of work and I feared it might stop the flow of my other work (it did!). Directing animation is a full-time job. I ended up with a studio of about forty animators whom I tried to wean away from the Disney system in which most are trained.

The first animations I made for Wish You Were Here were projected onto a circular screen at the back of the stage, behind the band. I drew a man who walked slowly towards the camera, stopped and was eroded, like sand, by the blowing wind. A metal monster that stomped across the landscape for the song, ‘Welcome to the Machine‘, a sea of blood that appeared over the horizon, raced towards us and engulfed two shining, circular metal towers. The blood turned to groping hands which prayed to the metal monoliths. A leaf tumbled through the sky and slowly turned into a naked man who, still tumbling, smashed through the sky as though it were made of glass.

I continued my association with Pink Floyd by collaborating on The Wall. Begun in 1979, this project became three years of work. Roger and I worked out the cover design in the South of France and I completed it on my return to London. Roger gave me complete carte blanche, complete control over it. Besides showing me the libretto, they didn’t interfere at all in crafting of the images. They obviously saw what I was going to do, but they never altered them. I remember Roger saying that “when we employ an artist, we employ him for what he does, not for what we would like to make him do.”

In as far as what inspired the ‘Hammers’ imagery, we obviously wanted to have some figure of oppression, and I came up with the hammers. I had to think, ‘what would be the most obvious symbol of oppression’, and the most unrelenting, crushing, unthinking thing that I could think of was a hammer. The violence of a hammer when it comes down is horrific. I was slightly worried that they might be adopted by some fascist, neo-Nazi group as a symbol but thankfully it didn’t happen. And I think that when I did the hammers, and Roger wrote ‘hammer, hammer’ into the lyrics, it was the one instance when the drawings influenced the lyrics.

I knew the images were ultimately going to be used in an animated sequence. The actual images came to me quite quickly, but of course the animation is an incredibly time consuming process. When we began the animation for the film there were only about 8-10 people on the project, but by the end there were around 40-50 animators using pen, paper, ink and paint.

From the original LP of The Wall, a stage show was produced, for which I art-directed. I made puppets and inflatables and directed another animated film, The Trial. The Wall was subsequently made into a feature film which I designed and for which I directed two further pieces of animation – ‘Empty Spaces’ and ‘Goodbye Blue Sky’.

As a child who grew up in the war, ‘Goodbye Blue Sky’ came completely from my mind, because I had memories of the war. Roger was born after the war; as you may know, he lost his father in the war, and that’s why he refers to it, but I actually lived through it, and remember the bombs falling in London, and being in air raid shelters.

But above all else I remember having to wear a gas mask, which is a very claustrophobic thing for anyone to wear, let alone an asthmatic. I’d put this thing on and fight for breath. We had to put them on for practice – thankfully there was no occasion when gas bombs were actually dropped, to my memory. But I hated the mask. They tried to make it look cute and childlike by putting Mickey Mouse ears on it and calling it a ‘Mickey Mouse children’s gasmask’. But the memory of the mask came in useful for the ‘Frightened Ones’. I gave them gas-mask heads and they are running for cover into air raid shelters as the dove which explodes into the Germanic Eagle, and flies across the landscape, lays its trail of waste.

When I do my illustrated talks I like to show the ‘Goodbye Blue Sky’ sequence, because it ties up with my childhood really, it’s a sort of poem to the Second World War, and it was the Floyd that gave me the opportunity to do it. I am often asked if I think my drawings change anything. I don’t believe they do, but on occasion I hope they may crystallize a mood or sum up an attitude. If I have succeed in demonstrating this – or even better, in making people laugh – then I can ask for no more.”

About the illustrator, Gerald Scarfe -

Illustrator and cartoonist Gerald Scarfe was born in 1936 in London. He was asthmatic as a child and spent much time drawing and reading. After a brief period at the Royal College of Art in London, he established himself as a satirical cartoonist, working for Punch magazine and Private Eye during the early sixties. He has had many exhibitions worldwide, including ones in New York, Osaka, Montreal, Los Angeles, Sydney, Melbourne, Chicago and London, as well as 50 one-man shows. He has designed the sets and costumes for plays, operas and musicals in London, Houston, Los Angeles and Detroit. His film work includes designing and directing the animation for Pink Floyd’s rock opera The Wall (he also created the graphics and animation for Roger Waters’ 1984 solo album titled The Pros And Cons Of Hitch Hiking and its supporting tour). Scarfe has written and directed many live action and documentary films for BBC and Channel 4.

He has also published many books of his work, including Heroes & Villains: Scarfe at the National Portrait Gallery, which was published in September 2003. His most recent book, Gerald Scarfe: Drawing Blood: 45 Years of Scarfe Uncensored was published in November 2005. Gerald Scarfe has been political cartoonist for the London Sunday Times for 40 years, and has worked for The New Yorker magazine for 14 years. His work regularly appears in many periodicals and in 2005, he was selected as one of the 40 Most-Influential Journalists by the U.K.’s Press Gazette. In 2006, he received the British Press Award as Cartoonist of the Year.

Most recently, he has just completed working with Ozzy Osbourne on illustrating a 10-foot guitar for Gibson Guitar and their special charity event held for the Prince’s Trust.

He is married to British film/TV actress and author Jane Asher, and they have 3 three children.

You can see more of Mr. Scarfe’s work, please visit – www.geraldscarfe.com. Not only will you find a large selection of illustrations covering his whole career (including the work with Pink Floyd), but there is more information about Gerald, his book Drawing Blood (where some of today’s material was excerpted from), a CV, and writings on all the different subjects of his work.

To see more of Mr. Scarfe’s images that are available for sale at the RockPoP Gallery, please follow this link – http://rockpopgallery.easystorecreator.com/items/gerald-scarfe/list.htm?1=1

About “Cover Stories” - Our weekly series will give you, the music and art fan, a look at “the making of” the illustrations, photographs and designs of many of the most-recognized and influential images that have served to package and promote your all-time-favorite recordings.

Every Friday, we’ll meet the artists, designers and photographers who produced these works of art and learn what motivated them, what processes they used, how they collaborated (or fought) with the musical acts, their management, their labels, etc. - all of the things that influenced the final product you saw then and still see today.

We hope that you enjoy these looks behind the scenes of the music-related art business and that you’ll share your stories with us and fellow fans about what role these works of art - and the music they covered - played in your lives.

Copyright 2007 - Mike Goldstein & RockPoP Gallery - All rights reserved.

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By Michael Goldstein

Pink Floyd’s “rock opera” The Wall (released on Columbia Records in the U.S. and on Harvest Records in the UK), is the best-selling multi-disc recording of all time, having sold well over 30 million packages since its 1979 release. The record reached #1 in the U.S. (topping at #3 in the U.K.) and included the #1 hit single “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)”, along with the hits “Hey You”, “Run Like Hell”, and the epic “Comfortably Numb”. It was voted #87 of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” in the 2003 survey published by Rolling Stone Magazine.

