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The Art of LP Cover
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A music critic once wrote that if the members of the band ABBA had already lived in the Middle Ages, then they probably would have sounded exactly like the music of Blackmore’s Night sounds today.
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In recent years, so-called earbooks or music-mediabooks have been published more often. CD collections that are published in an elaborately designed hard cover. Often in combination with pictures and background information about this special album. Real small books, which then also contain the actual CD and bonus material. I actually like the idea of this earbooks a lot, but they are usually expensive, have an unwieldy format and the CD’s are difficult to remove. How do you like the idea?
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Sting choose his own way when designing the CD cover for his new album “The Bridge”: The jacket looks like the cover of a double LP, only in mini format. Maybe the size of a single, otherwise it looks like the sleeve of an LP. The rebirth of the classic LP cover, only in small? Away from Jewel Case and various other solutions.
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Not to forget the various anniversary boxes by the Beatles, which really go beyond any spatial framework. I couldn’t resist ordering some the 50th Anniversary Editions. Among other things also because of the surround mixes. Certainly a nightmare for the real Beatles purist. I like it. All in a weight class and size that you can use to hammer nails into the wall or dig up the vegetable patch in the garden.
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Check out the artwork at the bottom I think that cover could have affected sales?
</div>https://festivalpeak.com/pink-floyds-animals-the-story-behind-the-album-cover-e7e9c588fa00 -
Hi JP,
I was always fascinated by the impressive building on this Pink Floyd cover. Dominant and overwhelming. I’ve always thought it was a photo montage or fictitious. I didn’t know that it was a real existing power plant. Also the background story to this LP was unknown to me. Thanks for the interesting article. I would not have guessed a reference to George Orwell’s Animal Farm. The whole thing reminds a bit of the message of George Harrison’s Piggies.
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Ha ha charade you are
Are you familiar with their album “Animals”? If not, listen to it with earbuds and with the lyrics in front of you. I love the corporate feel of “Dogs”. It has some really kool guitar solos, too. You will see why it is compared with “Animal Farm”.
And watching for pigs on the wing
Here is the guy that did most of Floyd’s artwork, Storm Thorgerson (rabbit-hole alert)
One more thing. Isn’t “Catch The Wind” awesome?!
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Thanks again, JP. The Album „Animals“ seems to be a bit overshadowed by „The Wall“ and „Dark Side of the Moon“. I’ve listened to it more closely now: an extraordinary album.
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Some of the most iconic album covers probably come from Pink Floyd. While I’m not a proven Pink Floyd expert, I would like to include some of the covers in this topic. Perhaps one or the other of you has interesting background information on selected LPs or Covers by Pink Floyd.
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By the way: a remix of the album „Animals“ was released which is said to sound pretty good. The cover was also redesigned. The power plant has now been photographed as an impressive monument of industrial culture. Interesting, but the charm of the original cover has been lost.
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Speaking of Picture Disks and Pink Floyd: a colorful LP version of the „Animals“ album has now been released. This time as a cover version by different artists, with a new sleeve design (let’s see how often this cow can still be milked…).
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Here is an interesting idea how you can design the legendary LP cover „Dark Side of the Moon” yourself with very simple means. 😄
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Hi JP,
how do you like the music of the album “Atom Hearts Mother“ compared with the other Pink Floyd albums? Is the LP recommended? I don’t know exactly how many times I held this LP in my hands as a teenager and wondered what the music might sound like. A question that remains unanswered for me to this day.
The British graphics agency Hipgnosis, who are responsible for the design of this cover, called this a non-cover: „it’s not a cover, it doesn’t exist as a cover because it doesn’t represent the band, it doesn’t show any record titles or band names, nor has anything to do with the music. It’s just an idea. And when you walked into those huge record stores back then, of course, a picture of a cow across from all the covers with band photos on them caught your eye.“
This non-cover also caught my attention. But I still didn’t buy it. The chains of associations went in the wrong direction for me: the cow always reminded me of my vacations on the farm, which I loved as a child. Cows, farm and Bavarian brass music. No, not a selling point. 😀
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Brig smiles. I am glad you liked Animals. The original is by far the best. When you mentioned you want to add to your collection I immediately thought of Meddle. And now you mention AHM. I love it and listen to it often. Like you, as a teenager I would see it as we fanned through the racks of albums and wonder if it held any treasures. Later in my twenties I had money to expand my collection and started by everything Floyd. Upon first listen of AHM, it was like huh?
