Uncategorized

Klaus Voormann’s Early Record Covers.

Leave a comment

There can be few artists or graphic designers who have designed record covers for more than half a century. Offhand, I can think of three: the late great Alex Steinweiss (1917-2011), who designed over 2,500 covers in his career, Sir Peter Blake, who is till going strong at the age of 91 and Klaus Voormann, who designed his first cover in 1960 and his most recent to be released in April 2024. His most famous cover, of course, is the one he did in 1966 for the Beatles Revolver, that he revisited in his book The Birth of an Icon. Revolver 50 on the fiftieth anniversary of Revolver’s release.

Voormann has designed over eighty record covers since the first that was released in 1960, when Klaus was only 22 years old. I am indebted to Thorsten Knublauch for much of the information on release dates for Klaus’s early covers. He is a mine of knowledge about matrix numbers and had tipped me off about several Voormann covers that I otherwise wouldnt have been able to collect. So, thank you, Thorsten!

Voormann’s first cover was for the Walk Don’t Run / Parisian Heiress 7″ single by a band called the Typhoons released on the Heliodor label, a subsidiary of Deutsche Grammophon that was released in autumn 1960. According to Thorsten, the Typhoons were a group of New York session musicians — but how they came to release this lone single in Germany remains a mystery.

In late October 1960, according to Klaus’s own accounts in his books, he Klaus was walking in Hamburg’s Reeperbahn district after a row with Astrid Kirchherr, when he heard music coming from the Kaiserkellar bar, on Grosse Freihet Strasse, and went in to investigate. There he was fascinated by the young Beatles and returned several times and befriended the band members. And at about the same time, he showed John Lennon the cover of the Typhoons Walk Don’t Run single.

Voormann’s first publsihed record cover.

Klaus got another cover commision from Reinhart Wolf in 1960/1 to illustrate the covers for a series of jazz reeissue EPs called Pioneers of Jazz. These archival recordings were released on the German Coral label, another Deutsche Grammophon imprint at the time. Klaus illustrated all twenty covers

Soon after, Klaus illustrated the covers for another reissue series, this time eight seven-inch EPs each called Country & Western Hitparade, Vols 1 to 8. This time, though, all eight covers bore the same Voormann illustration. The series was released in January 1962 (my copies have a sticker on the front of each dated 2.62, implying they were availabe as early as February 1962). It’s tempting to wonder if the cowboy boot on the cover was a wink to the Beatles, who bought cowboy boots and wore them on stage while playing in Hamburg.

Voormann’s cover for the Country & Western Hitparade EPs.

Then in late 1962, probably as a Christmas gift for employees at Deutsche Grammophon, Klaus was commissioned to design the cover for the LP album Wer nie im Bett Programm gemacht.

Klaus Voormann is a musician as well as a graphic designer, record producer and author and has played in a number of bands, the first of which was the Eyes, together with Gibson Kemp and Patrik Chambers. The Eyes released a single called She / Peanut Butter in 1965 with cover illustration by Klaus.

Paddy, Klaus and Gibson were three of the four members of the Eyes and they released three singles on the Pye label in 1965/6 as Paddy, Klaus & Gibson. The six tracks from these singles were reissued on a ten-inch EP in 2014 and the cover illustration was an editied version of the Eyes’cover with only Paddy, Klaus and Gibson. The limited edition EP was available on black, red and clear vinyl.

Revolver, Voormann‘s most famous cover design, was released on 5th August 1966 when Klaus was back in London as the basist in Manfred Mann’s reformed band after Paul Jones had left Manfred Mann released their latest album As Is on 21st October 1966, with cover design by Klaus Voormann. And in the following decade, Voormann went on to design covers for the Bee Gees, Gary Wright, Harry Nilsson, Edwards Hand, Ringo Starr, Jimmy Smith and Jackie Lomax.In April 2024 his 1966 portrait of Manfred Mann appeared on a double LP greatest hists package entitled Manfred Mann — Hits from the Sixties.