It was after this record that founding keyboardist Richard Wright departed, to return as a paid player when the band performed The Wall on tour, finally re-uniting as a full member in 1987.

According to the legend, songwriter/lyricist Roger Waters was inspired to begin writing The Wall while on tour in 1977 promoting their Animals record. Near the end of the tour, an angry Waters spat in the face of an audience member who was trying to jump up onto the stage with the band. Whatever the motivation, the record required 8 months in the South of France to complete.

All Pink Floyd records since their 1967 release The Piper at the Gates of Dawn had featured cover designs/packaging by Storm Thorgerson and Hipgnosis. For The Wall, the band chose U.K. cartoonist and illustrator Gerald Scarfe, who then also designed the giant puppets of the ‘Mother’, ‘Wife’ and ‘Teacher’, as well as the animations that were projected around the theater and onto the Wall constructed during the public performances of the opera. The selection of Mr. Scarfe as illustrator was inspired, as he creates “drawings that are often a cry against that which I detest, and in showing my dislike I have to draw the dislikeable. To horrify people with a drawing of the waste of war I must make a horrific drawing of war, and when I come to draw people, their bodies become vehicles for their emotions – greed, lust, cruelty.” Considering The Wall’s subject material, the story behind the making of today’s Cover Story image is particularly compelling….

In the words of the illustrator, Gerald Scarfe (interviewed July 2007, with additional quotes and info provided by Julie Davies and the nice folks at geraldscarfe.com) –

“In 1973, the BBC sent me to Los Angeles to work on a twenty minute animated film about all things American – a psychedelic stream-of-consciousness work featuring Mickey Mouse, Black Power, Playboy Magazine, the Statue of Liberty, Nixon and John Wayne. We used a new animation system called the ‘De Joux’ system. In full Disney-type animation there are twelve drawings to one second of film. The ‘De Joux’ system cut that number to only six or eight by mixing photographically between every drawing and producing the illusion of extra movement. This still meant an immense amount of work, drawing every second of a twenty minute film. I worked, ate and slept that project for six weeks, drawing every cliché I knew about America straight onto 70mm film - from Coca Cola to John Wayne. I called the film Long Drawn-Out Trip.

Two members of Pink Floyd (Roger and Nick) saw this film when it was shown on the BBC and asked me to make an animated film for their next series of live concerts, based on their LP Wish You Were Here. I didn’t take up the offer for some time – it seemed like a lot of work and I feared it might stop the flow of my other work (it did!). Directing animation is a full-time job. I ended up with a studio of about forty animators whom I tried to wean away from the Disney system in which most are trained.

The first animations I made for Wish You Were Here were projected onto a circular screen at the back of the stage, behind the band. I drew a man who walked slowly towards the camera, stopped and was eroded, like sand, by the blowing wind. A metal monster that stomped across the landscape for the song, ‘Welcome to the Machine‘, a sea of blood that appeared over the horizon, raced towards us and engulfed two shining, circular metal towers. The blood turned to groping hands which prayed to the metal monoliths. A leaf tumbled through the sky and slowly turned into a naked man who, still tumbling, smashed through the sky as though it were made of glass.

I continued my association with Pink Floyd by collaborating on The Wall. Begun in 1979, this project became three years of work. Roger and I worked out the cover design in the South of France and I completed it on my return to London. Roger gave me complete carte blanche, complete control over it. Besides showing me the libretto, they didn’t interfere at all in crafting of the images. They obviously saw what I was going to do, but they never altered them. I remember Roger saying that “when we employ an artist, we employ him for what he does, not for what we would like to make him do.”

In as far as what inspired the ‘Hammers’ imagery, we obviously wanted to have some figure of oppression, and I came up with the hammers. I had to think, ‘what would be the most obvious symbol of oppression’, and the most unrelenting, crushing, unthinking thing that I could think of was a hammer. The violence of a hammer when it comes down is horrific. I was slightly worried that they might be adopted by some fascist, neo-Nazi group as a symbol but thankfully it didn’t happen. And I think that when I did the hammers, and Roger wrote ‘hammer, hammer’ into the lyrics, it was the one instance when the drawings influenced the lyrics.

I knew the images were ultimately going to be used in an animated sequence. The actual images came to me quite quickly, but of course the animation is an incredibly time consuming process. When we began the animation for the film there were only about 8-10 people on the project, but by the end there were around 40-50 animators using pen, paper, ink and paint.

From the original LP of The Wall, a stage show was produced, for which I art-directed. I made puppets and inflatables and directed another animated film, The Trial. The Wall was subsequently made into a feature film which I designed and for which I directed two further pieces of animation – ‘Empty Spaces’ and ‘Goodbye Blue Sky’.

As a child who grew up in the war, ‘Goodbye Blue Sky’ came completely from my mind, because I had memories of the war. Roger was born after the war; as you may know, he lost his father in the war, and that’s why he refers to it, but I actually lived through it, and remember the bombs falling in London, and being in air raid shelters.

But above all else I remember having to wear a gas mask, which is a very claustrophobic thing for anyone to wear, let alone an asthmatic. I’d put this thing on and fight for breath. We had to put them on for practice – thankfully there was no occasion when gas bombs were actually dropped, to my memory. But I hated the mask. They tried to make it look cute and childlike by putting Mickey Mouse ears on it and calling it a ‘Mickey Mouse children’s gasmask’. But the memory of the mask came in useful for the ‘Frightened Ones’. I gave them gas-mask heads and they are running for cover into air raid shelters as the dove which explodes into the Germanic Eagle, and flies across the landscape, lays its trail of waste.

When I do my illustrated talks I like to show the ‘Goodbye Blue Sky’ sequence, because it ties up with my childhood really, it’s a sort of poem to the Second World War, and it was the Floyd that gave me the opportunity to do it. I am often asked if I think my drawings change anything. I don’t believe they do, but on occasion I hope they may crystallize a mood or sum up an attitude. If I have succeed in demonstrating this – or even better, in making people laugh – then I can ask for no more.”

About the illustrator, Gerald Scarfe -

Illustrator and cartoonist Gerald Scarfe was born in 1936 in London. He was asthmatic as a child and spent much time drawing and reading. After a brief period at the Royal College of Art in London, he established himself as a satirical cartoonist, working for Punch magazine and Private Eye during the early sixties. He has had many exhibitions worldwide, including ones in New York, Osaka, Montreal, Los Angeles, Sydney, Melbourne, Chicago and London, as well as 50 one-man shows. He has designed the sets and costumes for plays, operas and musicals in London, Houston, Los Angeles and Detroit. His film work includes designing and directing the animation for Pink Floyd’s rock opera The Wall (he also created the graphics and animation for Roger Waters’ 1984 solo album titled The Pros And Cons Of Hitch Hiking and its supporting tour). Scarfe has written and directed many live action and documentary films for BBC and Channel 4.