Side A is mostly instrumental with a choir. By the way there are plenty of stories that go along with the making of this. Dive down every worm hole. Ron Geesin played a big part in this. Side B has some beautiful acoustic pieces with great lyrics. Yes, get it. Side A is great for drives, or just background music. Side B might surprise you. There are some great songs there. Summer’68 has some great phrasing.
Would you like to say something before you leave?
Perhaps you’d care to state exactly how you feel
We said goodbye before we said helloI hardly even like you, I shouldn’t care at all
We met just six hours ago, the music was too loud
From your bed I gained a day and lost a bloody year
And I would like to knowHow do you feel, how do you feel?
How do you feel, how do you feel?Fun fact: Meddle is the only album featuring Nick Mason’s vocal on One of These Days.
Hmmm….I was going to share a live version of this, but I like the album version better.
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Thank you for your brief recession of „Atomic Heart Mother“, JP. Definitely more advertising than the cow 😃. You got me interested again by mentioning „Meddle“. I’ve researched it by myself now. The A-side is supposed to contain more melodic songs and the B-side more experimental, like e.g. „Echoes“. I enjoyed this song. What do you like about the album?
I didn’t really know much about Pink Floyd for many years. I guess I just heard the wrong songs for a long time. „The Wall“, certainly a masterpiece, was hugely hyped in the 80’s. The song of the same name was played so often in the radio stations that I didn’t want to hear this for a long time (and to rip the song simply out of the album as a single didn’t make any sense). The other albums fell into oblivion. I think Pink Floyd produced a kind of music that you can’t even listen to on the fly, but for which you have to take some time.
I find it interesting how music evolved through the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. The songs in the early 60s were wonderful appetizers. Small sweet cookies. A nice melody, a great guitar solo and interesting voices. In the 70s the music got bombastic. Playful, experimental and overflowing. Almost like a big juicy pie plate with no precise beginning and sometimes no discernible end. The music of the 80s then followed the pattern of the 60s: shorter songs, catchy rhythm and vocals, but lots of synth music and drum computer sounds. Colorful space cookies. At least in the mainstream area. Ouroboros bites his own tail again.
PS: Pink Floyd is actually worth its own topic. How about? I’m in.
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“One of these days, I am going to cut you into little pieces”
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Mhm, are you talking about me or the Pink Floyd song? 🤔 The song rocks, great intro. 😀 Thanks, any other recommendations?
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That is Nick Mason’s only vocal. Hmm…put in your earbuds and listen to Roger Waters Pro’s and Con’s of Hitchhiking featuring Eric Clapton. It was recorded with an early form of surround sound. Just speaking from memory, I think the surround effect only worked on vinyl? There’s another rabbit hole. The album is awesome. Earbuds recommended and listen with the lyrics in front of you. It is definitely a concept album with a beginning, middle and end. A dream within a dream within a dream…Clayton’s playing on this is pretty hot. I think you will like the music, and the story it tells.
We were moving away from the border looking for somewhere to sleep The two of sharing the driving Two hitchhiker’s slumped in the back seat
Floydian sound effects throughout Don’t preview songs. Just get a copy of it, so you can listen from beginning to end.
JP
Are you familiar with Winnie The Pooh?
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Hi JP, thanks for mentioning „Roger Waters: The Pros And Cons Of Hitch Hiking“. I listened in there. The vocals and style reminds me a bit of The Wall. It sounds very interesting, musical impressive and captivating but also partly dark. Definitely very complex. Is this another autobiographical work by Roger Waters? The LP is currently not available, but the CD version is.
Winnie the Pooh, you mean the cuddly little fellow who lives in the 160 acre forest with his honey pot and his best mate Tigger? The story is rather unknown to my generation here, but I heard a little bit about it.
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When I was growing up, we had a big stereo in the living room. One of those that was furniture first and stereo second. One day I came in and saw that album laying on top of it. I’d never seen or heard of it before. Actually, I don’t think I’d ever seen any Who albums before – I was in grade school.