Voormann’s 1966 portrait of Manfred Mann on the cover of the 2024 Hits album.

Lou Reed - Words & Music 1965, Masaki Koike, Record cover art

Lou Reed — Words and Music May 1965.

Leave a comment

Design: Masaki Koike.

I don’t usually succumb to the temptation to buy a record designed by someone other than one of the designers I already collect. However, I’m a fan of Lou Reed and when I read that his latest release, designed by the Japanese-American Masaki Koike, based in Los Angeles, had been nominated for a Grammy in the package design category that I thought I would ignore my own collection rule and invest. Sadly, Koike didn’t win the Grammy but his design won my approval.

This album has been proiduced by Reed’s widow Laurie Anderson and associates. Anderson found a reel-to-reel tape of Lou Reed’s early music in a sealed envelope among Reed’s possesions.

I am not alone as a vinyl collector in that I try to buy two copies of each release for my collection — one I keep sealed while the second copy is my display copy. So I had to buy two copies of the Lou Reed album. Of course I wanted the limited edition — a double album with a limited edition seven-inch EP and a CD. Most copies of this version available online or in my local record shops cost $100 or more. I was lucky to find copies for $60..

The outer and inner spreads of the cover. The seven-inch EP is visible on the left and the CD on the right, overlying the booklet with lyrics.

The twoblack vinyl LPs are mastered at 45 rpm and housed in printed inner sleeves.

The outer cover is diecut with a series of 6 mm holes — 110 holes on the front cover. Even the seven-inch and CD covers are diecut with similar holes.

I am really pleased to have added this beautifully designed album to my collection. My congratulations to Masaki Koike for the great design. I noticed that the band round the album calls this album “No. 1”. Hopefully there will be at least one follow-up collection.

Richard Prince, Richard Prince record cover art

More on Richard Prince’s Record Cover Art.

Leave a comment

It’s amazing what one can come up with after a little bit of research.

I have the exhibition catalogues from Richard Prince’s exhibitions Super Group (shown at the Gallerie Max Hetzler in Berlin, from 16th September to 28th October 2017) and High Times (Gaagosian, New York, 1st November to 19th December 2018.) These include essays by Prince that explain some aspects of his record cover-related works. He obviously has a record collection and decided to make artworks of covers, starting with the nine Sonic Youth covers he happened to have in his collection. He fixed thm in a 3 x 3 format on canvas using paint as glue. Then he moved on to Kinks albums. He wanted to make a collage of sixteen Kinks albums but only had six so he went out anbought ten more! Next he collected eighty-seven Beatles albums, includung seventeen copies of Revolver! However, he doesn’t say how he used all these.

Prince got fascinated by records’ inner sleeves and betweewn 2015 and 2017 created a series of large format paintings/collages using record sleeves, black and white stuck to canvas and with group names and song tiotles as well as some “hippie” figures from his earlier series of Hippie paintings that had been noticed by High Times magazine that had used two on the covers of its September 2016 special trippy issue.

In 2016 A Tribe Called Quest were planning to release their first album since 2003 and the band’s lead rapper, Q-Tip (Kamaal Ibn John Fareed) approached Richard Prince to ask if he would design the cover. Q-Tip had obviously seen Prince’s Hippie paintings and wanted something in that style. However, at that time Prince was painting his Super Group paintings/collages using blank black or white recoird sleeves.

Prince visited the band in NewJersey and painted protraits of the four members, renedered in his Hippie painting style. The final cover design for the CD/double LP combined one of his Super Group collages with a Hippie-style portrait of one of the band.

A tribe Called Quest’s 2016 album We Got It From Here … Thank You 4 Your Service.

You may remeber the set of nine “Pop” covers that Prince exhibited in 2022.

Richard Prince’s 2022 set of nine “Pop” covers.