He has also published many books of his work, including Heroes & Villains: Scarfe at the National Portrait Gallery, which was published in September 2003. His most recent book, Gerald Scarfe: Drawing Blood: 45 Years of Scarfe Uncensored was published in November 2005. Gerald Scarfe has been political cartoonist for the London Sunday Times for 40 years, and has worked for The New Yorker magazine for 14 years. His work regularly appears in many periodicals and in 2005, he was selected as one of the 40 Most-Influential Journalists by the U.K.’s Press Gazette. In 2006, he received the British Press Award as Cartoonist of the Year.

Most recently, he has just completed working with Ozzy Osbourne on illustrating a 10-foot guitar for Gibson Guitar and their special charity event held for the Prince’s Trust.

He is married to British film/TV actress and author Jane Asher, and they have 3 three children.

You can see more of Mr. Scarfe’s work, please visit – www.geraldscarfe.com. Not only will you find a large selection of illustrations covering his whole career (including the work with Pink Floyd), but there is more information about Gerald, his book Drawing Blood (where some of today’s material was excerpted from), a CV, and writings on all the different subjects of his work.

To see more of Mr. Scarfe’s images that are available for sale at the RockPoP Gallery, please follow this link – http://rockpopgallery.easystorecreator.com/items/gerald-scarfe/list.htm?1=1

About “Cover Stories” - Our weekly series will give you, the music and art fan, a look at “the making of” the illustrations, photographs and designs of many of the most-recognized and influential images that have served to package and promote your all-time-favorite recordings.

Every Friday, we’ll meet the artists, designers and photographers who produced these works of art and learn what motivated them, what processes they used, how they collaborated (or fought) with the musical acts, their management, their labels, etc. - all of the things that influenced the final product you saw then and still see today.

We hope that you enjoy these looks behind the scenes of the music-related art business and that you’ll share your stories with us and fellow fans about what role these works of art - and the music they covered - played in your lives.

Copyright 2007 - Mike Goldstein & RockPoP Gallery - All rights reserved.

Share This

As I am learning about how to podcast using all of these amazing electronic gizmos and software, it is easy to loose sight of why you want to podcast while you struggle with the issue of how to podcast. Much the same can be the said of musicians who have such a wide variety of home recording gear and software that it is so easy to get caught up in the virtual trees that they tend to lose sight of the musical forest. I just read an article from almost a year ago about musician Kelley Stoltz who is attempting to recreate the analog sound of rock and roll in the privacy of his apartment and it struck a chord with me.

Until the widespread use of digital technology in the late ‘90s most home recording was done on either a portastudio cassette-based unit or on analog ¼ inch tape with 8-track being the norm. Obviously it wasn’t as flexible as today’s 128 virtual-track software products but it forced bands to really pay attention to the craft of recording their music without getting side-tracked by the endless options that digital technology provided. The key to recording on analog 8-track was to ensure that you had the proper placement of your microphones and that you really thought out what instruments would go where and how you would record them on which tracks. This element of pre-production was not an option, it was a necessity based on the limited options you had available but it forced bands to really think out what they wanted to do and how.

Kelley Stoltz knew that some of his favourite rock and roll from the likes of the Beatles and Pink Floyd were recorded analog and he wanted to recapture that for his record Below the Branches so he enlisted the trusty aid of the venerable Tascam 388. I myself have had some great experiences with this beast which is essentially a giant portastudio marrying an 8 input mixer with a ¼ inch reel-to-reel recorder and dbx noise reduction. Why did he essentially go retro, with the sometimes added headaches that analog entails? According to the article:

“I just enjoy the ritual of the tape machine: cleaning the heads, waiting for the tape to rewind. A lot of the music I love — the Beatles, Pink Floyd — they were using 2-inch rather than ¼-inch, but they still had to wait for tape to rewind. It just feels more like it used to be. I feel as though I’m partaking in the same process.”

This to me is very important these days because the ease of recording music in 2007 sometimes takes away from the art of creating music which is a very important difference in my rock and roll book. While not everyone will pine for the days of editing tape with razor blades, I think that the craftsmanship of recording music is getting a bit lost these days. Do I advocate going back to analog tape? Well that all depends on the musician but it is nice to hear a rock and roller interested in the process of making a record and not just in the end result of burning a CD. It gives me hope that the soul of rock and roll lives on in the sound of people like Kelley Stoltz and that is pretty cool.

You can listen to Kelley’s music on his website at http://www.electriccity.org/ or on his MySpace page http://www.myspace.com/kelleystoltz. See, he isn’t completely retro!

Later.

Mark

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By Michael Goldstein

Subject – Fused – a 2005 recording by “Iommi” (Tony Iommi & Glenn Hughes), released on Sanctuary Records and featuring a cover image by artist Hugh Gilmour.

Main personnel – Tony Iommi – Guitars; Glenn Hughes - Vocals, Bass; Kenny Aronoff – Drums; Bob Marlette - Keyboards, Bass

Having first worked together on the 1986 Black Sabbath album Seventh Star, guitarist Tony Iommi and bassist/vocalist Glenn Hughes reunited in 1996 to work on new songs but, as Tony was “side-tracked” by constant touring with Sabbath for the next 8 years, they weren’t able to get together again to work on this music until 2004 (note - you can listen to their 1996 efforts as they were compiled on an album released in 2004 titled DEP Sessions: 1996). After the release of the DEP Sessions record, the pair formed a power trio with crack session/John Mellencamp drummer Kenny Aronoff and with producer Bob Marlette also adding his keyboard talents, the group released Fused in 2005.

Looking to return to their harder, riff-centric pasts (Iommi’s riffs set the stage for all metal bands to come, and Hughes’ vocal and bass work with Deep Purple filled in the gaping holes left by Ian Gillian and Roger Glover in 1973), the band left no doubt of their blues/rock/metal pedigrees and musical prowess with riff-filled tunes such as “Face Your Fear”, “Dopamine”, and the epic “Insane”.

It only made sense then when the band approached Sanctuary Record’s former Head of Design (a well-known “metal head” and now independent graphic designer) Hugh Gilmour to create the packaging for this new release. According to Hugh, it was Black Sabbath’s fault that he got a job in the music industry in the first place. Let him explain in today’s Cover Story…

In the words of the artist, Hugh Gilmour (interviewed in July 2007) –

“I was at University in Kingston in UK, and saw that Castle Communications had a vacancy for a Mac Operator. I’d switched an Apple Macintosh on and off at University, so I figured I was qualified. Castle Communications had the rights to the Sabbath catalogue in the U.K., and I knew that one day they would have to reissue and remaster them, and I wanted to be the one to do it, so I applied for the job and got it.

