As you know, one of the great pleasures of album collecting that no other medium can offer, let alone equal, is the artwork. What you’re holding there, is a 12” x 12” piece of art. When money was spent on covers, they were a brilliant artistic expression. They went from being purely functional to being a chance to offer the public an artistic vision.
There were some great sleeves in the late 50s and 60s for jazz artists. They were contemporary art and looked very much in sympathy with graphic art of the time. Records like Ah Um by Charles Mingus are clearly inspired by Cubism. The way the lettering on Larry Young’s Unity, Joe Henderson’s In ‘N Out or Herbie Hancock’s Takin’ Off, could have been done by an advertising agency and invested a hip quality to the product.
Some, like Frank Sinatra’s Strangers In The Night, were more straightforward, but as time went on, soon enough drugs started to play their part. The Byrds' Mr Tamborine Man with its fish-eye lens was an early example. Psychedelic covers were everywhere from San Francisco to London. Even old blues artists released at least one record with a nod to the style. Lightnin’ Hopkins Lightnin’ album being a good example, Buddy Guy’s A Man And His Blues was another. Even BB King’s Completely Well got in on the act and Chuck Berry too with From St Louis To San Francisco.
But it was fully embraced by people like Martin Sharp who produced Disraeli Gears and Wheels Of Fire for Cream and his Mr Tamborine Man poster of Dylan. On the coast the likes of Rick Griffin with his Aoxomoxa for the Grateful Dead was part of an explosion of album and poster art. They adapted Edmund J. Sullivan’s 1913 artwork for the band. Griffin’s Quicksilver Messenger Service lettering and later his work on Man’s Maximum Darkness, influenced a whole generation. The Grateful Dead’s label was also designed by Griffin.
But soon that evolved into covers which were more fantastical like Clear Light Symphony’s self titled record, Uriah Heep’s Return To Fantasy and of course, numerous Roger Dean covers. He led a whole era with fantastical landscapes and bioforms. Some of his lesser known pieces are my favourites like Squawk by Budgie or indeed the ‘Best of’ with the astronaut budgie and Paladin’s Charge! They were everywhere on everything from Topographic Oceans to Yessongs, to Greenslade, Uriah Heep, Snafu, Gentle Giant and Babe Ruth. They were ‘ours’, markers for the artistry of the rock generation, even on labels, like Yes’ Relayer.
Others followed. I was enamoured with the Alan Parsons Project’ Turn Of A Friendly Card and Renaissance’s Turn Of The Cards and even more basic covers of a live shot like Johnny Winter’s Captured Live and Rory Gallagher’s Stage Struck.
A girlfriend of one of the bands often made sleeves like on most of Mountain’s records and Steve Hackett’s. Some rejected anything elaborate like Dark Side Of The Moon, but these record’s labels were unique and cool.
As the 80s arrived, record companies started cutting back expenditure on sleeves. But some were still great. Marilllion’s were so distinctive, created by Mark Wilkinson, and It Bites had a sleeve and logo designed by Roger Dean. A more graphic approach was taken by Yes on 90215 and Big Generator, even Genesis went the same way on Invisible Touch and Abacab after more fantastical covers in the 70s like Selling England by the Pound by Betty Swanwick and Trick Of The Tail by Colin Elgie, both of which looked straight out of a Victorian childrens book.
In trying to divorce themselves from the more fantastical elements like ELP’s Tarkus and Uriah Heeps Magician’s Birthday it took bands away from something that was much loved and distinctive. By the 90s, bands like Yes and Asia were on the phone to Roger Dean again for albums like Union and Phoenix.
Even on modern albums that strive to recreate the 70s style, artwork usually looks Photoshopped and that seems to give everything a similar underlying quality.
Classic rock’s era not only produced brilliant music, but also unforgettable artwork that you were proud to own and could stare at while the record played. You can’t do that with a download or stream, can you?