I picked it up and looked at it.
Tommy
the who
I thought the album was named “Tommy the who”.
Hey, I was just a kid.
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Chris, my first experience with a Who album was in college. Every day I ate lunch at the campus McDonald’s (and somehow I’m still alive). Directly across a small parking lot was a record store that had a window facing me which for years displayed the Who Are You album. I wasn’t familiar with the group then, so each day as I ate my Big Mac I was constantly thinking, “No, who are YOU?”
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You grow up, learn a few things, and you…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q
and nope, that’s not a Hammond organ…
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Hi Chris,
thanks for sending the photo (of course, I first read your message and only then noticed the photo). „Tommy“ is an album with an also interesting cover and some very nice songs by The Who.
Who Tommy Who is will be explained in the course of the album… 😀
PS: I remember the stereos of the 70s that were intended more for living than for listening to music. My uncle also had one of these. The whole thing should represent a living room wall unit. The record player was placed in a pull-out drawer and the radio was in a hinged part of the cabinet. Oh yes, and the stereo boxes were integrated into the side of the cabinet. As a child, I was terribly impressed. From today’s point of view: terrible, not impressed.
This is my favorite track from the LP:
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Maximum R&B.
If there was a “hit” on that album, that was it. All time classic rock anthem.
Most of my life, I said the best live rock album of all time was Live at Leeds – another album with minimalist artwork on the cover. And lots of competition to be best live album ever. But hard to argue with a band that had arguably the best rhythm section in R&R history.
Mona and Lisa said they saw The Who in Australia. That must have been awesome for them. They were pretty young.
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The LP covers by Alan Parsons Project, or Alan Parson, may not always be particularly extraordinary, but they have a high recognition value, such as “Eye in the Sky”. Typical of Alan Parsons Project albums: they were mostly concept albums. A central theme was taken up musically, which was then also represented visually in the Cover Art. „Tales of Mystery and Imagination“, for example, is a collection of songs inspired by short stories by British-American writer Edgar Alan Poe. “I Robot” was composed in direct reference to the science fiction novel of the same name by Isaac Assimov. The „Pyramid“ album, on the other hand, deals with the history of the Egyptian pyramids and various myths that grew up around them, etc. An Easter egg is hidden in the Alan Parsons album “Try anything else“: One of the pictures is a stereogram; when the viewer looks at it correctly, an image of a man and woman upside down will appear, similar to the other pictures in the album’s artwork. This image is also on the CD itself.
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What a fascinating subject, as a print and graphics person I was actually involved in some of the Iconic 12″ Album covers in the 70’s-80’s along with the elaborate Show Programmes that were sold at the concerts ( Duran Duran, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, Roxy Music, David Bowie, and others) , As a young Printing apprentice and an avid music lover my time during my teens was absolute heaven, I got to see many of the up and coming bands in local clubs and pubs before they hit chart status, I worked on and produced many album covers and sleeves for top bands of the era and got to meet and hang out with the bands during photoshoots that I later printed on good old fashioned Lithographic printing machines, I was also involved in some of the very first New CD packages, which ranged from simple colour slips to insert into the New Clear Plastic Jewel Cases to the more intricate fully printed and formed cardboard CD Style album sleeves, along with many cut down versions of posters, lyric sheets, etc contained within. Having seen “Rod Stewart and the Faces in a local very small ballroom before “Maggie May” hit worldwide success I had the pleasure and absolute excitement of printing their 12″ Album sleeve and to be absolutely honest the back of “<b itemprop=”headline” style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; color: var(–bb-body-text-color);”>The Faces – A Nod’s As Good As A Wink… To A Blind Horse” is still to this day my very best and most favorite. Alas I wasn’t there when they took to photos’ but have seen the puppets in real life at one of Ronnie Woods art exhibitions, they really are remarkable and he also did similar with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards but I dont think these every became open images to the public ? I have never seen them since. So if you want to share my excited enthusiasm for what I consider the “The Best” please check out here : https://youtu.be/ivlZtr0c2EY – images : https://www.superseventies.com/oaaa/oaaa_faces.jpg
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Hello Ckay,
thanks a lot for your posting. Writing about art and LP covers is a beautiful thing, meeting someone who has worked as an art designer in this industry is great. Of course, I immediately have a lot of questions: what were they like, the well-known stars of the rock and pop scene that you got to know through your work? Likeable, approachable people with whom you could work well, or did one or the other already have certain airs and graces at the beginning of their career? And how have these people changed over time? Was Rod Stewart, whom you met at the beginning of his career, still the same person after many successful years? Were the Dexy’s Midnight Runners as funky and casual as they portrayed themselves in their music videos? And David Bowie, always a kind of artifact for me: who was the real person behind this backdrop? Thanks for sendig the link. I didn’t know the back of the „Faces“ album, but the design with the characters is pretty cool. I think it’s very nice that the design of the LP sleeves has developed into an independent art form. I’m not an art expert, but I like it very much. As I wrote at the beginning of this topic: what I miss most about the LPs are the beautiful art covers. Are you still working as an art designer and do you still have some fancy LP sleeves from your work days at home?
