album covers 23 by Editorial Zone
Published Date: 04/04/07
Album Covers
Since the demise of the vinyl Long Playing records in the mid 1980s, I have missed the album covers. A CD just isn't the same. I would buy a new LP, take it home and admire it. There was some great art work on album covers, especially thru the golden age from the middle of the 1960s thru the 1970s. As artists wanted to express themselves on the covers as well as the music inside, they became more ambitious and elaborate. I have a copy of Led Zeppelin III which has a half hidden cardboard wheel incorporated into the cover. You can turn the wheel, revealing the pictures as they turn. It used to keep me out of mischief for hours.
I know CDs have better sound quality and will probably last longer and so on, but we've sacrificed something as well. Everything in a CD is necessarily scrunched up, including the visuals and the printed lyrics.
Many respected artists, photographers and illustrators got involved in album covers. The first gatefold cover design was the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band cover. The famous images on the cover were put together by British Pop Artist Peter Blake. It made him a household name and the cover was part of the iconic status of the record. Mae West and Bob Dylan etc. are captured forever on the most important album of the 1960s. Pepper was also the first album to have printed lyrics. The photographer Robert Mapplethorpe gained prominence with his photograph of Patti Smith on her Horses album. Of all her album covers, it became the one that was reproduced for most of Patti's publicity.
In the 1970s, the illustrator Roger Dean dominated. It was the decade of the concept album and Dean took full advantage of the gatefold to design his epic fantasy world. They were the perfect visualization for the work of bands like Yes. These days, people buy prints of them and they are considered works of art and not merely album covers.
There has also been controversy every now and then, with some album covers being banned or the record company told to make alterations. Some of these decisions seem a little petty today, as we are not so easily shocked. Other decisions, especially those concerning the sexual exploitation of women or the inappropriate depiction of children, seem sound even now.
One of the most famous of the album covers that received a ban is a Beatles compilation record for release in the US in 1966. Titled Yesterday....and Today, the track listing did not meet with the Beatles' approval. Consequently they had a photograph taken which showed the four of them holding various body parts of dummy babies. It became known as the Butcher Cover. John Lennon and Yoko Ono would cause further outrage two years later when they both posed naked for their Unfinished Music No.1 - Two Virgins album. It was an innocent, rather sweet shot of the couple but it was too much for some and the record had to be wrapped in brown paper so as not to offend. Jimi Hendrix added to the album covers storm that year with his release of his seminal album, Electric Ladyland. There were naked ladies on the cover and the record company was ordered to remove them!
>>Return to Home Page<<