114. Joni Mitchell - Hissing of Summer Lawns

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On this work, I tried to fuse two images together while seeing to it that the resulting image would fit an 18X10 frame. The two images are
a photograph which has been processed  to look cartoonized  and the illustration that was inspired by it.  These two images are opposites of
each other in their own right. 

The photo looks raw,  down-to-earth and portrays  an actual and not so unusual event for the characters  involved it.  The illustration that it
inspired retains the former's somewhat primitive character but possesses a finesse and cosmopolitanism far detached from the original while
still assuming the same animal forms that gave it essence.   

In the dedication on the inside gatefold of her album The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Canadian singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell thanks National Geographic Magazine,
amongst others, but doesn’t explain why. Here’s why:

The photographer was explorer W. Jesco von Puttkamer, who documented the plight of “Brazil’s Beleaguered Indians” for National Geographic‘s February 1975 issue.

Joni Mitchell’s The Hissing of Summer Lawns was released in November 1975.  In her notes,  Mitchell tells us that she “drew the cover and designed the package with
research help and guidance from Glen Christensen, Elektra/Asylum Art Director.” She thanks National Geographic Magazine and others, as I’ve already said. She does
not, however, mention W. Jesco von Puttkamer by name.

Of course,  I realize that 1975 is a long time ago,  but it was only today at a garage sale  that I purchased the  National Geographic Picture Atlas of Our World (1979)
for a buck and instantly  recognized the reprint of  W. Jesco von Puttkamer’s  photo on page 72 as one  of the  primary reference  sources for Joni Mitchell’s drawing.
Ragged Claws Network



Photo from mylonesomeblues.tumblr.com

This is the album's outside gatefold.

This is the version of the gatefold which I used for the work above.

No. 217,  The Virgin  All-Time Album Top 1000

Album produced by Joni Mitchell. Asylum 1975.


"I drew the cover and designed  the package with research  help and guidance  from Glen Christensen,  Electra/Asylum Art Director.  The photo is Norman Seef's."
- Joni Mitchell (with thanks to National Geographic Magazine) jonimitchell.com

"But even on the scuffle, the cleaner’s press was in my jeans/And any eye for detail caught a little lace along the seams,” sang Joni Mitchell on a song called "The
Boho Dance"  from her 1975 album  The Hissing of Summer Lawns.  If the couplet was an acknowledgment of her Canadian well-bredness,  it was also the perfect
metaphor for the increasing sophistication of her music at that time, the “lace along the seams” of her songs.

“For a long time,  I’ve been playing in straight rhythms,”  Mitchell told her friend,  Malka Marom,  in 1973,  in the first of the three extended interviews that are
included in the book Both Sides Now.  “But now,  in order to sophisticate  my music to my own taste,  I push it into odd places  that feel a little unusual to me, so
that I feel I’m stretching out.”

Sophistication  –  melodic, lyrical, compositional  – is an undervalued currency in popular music, though it illuminates the finest songs written by artists as diverse
as Lennon and McCartney,  Randy Newman,  Ray Davies, Brian Wilson,  Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield  as well as the songwriters for hire of an earlier era – Cole
Porter, Rodgers and Hart, George Gershwin. It also defines the best songs that Joni Mitchell wrote at her creative peak, which, for me, stretched from the release
of Blue (1971), For the Roses (1972),  Court and Spark (1974)  and The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975),  to the pared and broodingly atmospheric Hejira (1976).
Sean O'Hagan on The Guardian, edited

(A) In France They Kiss on Main Street - The Jungle Line - Edith and the Kingpin - Don't Interrupt the Sorrow - Shades of Scarlett Conquering

(B) The Hissing of Summer Lawns - The Boho Dance - Harry's House/Centerpiece - Sweet Bird - Shadows and Light

"The Hissing of Summer Lawns" music video from sonicboy19 on YouTube.


               

    

www.jonimitchell.com

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107. Kiss - Destroyer

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In this work, the original album art image background was deleted and with it went the band's name and album title.
It was still distinctively Kiss to people who know,  but perhaps not Destroyer anymore  even to most people who knew.
Two years  to go before  the 50th  anniversary  of the band's  formation in  1973 and eight years  more of  the album's
release in 1976, I thought it was already time I did a gold.

The story of this album cover art itself is almost like a legend.