After I’d been there a couple of years they began a campaign of reissuing the Black Sabbath catalogue (everything from 1970-1987), and I was the obvious person to do it, as I was the resident metal freak. Back then (in 1995) you didn’t automatically get sleeve notes, additional pics, memorabilia or additional material, in CD reissues. At the time, only Ryko was making the effort to give value for money with the packaging etc. but this was something I really pushed for. When I was told there was no budget to have sleeve notes written I went ahead and wrote ’em myself, all of which was approved by the Sabbath camp. I still have the faxes (this was before email!) from Sharon Osbourne praising my liner notes.

I worked on something like twenty Sabbath releases, mainly reissues and compilations. I did one Sabbath compilation called Between Heaven And Hell that I wanted to look like a Joy Division album cover, something akin to 1980’s Closer LP, and all of a sudden old Sabbath stuff is being compared favourably to Joy Division. Coincidence? Maybe. I also made sure we included tracks like ‘Wicked World’ (which was unavailable on CD in Europe) included as well. I genuinely created those from the perspective of being a fan first and foremost. They sold so well, and at a time when interest in Sabbath wasn’t that great, that it set the standard for all of the catalogue releases. I was told that certain record chains had complained that the booklets had been stolen, not the CDs! So I knew I’d done something right. And if you disagree with my opinions in the notes? Too bad. It was a long time ago, anyway. I also designed Geezer’s first solo record Plastic Planet for Gloria Butler, and like Sharon, I found Gloria and Geezer very easy to work with, and I’m still very proud of that album. These were all labours of love for me, but I also got to put my opinions and ideas in print.

To provide inspiration for the image and the theme of the packaging overall, I was given a brief by Tony’s management. They said that although it was an IOMMI album and that it was produced very much as a collaboration with Glenn Hughes. I wasn’t given a lot of specific imagery or instructions about the design, other than they wanted a sense that it was a collaborative effort, of ’something fused together’, and to hopefully give an impression of brotherhood.

Another reference point I was given was a Rammstein album which consisted of an orange background and a single white strip. Whether you feel that’s a good or challenging design, or not I had to agree that something that was that simple and graphic does jump off of a CD rack. It was important to depict the IOMMI logo clearly, but to also find a way to balance Tony Iommi and Glenn Hughes’s names too. Tony wanted some colour in the artwork too, as most of the albums he has been associated with have tended to be a bit dark, tonally. Some of the early ideas for Fused had a sense of heat, of something fusing through being melted then forged together. The finished design is quite cold in comparison. I quickly developed a number of ideas, and variations on those. I designed about 100 different ideas before the one used was settled upon. Tony and Tony’s management were involved very closely from the outset, which is a far cry from the early days of Sabbath when the band would see the artwork for the first time when it was in the record stores.

I trained as a traditional artist and technical illustrator (examples are on www.myspace.com/hughgilmour), but this sleeve was made up from a number of different images and photos put together in Photoshop. I still paint and draw as and when required, but Photoshop is now my primary tool for design. I couldn’t say exactly, but the time it took to develop the image, from the initial brief to the finished sleeve, was probably a month or so, which is quite generous as record labels do tend to work to very tight deadlines.

The images inside the Fused booklet are meant to be partly abstract, but at the same time, hopefully illustrate the lyrics in some way. There’s even a self portrait (of me) in there, somewhere…”

About the Illustrator/Designer, Hugh Gilmour –

Although little is known about what led Mr. Gilmour down the path he took to graphic design stardom, here’s what I can tell you. He was born on 20 June, 1969 and began his career in design doing freelance work in the early 1990s. From 1993-97, he was a Senior Designer at Castle Communications in Surrey, moving in 1997 to the position of Art Director at Diablo Design Ltd, Fox Studios, in London where he was responsible for the Design and Art Direction for a variety of clients including Castle Music, EMI Records, Sanctuary Music anagement, Snapper Music, Inferno Records, Eagle Rock Records, Iron Maiden Holdings Ltd., Music For Nations, Cleopatra Records (US), JVC (Japan) and Pony Canyon (Japan).

In 1998, he took on the job of Head of Design at the Sanctuary Records Group, UK, managing a team of 5 designers and a number of freelancers on a wide range of products and services for a busy music and multi-media company, reporting to the company COO. He provided the Design and Art Direction for CDs, DVDs, cassettes, videos, T-shirts, posters, advertisements, salesheets, POS and other associated promotional material. Clients have included Iron Maiden, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Phil Collins, Alice Cooper, The Who, Bruce Dickinson, Motörhead, Marillion, Status Quo, David Bowie, the Kinks, ELP, Fleetwood Mac, Bobby Womack, Barbara Dickson, Elkie Brooks, Small Faces, Humble Pie and the Sex Pistols. Additionally, he was responsible for packaging design for the Isle Of Wight Festival OST, Get Carter OST, Dune DVD, Conan The Destroyer DVD and Blue Velvet DVD.

With that experience under his belt, in September 2001 he launched his own Graphic Design & Art Direction firm - Gilmour Design, in London, UK. His clients include Capitol, EMI, Sanctuary Records, Sony/Columbia, JVC, Eagle Rock, Demon Vision, 2Entertain Ltd. and the BBC.

In addition to the packaging and print work he’s done for the music industry, he has written many sleeve notes for the same clients, and has published a number of articles on design and packaging in the popular music press. He has also lectured on packaging and graphic design for Moscow University, and he received his Master of Arts (with Commendation) in 2005 from the Communication Design School at London’s Kingston University.

Recently, he’s worked with Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson on a logo for his new airline - Bruce Air - and he’s also been working closely with David Coverdale (who he calls “a true gent”) and Whitesnake, as well as on an Anthology project for Glenn Hughes (beginning with his work on Trapeze’s Medusa record, through his time with Deep Purple and up to his current solo material).

When he’s not incredibly busy working on designs for his clients, he also does the designs and artwork for his own metal band Pig Iron (www.myspace.com/soundsofcaligula or www.pigironmc.com)

You can see more of Mr. Gilmour’s work as Hugh Gilmour Design at http:www.gilmourdesign.co.uk and on mySpace at http://www.myspace.com/hughgilmour

About “Cover Stories” - Our weekly series will give you, the music and art fan, a look at “the making of” the illustrations, photographs and designs of many of the most-recognized and influential images that have served to package and promote your all-time-favorite recordings.

Every Friday, we’ll meet the artists, designers and photographers who produced these works of art and learn what motivated them, what processes they used, how they collaborated (or fought) with the musical acts, their management, their labels, etc. - all of the things that influenced the final product you saw then and still see today.

We hope that you enjoy these looks behind the scenes of the music-related art business and that you’ll share your stories with us and fellow fans about what role these works of art - and the music they covered - played in your lives.

Copyright 2007 - Mike Goldstein & RockPoP Gallery - All rights reserved.

Share This

By Michael Goldstein

Subject – Fused – a 2005 recording by “Iommi” (Tony Iommi & Glenn Hughes), released on Sanctuary Records and featuring a cover image by artist Hugh Gilmour.