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hiya, sorry for delay, been preoccupied with my sick mom,
a lot of questions to be answered, but in general all were very nice people, most were in awe of their popularity and still very much real, the Duran Duran guys were great, we used to hang out on Broad Street regularly, usually ending up in a 24hr taxi cafe, laughing around and working the booze off, The legend of “The Faces ” after parties” in the hotels are real, spent the night in a bathtub when they first came to Birmingham UK , woke up in the back of their van and became a roadie for a few weeks till my mom found me !!! Oh for those days again, 🙏😎
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Thanks for your detailed answer Ckay. It seems to have been a pretty crazy time. I can understand that you will always have fond memories of this time together with the musicians. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that your mother is doing well given the circumstances.
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Supertramp’s “Even In the Quietest Moment” album cover always stood out to me. It’s a sight that would be hard to find in nature for sure, unless a grand piano fell out of the sky from a plane and landed on top of a snow covered mountain. It also represents a kind of humanity with it’s art and culture, taming the wild and cruel beast of nature for me.
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I may have mentioned this before, but Give a Little Bit is the song playing on Lois Lane’s car radio in the first Superman movie just before the earthquake hits. That was the first time I ever heard the song, and I still can’t listen to the refrain without picturing Margot Kidder honking the horn at the gas station in the desert.
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I never knew they used that song in Superman. I tried finding that scene but couldn’t yet. On another Superman gas station scene with the sheriff I found, you can hear Blondie “Heart of Glass” in the background.
Interestingly on the topic of great songs in movies, when I first heard MLT’s “Jump Ship”, I just couldn’t help but envision in my mind it would make a perfect song for a James Bond movie.
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David and Jung, movies and music, a combination that is always impressive. Many film productions would never have had their effect without the appropriate music. For me, an impressive symbiosis of image and music is Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” when the spaceship docks at the space station to the sounds of “The Blue Danube”. It’s like a space dance. When I saw the movie in the cinema for the first time, I was very irritated. At some point I liked it. Up to this point I had only seen space operas like „Star Trek“ or „Star Wars“, but this kind of movie music sounded more heroic or groovy.
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Hi Jung,
yes, the Supertramp cover “Even In the Quietest Moment” is something special. The grand piano in the picture doesn’t even seem particularly out of place. Quiet the contrary: it seems as if the piano has been there for ages, to capture the beauty and wildness of the landscape and transform it into sounds. Or music as a monument over time. As this LP cover by Kitaro symbolizes.
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Hi Jurgen
That piece by Kitaro is very relaxing, thanks. This and the Supertramp album cover reminds me of an old Japanese Anime story of a broken down mystic grand piano in a forest that would only play when a little boy plays it, and gives him powers to become a genius pianist. I wonder if this Anime was inspired at all by Even In The Quietest Moment.
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Hi Jung,
thank you for the entertaining contribution from the movie „The Piano Forrest“. Who knows, maybe the piano on the cover of Supertramp only sounds when a very special person is playing it? A very nice idea. Japanese manga tend to lead a shadowy existence here. I find the often philosophical ideas and mythologies behind them very interesting. I only know of Makoto Shinkai movies that tell modern fairy tales. Everyday stories of dreams, hopes and longings. Presented in a very unique, charming way.