In November 1975,  Kiss Alive! reached the top 10-album chart; fast on it's way to becoming the biggest selling live album in history.  After years of struggling to build an audience,
the world was now watching. We knew the next album had to be extraordinary in every way, taking Kiss to astronomic heights and forever placing them in the public's imagination.
The songs had to be stellar,  the production impeccable,  and the cover artwork something that took Kiss from fascinating to mythical.  A few artists' names  were thrown around in 
conversation until we came  to the vibrant powerful  style of a young artist  named Ken Kelly.  His beautiful work in the  comics was creating a buzz and it soon became clear to me
that if I wanted larger than life, Ken Kelly was the man. 

When I contacted Ken about doing the Destroyer artwork, I was impressed with his humble, unassuming manner.  Everything was taken with a grain of salt, including several re-dos
and tight deadlines.  Not many people  know that his original  version was rejected by the record company for being too violent.  In today's world,  it wouldn't raise an eyebrow, but
the burning buildings in the background were just too much to take in the relatively innocent mid-70s.  Ken took this in stride and began again, only to have me stop him just as he
was finishing up. This time we needed Ken to start over and put the boys in their new costumes and I wasn't looking forward to telling him.  But once again, Ken was a consummate
professional and went back to work without a word said. 


Original album art for Destroyer from Strong Sword Media on YouTube.

Needless to say,  Destroyer became a juggernaut,  Kiss became the world's premier rock band,  and Ken Kelly single-handedly raised the bar for what album artwork could aspire to.
Destroyer was and always will be one of the most dynamic pieces of album artwork ever created. It went above and beyond my expectations, which were very high considering the 
importance this  follow-up album held.  I wish I could  better verbalize  just what it is that makes Ken such a masterful artist,  but therein lays the element  that elevates art from 
merely well crafted to magic. He has struck such a chord in the generations of Kiss fans that it still reverberates three decades later.
Bill Aucion, excerpt from Ken Kelly's book, Escape on Ken Kelly


Here's the final album art design.

No. 489, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time; No. 745, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000


Original album cover art design by Ken Kelly. Album produced by Bob Ezrin. Casablanca 1976.


On the brink of  mainstream success,  glam rock band Kiss  set out to create a serious studio album by  enlisting Alice
Cooper’s  producer  Bob Ezrin.  In producing  the  band’s fourth album,  Destroyer, Ezrin added  richer production and
instrumentation with some outside musicians to the band’s base, party-rock sound. As none of the band members had
any formal musical  training or knew much musical theory,  Ezrin ran the sessions like a classroom,  explaining theory
along the way and scolding any band member who deviated from specific directions, something Kiss would later refer
to as “musical boot camp”.  The result was the  most successful  album to date,  following the  modest success of the
first three studio albums, and the launching of Kiss into super-stardom through the late 1970s and beyond.
Classic Rock Review

In anticipation of the 35th anniversary of the release of Destroyer, producer Bob Ezrin approached Simmons and Stanley about doing a remix and re-release of the original album.
With their approval, Ezrin acquired the original 16-track analog master tapes and had them digitally transferred for remixing. In addition to re-equalizing elements of each song,
Ezrin also added in some parts of tracks that had been omitted from the original mix.  Notable among these are some additional vocals on "Detroit Rock City" and "Beth",  and the
substitution of a guitar  solo by Ace Frehley on  "Sweet Pain"  for the one from the original that had been performed by Dick Wagner  (a version of "Sweet Pain" with Frehley's solo 
was included as track 6,  while the original  version with  Wagner's solo is appended  as a "bonus" track at the end of the new CD).  Ezrin also used digital  manipulation to fix an 
incorrect lyric on "Detroit Rock City".  The resulting album, titled Destroyer: Resurrected, was released on August 21, 2012.  It featured Ken Kelly's original cover artwork prior to 
alteration by Casablanca for the 1976 release. wikipedia


Of their make-up, "We had to go through torture to perfect the process of putting it on", Stanley admitted in 1996. wikipedia

(Characters and members in white did not appear on Destroyer.)


(A) Detroit Rock City - King of the Night Time World - God of Thunder - Great Expectations

(B) Flaming Youth - Sweet Pain - Shout It Out Loud - Beth - Do You Love Me



"Detroit Rock City" live 2006 from NEA ZIXNH on YouTube.


              

    

www.kissonline.com 

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106. Steely Dan - Can't Buy a Thrill

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The cover of Can’t Buy a Thrill is a visual metonym for the music contained therein. The record sleeve’s front, designed by Robert Lockart,  is a pastiche of roughly a dozen images spliced
together into a sexually  surreal graphic loosely representing the thrill-buying  alluded to in the album title.  Although  Walter Becker and Donald Fagen  have since dismissed the cover as
one of the decade’s most hideous, it is oddly appropriate.  Whereas the album’s sonic product is the result of musicians cutting and splicing in the recording studio, the cover image is the
product of a designer cutting and splicing in a graphic studio.