Main personnel – Tony Iommi – Guitars; Glenn Hughes - Vocals, Bass; Kenny Aronoff – Drums; Bob Marlette - Keyboards, Bass

Having first worked together on the 1986 Black Sabbath album Seventh Star, guitarist Tony Iommi and bassist/vocalist Glenn Hughes reunited in 1996 to work on new songs but, as Tony was “side-tracked” by constant touring with Sabbath for the next 8 years, they weren’t able to get together again to work on this music until 2004 (note - you can listen to their 1996 efforts as they were compiled on an album released in 2004 titled DEP Sessions: 1996). After the release of the DEP Sessions record, the pair formed a power trio with crack session/John Mellencamp drummer Kenny Aronoff and with producer Bob Marlette also adding his keyboard talents, the group released Fused in 2005.

Looking to return to their harder, riff-centric pasts (Iommi’s riffs set the stage for all metal bands to come, and Hughes’ vocal and bass work with Deep Purple filled in the gaping holes left by Ian Gillian and Roger Glover in 1973), the band left no doubt of their blues/rock/metal pedigrees and musical prowess with riff-filled tunes such as “Face Your Fear”, “Dopamine”, and the epic “Insane”.

It only made sense then when the band approached Sanctuary Record’s former Head of Design (a well-known “metal head” and now independent graphic designer) Hugh Gilmour to create the packaging for this new release. According to Hugh, it was Black Sabbath’s fault that he got a job in the music industry in the first place. Let him explain in today’s Cover Story…

In the words of the artist, Hugh Gilmour (interviewed in July 2007) –

“I was at University in Kingston in UK, and saw that Castle Communications had a vacancy for a Mac Operator. I’d switched an Apple Macintosh on and off at University, so I figured I was qualified. Castle Communications had the rights to the Sabbath catalogue in the U.K., and I knew that one day they would have to reissue and remaster them, and I wanted to be the one to do it, so I applied for the job and got it.

After I’d been there a couple of years they began a campaign of reissuing the Black Sabbath catalogue (everything from 1970-1987), and I was the obvious person to do it, as I was the resident metal freak. Back then (in 1995) you didn’t automatically get sleeve notes, additional pics, memorabilia or additional material, in CD reissues. At the time, only Ryko was making the effort to give value for money with the packaging etc. but this was something I really pushed for. When I was told there was no budget to have sleeve notes written I went ahead and wrote ’em myself, all of which was approved by the Sabbath camp. I still have the faxes (this was before email!) from Sharon Osbourne praising my liner notes.

I worked on something like twenty Sabbath releases, mainly reissues and compilations. I did one Sabbath compilation called Between Heaven And Hell that I wanted to look like a Joy Division album cover, something akin to 1980’s Closer LP, and all of a sudden old Sabbath stuff is being compared favourably to Joy Division. Coincidence? Maybe. I also made sure we included tracks like ‘Wicked World’ (which was unavailable on CD in Europe) included as well. I genuinely created those from the perspective of being a fan first and foremost. They sold so well, and at a time when interest in Sabbath wasn’t that great, that it set the standard for all of the catalogue releases. I was told that certain record chains had complained that the booklets had been stolen, not the CDs! So I knew I’d done something right. And if you disagree with my opinions in the notes? Too bad. It was a long time ago, anyway. I also designed Geezer’s first solo record Plastic Planet for Gloria Butler, and like Sharon, I found Gloria and Geezer very easy to work with, and I’m still very proud of that album. These were all labours of love for me, but I also got to put my opinions and ideas in print.

To provide inspiration for the image and the theme of the packaging overall, I was given a brief by Tony’s management. They said that although it was an IOMMI album and that it was produced very much as a collaboration with Glenn Hughes. I wasn’t given a lot of specific imagery or instructions about the design, other than they wanted a sense that it was a collaborative effort, of ’something fused together’, and to hopefully give an impression of brotherhood.

Another reference point I was given was a Rammstein album which consisted of an orange background and a single white strip. Whether you feel that’s a good or challenging design, or not I had to agree that something that was that simple and graphic does jump off of a CD rack. It was important to depict the IOMMI logo clearly, but to also find a way to balance Tony Iommi and Glenn Hughes’s names too. Tony wanted some colour in the artwork too, as most of the albums he has been associated with have tended to be a bit dark, tonally. Some of the early ideas for Fused had a sense of heat, of something fusing through being melted then forged together. The finished design is quite cold in comparison. I quickly developed a number of ideas, and variations on those. I designed about 100 different ideas before the one used was settled upon. Tony and Tony’s management were involved very closely from the outset, which is a far cry from the early days of Sabbath when the band would see the artwork for the first time when it was in the record stores.

I trained as a traditional artist and technical illustrator (examples are on www.myspace.com/hughgilmour), but this sleeve was made up from a number of different images and photos put together in Photoshop. I still paint and draw as and when required, but Photoshop is now my primary tool for design. I couldn’t say exactly, but the time it took to develop the image, from the initial brief to the finished sleeve, was probably a month or so, which is quite generous as record labels do tend to work to very tight deadlines.

The images inside the Fused booklet are meant to be partly abstract, but at the same time, hopefully illustrate the lyrics in some way. There’s even a self portrait (of me) in there, somewhere…”

About the Illustrator/Designer, Hugh Gilmour –

Although little is known about what led Mr. Gilmour down the path he took to graphic design stardom, here’s what I can tell you. He was born on 20 June, 1969 and began his career in design doing freelance work in the early 1990s. From 1993-97, he was a Senior Designer at Castle Communications in Surrey, moving in 1997 to the position of Art Director at Diablo Design Ltd, Fox Studios, in London where he was responsible for the Design and Art Direction for a variety of clients including Castle Music, EMI Records, Sanctuary Music anagement, Snapper Music, Inferno Records, Eagle Rock Records, Iron Maiden Holdings Ltd., Music For Nations, Cleopatra Records (US), JVC (Japan) and Pony Canyon (Japan).

In 1998, he took on the job of Head of Design at the Sanctuary Records Group, UK, managing a team of 5 designers and a number of freelancers on a wide range of products and services for a busy music and multi-media company, reporting to the company COO. He provided the Design and Art Direction for CDs, DVDs, cassettes, videos, T-shirts, posters, advertisements, salesheets, POS and other associated promotional material. Clients have included Iron Maiden, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Phil Collins, Alice Cooper, The Who, Bruce Dickinson, Motörhead, Marillion, Status Quo, David Bowie, the Kinks, ELP, Fleetwood Mac, Bobby Womack, Barbara Dickson, Elkie Brooks, Small Faces, Humble Pie and the Sex Pistols. Additionally, he was responsible for packaging design for the Isle Of Wight Festival OST, Get Carter OST, Dune DVD, Conan The Destroyer DVD and Blue Velvet DVD.

