Small Hours also set a precedent for cover designs that followed with its novel way of presenting the album and its artist to the public. Conventional industry standards asserted that in order to sell an LP, you needed a [image-1]pleasant, vanilla-flavored portrait of the artist smiling nicely and invitingly on the front. Small Hours did the opposite, reflecting the album’s late night feel with a brooding, smoking Sinatra staring off into a dark and deserted streetscape. Elvis Presley manager/career molder Col. Tom Parker caught wind of Sinatra’s LP success and devised a similar way of marketing his own shining star with Presley’s 1956 eponymous debut and its frenetic live still of the King captured in mid-performance, his eyes closed tightly as he played acoustic guitar and sang with seeming wild abandon.
Parker unwittingly helped spawn the proto-rock album cover and along with Sinatra, was responsible for transforming the media as a whole.
The Art of the LP kicks off from there, but rather than organizing the book by genre or decade, co-authors Morgan and Wardle created chapters that touch upon 10 distinctive visual themes — “Rock & Roll,” “Sex,” “Art,” “Identity,” “Drugs,” “Ego,” “Real World,” “Escape,” “Politics” and “Death” — and each selection includes juicy tidbits of information; background to put the image in its proper context, funny and interesting anecdotes (including the tale of how Ween’s original idea to feature a gay sailor on the cover of Chocolate and Cheese was axed because the label was nervous about “The HIV Song” being linked nack to it), and analysis about why a particular image was used (or why not, like the original rejected cover for Electric Ladyland and its gritty group of nude women, so dark and unappealing that Hendrix himself apparently hated it), the reasons it made an impact (or the reasons it didn’t), and its inspiration and influence (as in the case of Andy Warhol’s zippered pants on the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers and the Mötley Crüe Too Fast For Love cover that blatantly imitated and updated it).
[image-2]A small red (!) indicates albums considered tasteless, senseless, absurd or general failures, and these are just as fun to look at as the ones that work, if for entirely different reasons. Among these are Whitesnake’s Lovehunter and its tacky fantasy-style illustration of a naked woman straddling/being devoured by a snake, and Elvis’ Separate Ways, which features a jumpsuited King gracelessly cut and pasted onto a picture of a wide highway.
It’s not a perfect guide by any stretch. American readers will likely notice the content skews a little heavy on artists from England and light on hip-hop overall, the chapter on “Escape” is a bit dull and redundant (how many cover shots featuring vehicles can you really show?), and some obviously important album covers and their respective bands are entirely absent; the Grateful Dead’s influential and widely-recognized cover art is the most glaring omission, and the exclusion of The Band, R.E.M., Red Hot Chili Peppers (no Mother’s Milk in “Sex”?), Madonna (although her exclusion might have been more snub than oversight), and Michael Jackson (although there is a nod to the Jackson 5’s ABC) is also a bit of a surprise.
But plenty of iconic LP cover art made its way to the pages; the unconventional portraiture of The Beatles’ Rubber Soul and Sgt. Pepper, the rainbow prism from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and the industrial smokestacks of Animals, the Warhol banana-clad self-titled third album of The Velvet Underground, the naked underwater baby of Nirvana’s Nevermind ... Pairing these perennial classics with lesser-known and unexpected gems, The Art of the LP manages to cover a great deal of ground, making it a must-have for any music enthusiast’s collection.
The Art of the LP is available now for $29.95 (or less if you do your shopping right); call your local indie book retailer to secure a copy.
The following in a gallery featuring all of the album covers mentioned above as well as some other LP covers that were included in the book.
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Re-imagining a sacred cow of rock albums is not only a demanding endeavor, but a tricky one. How do you put your own distinctive stamp on a work so relentlessly and universally familiar, one beloved by millions in its original state and still relevant more than three decades later?
If the album happens to be Dark Side of the Moon and your band is The Flaming Lips, unfettered and fearless pioneers of modern psychedelia, then you tackle it as you would any other challenge: by bringing on a cast of like-minded support players and diving into it headfirst.
The dystopian themes are still fully intact, as is the basic sonic framework of the album and certain key elements within it; the opening and closing throb of a beating heart; the chatter of a madman (guest Henry Rollins) interspersed throughout; the piercing opening screams of “Breathe” and the deep, soul-wailing female vocal solos of “The Great Gig In The Sky” (provided by Canadian electro-clash singer-songstress Peaches); the rising and falling organ notes in “Us and Them.”
But the Lips have added a loose, acid-washed collage of sound to Dark Side with help from recurrent collaborators Stardeath and White Dwarfs, the album treated to roiling, mind-expanding moments of funkified jamtronica. Fuzzy, aggressive guitar and bass notes duel to a propulsive dance beat in “On the Run,” “The Great Gig In The Sky” is transformed by a heady, heavy, bass-driven jam, and the closing three-song suite of “Any Colour You Like,” “Brain Damage” and “Eclipse” is a rollercoaster ride of vibrant highs and lows, wah-wah guitar, industrial-strength synthesizers and deep distortion meeting in a resounding climax and petering off with quiet ease.
Get the Record Store Day LP on sea foam green vinyl while supplies last, or snag a copy of the CD release, out this week (Warner Bros.). HHHH stars