Capping the front cover image is the band’s name in script. A careful inspection of this seemingly straightforward logo reveals another clue to the artifice that made Steely Dan’s musical
commodity a reality. The band’s name is written in script, seemingly drawn by a careful penman — yet not one working in the usual fashion.  The lower-case “a” in “Dan” could not have
been written by a pen  utilizing forward motion.  The same goes for the loops in the “eely” portion of “Steely”:  a person would have to write  ursive script backward  in order to present
the band name the way it appears on the album cover.  The absurdity, though, does not stop there: the cross of the “t” in “Steely” is unnaturally inserted into the middle of the loop. The
capital “S” and “D” could neither be written  forward or backward by a calligrapher’s pen in real time.  The bottom swirl of the “S” is pulled  back under the main part of the letter; the
terminal upward slash of the letter “D” is firmly tucked under its opening swoosh.

The logo is craftsmanship,  not penmanship.  It is a careful absurdity,  a surrealism crafted by an artist with the imagination, time, and ability to rework the image until it was just right.

Like a band that  created its magic  in the studio — a magic that could rarely,  if ever, be recreated on  stage in real time — the artist was using the tools  of his trade to openly mask the
artifice of his creation.  The designer  seemed to be saying something about the modern (or postmodern) world that  created art such as Steely Dan’s music.  To make the representations
that thrill, one has to embrace the artificial. The rehearsal must become the performance. You have to go back and do it again.
"Steely Dan Postmodern: A Meditation on Sonic and Visual Artifice" by Brian M. Ingrassia on Matters of Sense


The album cover  features a photomontage by Robert Lockart.  It includes an  image of a line of  prostitutes,  standing in a red light  area waiting for clients,
chosen because of its  relevance to the album title.  The title of the  album is taken in  reference to the opening line of the Bob Dylan song  "It Takes a Lot to
Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry".  Walter Becker and Donald Fagen themselves commented on the album art in their liner notes to the reissued The Royal Scam,
saying that the  album possessed  "the most hideous  album cover of the seventies,  bar none (excepting perhaps Can't Buy a Thrill)."  The cover was banned in
Francisco Franco's Spain and was replaced with a photograph of the band playing in concert. wikipedia


Here's the original album cover art design.

No. 207, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000; No. 261, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Cover art design by Robert Lockart. Album produced by Gary Katz. ABC 1972.

The title of Steely Dan’s  debut album  may come from  Bob Dylan's "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry",  and the band’s  name a dildo in William

Burroughs’ Naked Lunch,  but Can’t Buy a Thrill,  recorded in  Los Angeles  with the best session  musicians money  could buy,  seems somehow only  distantly

related to rock’n’roll.

Cock a cursory ear to this  melange of mambo muzak,  Latin, swing and  jazz and you could be listening to a lounge band on the Catskills circuit. But beneath

the charming melodies and sublime grooves are lyrics every bit as acrid if oblique as, well, Dylan’s, while the music packs a gorgeous, subtle punch.

It became clearer as time went on,  but even at this early  stage you can tell that  Steely Dan,  the titans of 70s  studio pop along with 10cc,  were less a band

and more a pair of transplanted  New Yorkers whose job it was to conduct their many players. They appeared to have it all worked out to the nth degree – not

one percussive  break or dab of  flugelhorn is out of place.  As with all of  Steely Dan’s   albums up to 1980’s Gaucho,  much credit for this  attention to detail

must go to producer Gary Katz.

So fully-formed is  Can’t Buy a Thrill  that you would  scarcely  believe  that it’s their debut.  Fagen’s  acerbic,  nasal croon  is not the only  vocal here – David

Palmer’s dulcet tenor  can be heard for the first  and last time on a Steely Dan album,  taking the lead on  "Dirty Work" and the exquisite  "Brooklyn (Owes the

Charmer Under Me)".  Drummer Jim Hodder and Fagen duet on "Midnight Cruiser" – the very definition of bittersweet – but elsewhere Fagen dominates, and so

the Steely Dan model is in place:  tightly constructed  songs with dazzling hooks,  clever, cryptic lyrics,  and vocals  that offer  teasing critiques for  those that

want them. BBC Music Review by Paul Lester, abridged

(A) Do It Again - Dirty Work - Kings - Midnite Cruiser - Only a Fool Would Say That

(B) Reelin' in the Years - Fire in the Hole - Brooklyn (Owes the Charmer Under Me) - Change of the Guard - Turn That Heartbeat Over Again

"Do It Again" live from Eduardo Montenegro on YouTube.