With that experience under his belt, in September 2001 he launched his own Graphic Design & Art Direction firm - Gilmour Design, in London, UK. His clients include Capitol, EMI, Sanctuary Records, Sony/Columbia, JVC, Eagle Rock, Demon Vision, 2Entertain Ltd. and the BBC.

In addition to the packaging and print work he’s done for the music industry, he has written many sleeve notes for the same clients, and has published a number of articles on design and packaging in the popular music press. He has also lectured on packaging and graphic design for Moscow University, and he received his Master of Arts (with Commendation) in 2005 from the Communication Design School at London’s Kingston University.

Recently, he’s worked with Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson on a logo for his new airline - Bruce Air - and he’s also been working closely with David Coverdale (who he calls “a true gent”) and Whitesnake, as well as on an Anthology project for Glenn Hughes (beginning with his work on Trapeze’s Medusa record, through his time with Deep Purple and up to his current solo material).

When he’s not incredibly busy working on designs for his clients, he also does the designs and artwork for his own metal band Pig Iron (www.myspace.com/soundsofcaligula or www.pigironmc.com)

You can see more of Mr. Gilmour’s work as Hugh Gilmour Design at http:www.gilmourdesign.co.uk and on mySpace at http://www.myspace.com/hughgilmour

About “Cover Stories” - Our weekly series will give you, the music and art fan, a look at “the making of” the illustrations, photographs and designs of many of the most-recognized and influential images that have served to package and promote your all-time-favorite recordings.

Every Friday, we’ll meet the artists, designers and photographers who produced these works of art and learn what motivated them, what processes they used, how they collaborated (or fought) with the musical acts, their management, their labels, etc. - all of the things that influenced the final product you saw then and still see today.

We hope that you enjoy these looks behind the scenes of the music-related art business and that you’ll share your stories with us and fellow fans about what role these works of art - and the music they covered - played in your lives.

Copyright 2007 - Mike Goldstein & RockPoP Gallery - All rights reserved.

Share This

By Michael Goldstein of RockPop Gallery

Subject – “Too Tough To Die” – a 1985 recording by The Ramones on Sire Records featuring a cover photograph by George DuBose.

Main personnel – The Ramones - Joey (vocals), Johnny (guitar), Dee Dee (bass), Richie (drums)

After “suffering” through three albums of music that was more slickly-produced hard pop than the straight-ahead punk rock, Ramones fans were rewarded with a return-to-form production titled “Too Tough To Die”. After firing drummer Marky (due to his diminished abilities brought about by alcoholism) and replacing him with the newly-christened Richie Ramone, original drummer and now producer Tommy (Erdelyi) headed the band into the studio and, with the help of Dave Stewart, brought the band back to playing what they played best – short, fast, and smart punk tunes, with 9 of them written or co-written by bassist Dee Dee.

Critics have said that the was the “last great Ramones” recording, and it certainly showed that the band was ready and able to hold its own in the emerging early-mid 1980’s hardcore punk scene. The album features two classic Ramones tracks - “Wart Hog” and “Endless Vacation” (sung by Dee Dee), as well as the Stewart-produced “Howling at the Moon”.

The cover for “Too Tough To Die” was one of nine covers George shot for the Ramones. The song “Durango 95″ bears the same name of the car driven by Alex in the Kubrick film “A Clockwork Orange”. Why is that important? Read on…

In the words of the photographer, George DuBose –

“I met the Ramones when Tony Wright asked me to shoot the cover for ‘Subterranean Jungle’. A year later, a call came from His Rockin’ Royal Highness, Johnny Ramone himself. He told me that he definitely wanted me to shoot another cover for them, but he asked me if I knew any other art directors, as they were not happy about the way the cover of ‘Subterranean Jungle’ looked.

‘What was wrong with Tony Wright?’ I asked. ‘The graffiti on the cover he did for ‘Subterranean Jungle’ really looked fake – we didn’t like it,’ Johnny said. Having worked with Tony on many projects by this point, I knew the range of his talents and capabilities. ‘Don’t write Tony off so quickly. Tony is extremely versatile. He will design the cover any wan you want – you just have to be clear and tell him what you like and what you want.’ I felt an allegiance to Tony. After all, I would never have shot ‘Subterranean Jungle’ - or probably even met the Ramones – if Tony had used another photographer.

At the following creative meeting with Johnny and Joey about the upcoming cover session for “Too Tough To Die”, Johnny asked me if I had ever seen “A Clockwork Orange”, the Stanley Kubrick film. ‘Not completely’, I said, not elaborating that I found the film kind of boring and didn’t appreciate the excessive sadism that the film projected. Johnny told me that, in the film, there was a scene of a mugging in a tunnel in London and that the band wanted to recreate that scene – or at least the feeling of it.

I asked my now ex-boss and mentor, professional fashion photographer Lane Pederson, where in NYC could a small pedestrian tunnel be found. Lane told me that there were lots of tunnels in Central Park and suggested one near the Children’s Zoo. I checked that tunnel - as well as a dozen other tunnels in Manhattan - but Lane was right; the small diameter of the tunnel at the zoo lent a scale to the shot that would be perfect. The tunnel was small and would make the guys in the band look bigger in relation…and more imposing.

As this was a job for Warner Bros. Records and the budget was quite substantial, we rented a Winnebago to use as a dressing room. I asked the band what they wanted in way of refreshments and they said ‘pizza and beer!’ This time, I felt like I was in charge of quite a big production. I had two assistants, a valid location permit, and the Winnebago we rented had an on-board electric generator to supply us with electricity for the lighting. We sealed of one end of the tunnel with clear plastic sheeting to control the smoke that would come from the smoke machines. We had several powerful studio strobe lights with blue-colored filters or gels outside the far end of the tunnel to backlight the blue smoke background and white light from the front of the tunnel to illuminate the group.

After shooting a couple of Polaroids to test the exposure, then several roles of 2-1/4 slide film, all the while listening to Johnny complaining about why the Polaroid pictures took so long (one minute!), I changed the Polaroid film pack from color to B&W for quicker developing time (30 seconds). Johnny was now looking at a B&W Polaroid and asked me ‘I thought we were shooting this in color!?’ I then let the band take a pause and asked them if they wanted to eat some pizza and beer. They ate the pizza, but I noticed that the full case of beer was untouched. After the pizza break, we resumed the session and I took another color Polaroid, but this time the white front lights didn’t flash for some reason…and wow!

It was clear from the image on the Polaroid that the silhouette of the band in the tunnel against the blue and smoky backlights was really powerful. Tony asked me to shoot a whole roll with no front lights. I then called a ‘wrap’, although I wasn’t quite convinced about the potential masterpiece that had just been created. The band quickly disappeared into the dark night without so much as a ‘good bye’.

After my assistant broke down all of the lighting and camera equipment and loaded everything into the Winnebago, I wanted to offer my hard-working crew their well-deserved first beer of the evening. When I looked into the Winnebago’s icebox, the whole case of beer had disappeared.

