Sgt Pepper-It featured a colorful collage of life-sized cardboard models of famous people on the front of the album cover and lyrics printed on the back cover, the first time this had been done on a British pop LP. It introduced us to the full “liner note” album experience
Sticky Fingers-The artwork for Sticky Fingers — which, on the original vinyl release, featured a working zipper that opened to reveal cotton briefs (rubber stamped “THIS PHOTOGRAPH MAY NOT BE-ETC.”) — was conceived by American pop artist Andy Warhol. The cover, a photo of a crotch clad in tight blue jeans, was assumed by many fans to be an image of Mick Jagger, however the people actually involved at the time of the photo shoot claim that Warhol had several different men photographed (Jagger was not among them) and never revealed which shots he used.
Breakfast in America
The members of Supertramp didn’t appear on their album covers, says keyboardist Rick Davies, because “we wanted to be around a long time, and we didn’t want people watching us getting older. We were a pretty imageless lot, anyway.” For Breakfast in America, the band’s first LP after moving to the U.S., designer Mike Doud drew various illustrations combining breakfast and America — one of the rejected sketches depicted giant Cheerios rolling down Arizona’s Monument Valley in a flood of milk.The band preferred Doud’s illustration of the Statue of Liberty holding an orange-juice glass, so Doud’s associate, Mick Haggerty, went about selecting a model. He brought in a busty beauty, then what Haggerty calls “a Tom Waits kind of girl,” both of whom the band vetoed. Eventually, they found the matronly woman whom Haggerty dubbed Libby. Haggerty also built a miniature Manahattan out of breakfast implements. The motif inspired a huge promotional campaign that featured such items as laminated menus, spoons, plates and cans of orange juice.
“It’s New York seen through the eyes of someone that sees it not as a gateway to the east of America but as a gateway to Route 66,” says Haggerty, an Englishman. “It was a West Coast treatment of an East Coast icon.”
Houses of the Holy-The cover art for Houses of the Holy was inspired by the ending of Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Childhoods End… (The ending involves several hundred million naked children, only slightly and physically resembling the human race in basic forms.) It is a collage of several photographs which were taken at the Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland. Jimmy Page has stated that the album cover was actually the second version submitted , the first by artist Storm Thorgerson, featured an electric green tennis court with a tennis racquet on it. Furious that Thorgerson was implying their music sounded like a “racket”, the band fired him and hired Powell in his place in 1974, the album was nominated for a Grammy in the category of best album package.
Who’s Next-What does the Monolith the Who are taking a leak on represent? Is it a message to 2001: A Space Odyssey Director Stanley Kubrick (Remember the Black Monolith in the film) who declined the band’s offer to direct an earlier version of Tommy? Ken Russell helmed the film when it was released in 1975. Or, is it a statement to the “Monolith” that is the establishment and conventional machinations of society. It tops my list of Rocks Greatest Album Covers.
This Halloween, as you prepare to hand out piles of candy to a bunch of trick-or-treaters, give some thought to what kind of candy you’re going to give out. As it turns out, your candy actually says a lot about the type of person you are.
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