              

    

www.steelydan.com

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105. Jane's Addiction - Nothing's Shocking

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Ultimate Classic Rock says it is one of the most shocking album covers.

Guitar World  says the album cover art has  been banned on Facebook.  


Perry Farrell created the cover image to Nothing's Shocking,  which features a sculpture  of a pair of nude female conjoined  twins sitting on a sideways
rocking chair with their heads on fire.  Farrell said the image,  like much of his artwork, came to him in a dream. Farrell hired Warner Bros. employees
to create the cover sculpture; after learning how to create sculptures by watching them closely, he fired the Warner Bros.  staff and created the artwork
himself. Farrell hired someone to help create a full body casting of his girlfriend for use as the sculptures.  Retailers objected to the album's cover. Nine
out of the eleven leading record store chains refused to carry Nothing's Shocking, and the record had to be issued covered with brown paper. wikipedia

My work was just an experiment with Plastic Wrap, Craquelure, Accented Edges and Crosshatch and the purpose was to create what
would look like a glass piece  or a glass sculpture,  or something that would  still appear shocking yet would less explicit and not be
banned on Facebook. After all, these are mere glimpses of the female anatomy, some fire up their heads which is not really hot. It
looks more scary when they' re Siamese twins but if they're frozen in antiquated glass, you'd wish it was on auction at eBay.  


During the recording sessions, Farrell stated he wanted 50 percent of the band's publishing royalties for writing the lyrics,
as well as quarter of the remaining half for writing music,  adding up to 62.5 percent total. Bassist Eric Avery said he and
the other  band members,  guitarist  Dave Navarro  and drummer  Stephen Perkins,  were  stunned by  Farrell's  demands.
Farrell refused to compromise. wikipedia


There's the shock. Sixty-two and a half percent did not even include designing the album cover.





No. 225, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000; No. 312, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

No. 19, Rolling Stone, The 100 Greatest Album Covers.


Album design, sculpture & photography by Perry Farrell, album produced by Dave Jerden & Perry Farrell. Warner Bros. 1988.


Although  Jane's Addiction's  1987  self-titled debut was an  intriguing  release  (few alternative bands  at the time had the  courage to mix modern rock,
prog rock,  and heavy metal  together),  it paled in  comparison  to their now classic major-label release one year later,  Nothing's Shocking. Produced by
Dave Jerden and  Jane's Addiction vocalist  Perry Farrell,  the album was more  focused and packed more of a sonic wallop than its predecessor;  the fiery
performances  often create an amazing sense that it could all fall apart at any second, creating a fantastic musical tension. Such tracks as "Up the Beach,"
"Ocean Size," and one of alt-rock's greatest anthems, "Mountain Song," contain the spaciousness created by the band's two biggest influences, Led Zeppelin
and the Cure.  Elsewhere, "Ted, Just Admit It..."  (about  serial  killer  Ted Bundy)  and the haunting  yet gorgeous  "Summertime Rolls"  stretched  to epic
proportions, making great use of changing moods and dynamics (something most alt-rock bands of the time were oblivious to).

An incredibly consistent and challenging  album, other highlights included the rockers "Had a Dad" and "Pigs in Zen," the horn-driven "Idiots Rule," the jazz
instrumental  "Thank  You  Boys,"  and the  up-tempo  "Standing  in the  Shower...T hinking."  Like  most  great bands,  it was  not a single  member  whose
contribution was greater: Perry Farrell's unique voice and lyrics, Dave Navarro's guitar riffs and wailing leads, Eric Avery's sturdy basslines, and one of rock's
greatest and most powerful drummers,  Stephen Perkins.  Nothing's Shocking is a must-have for lovers of cutting-edge,  influential, and timeless hard rock.
AllMusic Review by Greg Prato

(A) Up the Beach - Ocean Size - Had a Dad - Ted, Just Admit It. . . - Standing in the Shower. . .  Thinking

(B) Summertime Rolls - Mountain Song - Idiots Rule - Jane Says - Thank You, Boys




"Mountain Song" music video from RHINO on YouTube.

              

    

www.janesaddiction.com

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