The following evening, I showed the developed film to Tony. It was clear that the backlit shots were by far ‘the bomb’ and since this was the seventh LP for the band – most of which had their faces on the cover – we thought that it would be easy to convince the group to use the silhouette shot. A couple of days later, when we met with the band to show them a mock-up of the cover, the band immediately agreed upon our choice. Tony added some simple block white type to the cover design which read ‘RAMONES’ and ‘TOO TOUGH TO DIE’ and one of the most powerful and classic rock’n’roll LP covers of all time was created.”

About the photographer, George DuBose -

Originally apprenticed to commercial and fashion photographers, George DuBose first became associated with New Wave music after he began speculative work with the fledgling B52s from Athens, Georgia. He has photographed and designed over 300 album covers, collecting 18 gold and platinum albums for groups as diverse as the REM, The Go-Gos, Melissa Etheridge, Kid Creole and the Coconuts, Biz Markie and Big Daddy Kane. The Ramones have commissioned him to photograph or design their last nine covers and it is his shot for their only gold record (”Ramonesmania”) that he treasures most. He continues to provide creative guidance, art direction, computer graphic design, photography, manufacturing assistance for major record companies and up-and coming artists that want to produce their own albums.

Du Bose’s professional experience includes staff positions as art director and photographer for Island Records and Cold Chillin’ Records, the first photo editor for SPIN magazine and The Image Bankbook division and staff photographer for the original Interview magazine. His company, PopEye Designs International lists Island Trading Company, The New Music Seminar, PolyGram, Warner Bros, Island Records (since 1978), Sony, MCA, Playboy Enterprises, Thirteen/WNET and others among its clients.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

ART DIRECTOR/PHOTOGRAPHER

FREELANCE 1991-PRESENT

SENIOR ART DIRECTOR/PHOTOGRAPHER

ISLAND RECORDS, N.Y.C. 1988-1991

PHOTO EDITOR

IMAGE BANK 1987-1988

PHOTO EDITOR

SPIN MAGAZINE 1984-1987

PHOTOGRAPHER/GRAPHIC DESIGNER

1978-1984

ASSISTANT PRODUCTION MANAGER

WESTSHORE PUBLISHING CO. 1975-1978

Read George’s new book, titled “I Speak Music – Ramones” - This book is 104 pages of text and colorful photos (many unpublished) that document the 10 year relationship between the Ramones and their “official” photographer, George DuBose. Stories about how the various concepts came about and how these remarkable photos were executed. This book is a “must have” for any serious fan, old or new.

http://www.lulu.com/content/877509

To see examples of Mr. DuBose’s work in the RockPoP Gallery collection, please click on the following link:

http://rockpopgallery.easystorecreator.com/items/george-dubose/list.htm?1=1

About “Cover Stories” - Our weekly series will give you, the music and art fan, a look at “the making of” the illustrations, photographs and designs of many of the most-recognized and influential images that have served to package and promote your all-time-favorite recordings.

Every Friday and syndicated the following Monday on The Rock and Roll Report, we’ll meet the artists, designers and photographers who produced these works of art and learn what motivated them, what processes they used, how they collaborated (or fought) with the musical acts, their management, their labels, etc. - all of the things that influenced the final product you saw then and still see today.

We hope that you enjoy these looks behind the scenes of the music-related art business and that you’ll share your stories with us and fellow fans about what role these works of art - and the music they covered - played in your lives.

Share This

By Michael Goldstein of RockPop Gallery

Subject – “Too Tough To Die” – a 1985 recording by The Ramones on Sire Records featuring a cover photograph by George DuBose.

Main personnel – The Ramones - Joey (vocals), Johnny (guitar), Dee Dee (bass), Richie (drums)

After “suffering” through three albums of music that was more slickly-produced hard pop than the straight-ahead punk rock, Ramones fans were rewarded with a return-to-form production titled “Too Tough To Die”. After firing drummer Marky (due to his diminished abilities brought about by alcoholism) and replacing him with the newly-christened Richie Ramone, original drummer and now producer Tommy (Erdelyi) headed the band into the studio and, with the help of Dave Stewart, brought the band back to playing what they played best – short, fast, and smart punk tunes, with 9 of them written or co-written by bassist Dee Dee.

Critics have said that the was the “last great Ramones” recording, and it certainly showed that the band was ready and able to hold its own in the emerging early-mid 1980’s hardcore punk scene. The album features two classic Ramones tracks - “Wart Hog” and “Endless Vacation” (sung by Dee Dee), as well as the Stewart-produced “Howling at the Moon”.

The cover for “Too Tough To Die” was one of nine covers George shot for the Ramones. The song “Durango 95″ bears the same name of the car driven by Alex in the Kubrick film “A Clockwork Orange”. Why is that important? Read on…

In the words of the photographer, George DuBose –

“I met the Ramones when Tony Wright asked me to shoot the cover for ‘Subterranean Jungle’. A year later, a call came from His Rockin’ Royal Highness, Johnny Ramone himself. He told me that he definitely wanted me to shoot another cover for them, but he asked me if I knew any other art directors, as they were not happy about the way the cover of ‘Subterranean Jungle’ looked.

‘What was wrong with Tony Wright?’ I asked. ‘The graffiti on the cover he did for ‘Subterranean Jungle’ really looked fake – we didn’t like it,’ Johnny said. Having worked with Tony on many projects by this point, I knew the range of his talents and capabilities. ‘Don’t write Tony off so quickly. Tony is extremely versatile. He will design the cover any wan you want – you just have to be clear and tell him what you like and what you want.’ I felt an allegiance to Tony. After all, I would never have shot ‘Subterranean Jungle’ - or probably even met the Ramones – if Tony had used another photographer.

At the following creative meeting with Johnny and Joey about the upcoming cover session for “Too Tough To Die”, Johnny asked me if I had ever seen “A Clockwork Orange”, the Stanley Kubrick film. ‘Not completely’, I said, not elaborating that I found the film kind of boring and didn’t appreciate the excessive sadism that the film projected. Johnny told me that, in the film, there was a scene of a mugging in a tunnel in London and that the band wanted to recreate that scene – or at least the feeling of it.

I asked my now ex-boss and mentor, professional fashion photographer Lane Pederson, where in NYC could a small pedestrian tunnel be found. Lane told me that there were lots of tunnels in Central Park and suggested one near the Children’s Zoo. I checked that tunnel - as well as a dozen other tunnels in Manhattan - but Lane was right; the small diameter of the tunnel at the zoo lent a scale to the shot that would be perfect. The tunnel was small and would make the guys in the band look bigger in relation…and more imposing.