And then I remember „Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within“. The first feature film created entirely on the computer – produced by 150 digital artists and 20 computer animators. A flop at the box office. Visually a feast for the eyes. I like the film, also because of the complex Far Eastern mythological basic idea, which was packed into a modern science fiction setting.
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And what about this one, has a bit of WHY? album art work vibe for me.
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Hi Jung,
I had a glimpse of the LP cover of “Crisis what Crisis?” at some point, but I never consciously noticed it. I like the theme very much. It reflects the daily madness that we live in very well. The human will and motivation to survive and enjoy even when the world descends into chaos. Or just purposeful optimism and a twisted perception of the world as it really is?
Music can create images in the mind of the listener and lead to daydreams or fantasy journeys. But sometimes images are also the actual source of music. A famous example is certainly Mussorgski’s work „Pictures of an Exhibition“. The modern pianist Martin Vatter was also inspired to make music by a picture exhibition. He received the inspiration for one of his music albums from the paintings of the artist Lovis Corinth, who captured the forest and lake landscapes of his homeland with brushes and paint.
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Jurgen
This album cover art is certainly open to interpretation. When I first saw it, I envisioned a kind of fool going about oblivious to what’s going on in the world around him, a kind of “Raise Your Head” scenario, but then I can see your perspective about human will and motivation that can rise above all the chaos going around in the world. It’s very interesting the two perspectives this album art cover of “crisis, what crisis” can evoke.
That Martin Vatter piano piece is really beautiful, especially those piano runs. I listened while looking at the 3 photos you posted, and I can feel a connection. The music and the images feel similar. When someone composes music, they are trying to express in music what they are feeling, and it appears Martin was quite successful in expressing what he was feeling looking at the forest in lake landscape painting.
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Kate Bush, known for her extravagant style and her expressive music, has also chosen unusual motifs for her LP sleeves.
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Tough guys, guitars and engines (and not a bit stereotypical…). And what does that have to do with LP covers? A lot at ZZ-Top. Bill Gibbons, the band’s guitarist, is not only a passionate guitar collector, he also collects fast cars. Accordingly, some of his personal dream cars can be seen on the covers of the band. Like this hot rod on the cover of the Eliminator LP. A converted Ford coupe. Original year of construction 1933.
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Hi Jurgen
I had that album “Eliminator” on cassette that I wore out, awesome album. Loved that song Sharp Dressed Man, and also Legs, and Gimme All Your Lovin. Brings back fond memories of cruising around in my first Mustang (89 5.0L LX). Great guitar sounds by ZZTOP. One of the great rockers in the 80s.
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Yeah Jung, „Sharp Dressed Man“, „Gimme All Your Lovin“ and „Legs“ are the three best tracks on this album. I was 16 years old at that time and wanted this record together with „Catch as Catch Can“ by Kim Wilde for Christmas. The car in the video clip really looks hot. I wonder what the driving experience is like. Relaxed gliding or rather a wild rodeo ride? The cameo appearance of ZZ-Top in “Back to the future” also remains unforgettable for me.
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Why actually print the art work of an LP on a cardboard sleeve, when the disc itself offers enough space for a picture? Uriah Heep, along with many other musicians, have released some colorful picture discs in recent years.
The only colorful LP I’ve ever owned was a cover of the song La Bamba (La Bamba as a disco number 🙄 ). The disc was fiery red and the sleeve bright yellow and orange. Are any of you the proud owner of a particularly beautiful example? What do you think of the idea of the Picture Disc?
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Some interesting (and also very detailed …) information about Beatles Picture Discs:
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I love picture disks, Juergen, and I don’t understand why they weren’t the industry standard. I mean, why would anyone prefer a featureless black disk to a rotating piece of art?
This might not qualify as art, but I think it’s the only picture disk I’ve ever owned:
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Yeah, that’s a funny LP, David. Thanks for posting. It’s a pity that picture discs have always been treated as rarities. Whether they really sounded that much worse? I don’t know. Not everyone has a high end stereo system at home, to hear the difference. In any case, the production was more complex and cost-intensive. I could imagine that this was one of the reasons why picture discs never became mass-market. At that time I was already happy about the apple label from Apple Records. This halved apple sticker gave the otherwise mostly sterile black discs a somewhat friendlier and cheerful appearance.