As this was a job for Warner Bros. Records and the budget was quite substantial, we rented a Winnebago to use as a dressing room. I asked the band what they wanted in way of refreshments and they said ‘pizza and beer!’ This time, I felt like I was in charge of quite a big production. I had two assistants, a valid location permit, and the Winnebago we rented had an on-board electric generator to supply us with electricity for the lighting. We sealed of one end of the tunnel with clear plastic sheeting to control the smoke that would come from the smoke machines. We had several powerful studio strobe lights with blue-colored filters or gels outside the far end of the tunnel to backlight the blue smoke background and white light from the front of the tunnel to illuminate the group.

After shooting a couple of Polaroids to test the exposure, then several roles of 2-1/4 slide film, all the while listening to Johnny complaining about why the Polaroid pictures took so long (one minute!), I changed the Polaroid film pack from color to B&W for quicker developing time (30 seconds). Johnny was now looking at a B&W Polaroid and asked me ‘I thought we were shooting this in color!?’ I then let the band take a pause and asked them if they wanted to eat some pizza and beer. They ate the pizza, but I noticed that the full case of beer was untouched. After the pizza break, we resumed the session and I took another color Polaroid, but this time the white front lights didn’t flash for some reason…and wow!

It was clear from the image on the Polaroid that the silhouette of the band in the tunnel against the blue and smoky backlights was really powerful. Tony asked me to shoot a whole roll with no front lights. I then called a ‘wrap’, although I wasn’t quite convinced about the potential masterpiece that had just been created. The band quickly disappeared into the dark night without so much as a ‘good bye’.

After my assistant broke down all of the lighting and camera equipment and loaded everything into the Winnebago, I wanted to offer my hard-working crew their well-deserved first beer of the evening. When I looked into the Winnebago’s icebox, the whole case of beer had disappeared.

The following evening, I showed the developed film to Tony. It was clear that the backlit shots were by far ‘the bomb’ and since this was the seventh LP for the band – most of which had their faces on the cover – we thought that it would be easy to convince the group to use the silhouette shot. A couple of days later, when we met with the band to show them a mock-up of the cover, the band immediately agreed upon our choice. Tony added some simple block white type to the cover design which read ‘RAMONES’ and ‘TOO TOUGH TO DIE’ and one of the most powerful and classic rock’n’roll LP covers of all time was created.”

About the photographer, George DuBose -

Originally apprenticed to commercial and fashion photographers, George DuBose first became associated with New Wave music after he began speculative work with the fledgling B52s from Athens, Georgia. He has photographed and designed over 300 album covers, collecting 18 gold and platinum albums for groups as diverse as the REM, The Go-Gos, Melissa Etheridge, Kid Creole and the Coconuts, Biz Markie and Big Daddy Kane. The Ramones have commissioned him to photograph or design their last nine covers and it is his shot for their only gold record (”Ramonesmania”) that he treasures most. He continues to provide creative guidance, art direction, computer graphic design, photography, manufacturing assistance for major record companies and up-and coming artists that want to produce their own albums.

Du Bose’s professional experience includes staff positions as art director and photographer for Island Records and Cold Chillin’ Records, the first photo editor for SPIN magazine and The Image Bankbook division and staff photographer for the original Interview magazine. His company, PopEye Designs International lists Island Trading Company, The New Music Seminar, PolyGram, Warner Bros, Island Records (since 1978), Sony, MCA, Playboy Enterprises, Thirteen/WNET and others among its clients.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

ART DIRECTOR/PHOTOGRAPHER

FREELANCE 1991-PRESENT

SENIOR ART DIRECTOR/PHOTOGRAPHER

ISLAND RECORDS, N.Y.C. 1988-1991

PHOTO EDITOR

IMAGE BANK 1987-1988

PHOTO EDITOR

SPIN MAGAZINE 1984-1987

PHOTOGRAPHER/GRAPHIC DESIGNER

1978-1984

ASSISTANT PRODUCTION MANAGER

WESTSHORE PUBLISHING CO. 1975-1978

Read George’s new book, titled “I Speak Music – Ramones” - This book is 104 pages of text and colorful photos (many unpublished) that document the 10 year relationship between the Ramones and their “official” photographer, George DuBose. Stories about how the various concepts came about and how these remarkable photos were executed. This book is a “must have” for any serious fan, old or new.

http://www.lulu.com/content/877509

To see examples of Mr. DuBose’s work in the RockPoP Gallery collection, please click on the following link:

http://rockpopgallery.easystorecreator.com/items/george-dubose/list.htm?1=1

About “Cover Stories” - Our weekly series will give you, the music and art fan, a look at “the making of” the illustrations, photographs and designs of many of the most-recognized and influential images that have served to package and promote your all-time-favorite recordings.

Every Friday and syndicated the following Monday on The Rock and Roll Report, we’ll meet the artists, designers and photographers who produced these works of art and learn what motivated them, what processes they used, how they collaborated (or fought) with the musical acts, their management, their labels, etc. - all of the things that influenced the final product you saw then and still see today.

We hope that you enjoy these looks behind the scenes of the music-related art business and that you’ll share your stories with us and fellow fans about what role these works of art - and the music they covered - played in your lives.

Share This

By Michael Goldstein of the Rock Pop Gallery


Subject – “Life, Death, Love and Hate”, a photograph by James Fortune used as the cover of California Bleeding, a CD of 1973-74 live concert recordings of Iggy Pop & The Stooges released in 1997 on Bomp! Records.

With 1973’s Raw Power serving as a pre-cursor to (and strong influence for) the hard-core punk music movement that was to occur a few years later, Iggy and the Stooges built a small but hard-core base of fans and would seemingly stop at nothing to serve as that era’s “poster children” for the self-destructive lifestyle. It was during their live performances that Iggy would dive from the stage, or flash his privates, or smear raw meat on himself and, quite often, use a knife or broken beer bottle to cut himself – tactics later recreated by many punk artists (an homage, perhaps?). “The Godfather of Punk” and his band put on legendary shows, including a five-day booking at LA’s Whisky A Go Go in 1973, the recording of which serves as the basis of today’s Cover Story.

After disbanding in early 1974 due to the band’s famous drug problems, The Stooges reunited in 2003, appearing on Iggy’s Skull Ring record with original members Iggy Pop on vocals, Scott Asheton on drums, and Ron Asheton on both guitar and bass. When touring live, The Stooges have performed by adding bassist Mike Watt (The Minutemen) and Steve MacKay (Fun House) on saxophone. And while he never had the huge commercial success of many of his peers and contemporaries (David Bowie, Alice Cooper, The Doors), songs such as “Search and Destroy”, “Lust for Life”, “Candy”, “I’m Bored” and “Real Wild Child” always rank high on the list of most-influential rock recordings.

Iggy’s life story will soon be a motion picture – “The Passenger” is currently in production for a 2008 release and, personally, I hope that they bring in Robert Downey, Jr. to play him at some point – the resemblance is uncanny (currently, Frodo Baggins/Elijah Woods is set to star) and the lifestyle choices both shared at one point are uncanny, too.

The image shown at the beginning of the column was the original black and white photograph (the colorized version used on the cover is shown below) and it