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Certainly not suitable for the masses and not for sound purists, but I like the idea: Shaped records.
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I’ve never seen a shaped record, Juergen, but what a cool idea!
As a kid I did collect a few of those cereal box records that the video mentions. They were very cheaply made, but it was quite a thrill (at that age) to get music from your breakfast container!
One thing I enjoyed doing with 45’s when I was young was to place them on the turntable with the hole way off center, and listen to the variations in the sound as the speed of the record oscillated.
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Yeah David, I remember those cereal box records and placing the 45s off center to get the warped sound. Also playing the records at different speeds was fun. I still change the speed settings on YouTube videos to get different effects. The first few times I listened to some of The Twins interviews or Q & A videos I would slow the speed to 75% to understand them better. Lol
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Tim, I used to do a “tour” of my favorite records at all four speeds. Along the way I discovered the secret of Alvin and the Chipmunks by playing them at 16 RPM.
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Hi David and Tim,
as far as I know, we never had cardboard singles in cornflake packs, but instead there were lots of figures and stuff that you’re kind of keen on as a child. I also liked playing around with the record speed. I once owned a Single by Madonna. Reducing the speed from 45 to 33 resulted in a passable male voice (and the rest of the music went with it too). It actually sounded pretty good. Tim, I’m glad to hear, that I’m not the only one who sometimes has trouble understanding the Twins (they often speak fast and in a very high pitch. As a non-native speaker, it is sometimes difficult for me to listen to them. Slow down seems a good idea). 😀
And then there were those funny gimmicks that let you play your LPs, like this reissue of the Record Car (I would never have done that to my discs, but watching this was fun).
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Juergen, the cereal box records were actually cut out from the packaging! You took a pair of scissors to the back of the box. My mom always insisted that we finish the cereal before destroying the box, so we went through it really fast!
I can’t believe that record car works, unless it has some very accurate positional sensors. I doubt the grooves provide enough friction to guide it, and it somehow has to slow down as it moves inward to maintain a constant number of RPM’s.
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Ah David, now I get it. The cereal box records were cut out. Our cereal packages also had such cut-outs and handicraft figures. Maybe there were such cardboard records. But to be honest, the contents of the cornflakes boxes weren’t that interesting most of the time. A plate of sugar-sweet cornflakes and my need for the next few weeks was satisfied. That’s why the figures were cut out first and the battered rest of the pack was stowed away in the cupboard. Since my mother threatened that there would be no new pack until everything was eaten, the remaining cornflakes gradually disappeared.
The Original Record Waggon (that’s what it was called) really worked. It had no loudspeakers, but the car’s housing was used as a resonance chamber. A soft, rattling sound. Fluctuations in pitch and a ruined LP. But it worked.
Speaking of turntables: I found some unusual turntables here:
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I’ve never seen those record cars before. Looks like fun but I don’t think I’d use it on any good records. Maybe on a Garth Brooks or Toby Keith record, Lol. I wonder if you ran it backwards if you would hear all the satanic messages hidden in the recording. Those religious groups would love that. I’m getting better at understanding Mona and Lisa talking but their speaking voices are quite similar and sometimes blend together, but I don’t mind replaying their videos.
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Awe, come on Uncle David. You can’t just hint about a secret and leave us hanging. Do you know something about those varmints? Are you sworn to secrecy or something? Or, are you just egging us down a rabbit hole?
Staying here won’t save my neck 🤓
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Sorry, JP, but I promised David Seville I would never tell. And whatever you do, don’t watch this video:
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oic that’s pretty kool That’s the kind of nugget I like to slip into a playlist for car rides , it’s fun to count the seconds it takes for passengers to recognize it, almost boss nova
Made me think of this. If you like dsotm this is a must have. Wait till you hear great gig.
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The first Mike Oldfield album that caught my interest many years ago was QE2. The design wasn’t really pretty and somehow it seemed very technical to me. But it made me curious how the music would sound on this LP. The name of the record refers to the passenger ship of the same name: Queen Elizabeth 2. With a lot of imagination you can see the bow of the ship.
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