All the words on these covers seemed to releate to a particular music genre, with one exceprtion: Hippie. I wondered why Prince had chosen that and, having now read about his seeries of Hippie paintings, I realise where the Hippie probably came from as the style of these paintings is similar to the style of the Hippe works.

Andy Warhol's record cover art, Appropriation Art, Record cover art, Richard Prince

Appropriational Art — To Copy or Not to Copy?

Leave a comment

I consider myself to be a graphic designer as opposed to an artist. And as a collector of record cover art I quite ofren remake a rare cover or create covers for records that never existed, but for which cover art exists. Examples are my creation of covers for a proposed RCA Victor jazz album entitled Progressive Piano that was scheduled for release some time in the 1950s but, despite being allocated a catalogue number, was never actually released. The Warhol Museum has lithographs of Andy Warhol’s proposed designs for the covers of a 10-inch and a 7-inch version of the record. I created full-sized covers from photos of these lithographs and even made record labels to look like fifites RCA Victor labels.

Progressive Piano 10″ covere.
Progressive Paino 7-inch cover.

Warhol also made collages for a projected Billie Holiday album to be called Volume 3. He made four versions and pictures have circulated on the Internet , so I decided to make actual covers and include records suggesting that the album would have been released by COlumbia records, though Warhol’s designs do not include a record label or catalogue number.

Four designs for a projected Billie Holiday album.

I consider these to be appropriations of Warhol’s art not dissimilar to those made by Elaine Sturtevant (1924-2014) who painted versions of Warhol’s Flower paintings — wnd was even given a silkscreen by Warhol to make further prints!

And then there are my paintings of posters and record sleeves.

There is a fine line between appropriation and copyright infringement. Warhol, or the Andy Warhol Foundation, was sued on at least three occasions. The first was in 1966. when Patricia Caulfield (1932-2023) sued Andy Warho for his use of her photograph of hibiscus flowers photographed in a Barbados restaurant as the basis for his series of Flowers paintings and prints. The case was settled out of court with Warhol paying Caulfield $6000 (from the sale of two Flowers paintings plus 25% of the royalties from the sale of the Flowers prints.) Warhol had, apparently, offered to licence the use of the photogeaph from the Modern Photography magazine, but was unwilling to pay the price quoted.

In 2011 the Andy Warhol Foundation intended to licence the use of Warhol’s Banana design for use for ipod and iPad ancillary products. However, the Velvet Underground threatend to sue as the band considered the design “to represent a symbol, truly an icon of them Velvet Undergound”. The matter was settled out of court with the Foundation publishing a letter stating that the matter had been resolved by a confidential settlement.

In 2021 photographer Lynn Goldsmith sued the Andy Warhol Foundation for licencing Warhol’s portrait of Prince to Condé Nast Publishers without credit to Goldsmith. She eventually won in the Supreme Court which decided that the Warhol version of her photograph was not sufficiently “transformative” to justify “fair use”, a legal term used to exempt use of copyright materal without having to pay the creator. Such use could be in reviews, criticisms or similar situations.

Other artists, ranging from the above-mentioned Sturtevant, to Jeff Koons, Richard Prince (who also lost a suit over his appropriation of five of Patrik Cariou’s photos of Rastafarians that Prince used in his 2008 exhibition Canal Zone at the Gagosian Gallery), and most recently, Eric Doeringer who makes “bootlegs” of other artists works, including Richard Prince’s! Apparently Prince has given Doeringer his blessing but Takashi Murakami was not so impressed with Doeringer’s work and issued a “stop and desist” order to prevent him from using Murakami’s work.

I have three examples of Richard Prince’s work in my collection: his 12-inch, limited edition , single sided vinyl Loud Song (with cover art by Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon), a 7-inch flexidisc of Loud Song that is included in his High Times! monograph published by Gagosian, and the limited edition, picture disc It’s a Free Concert Now. I recently saw that Eric Doeringer has made a 7-inch version of Loud Song with two other songs (Catherine and My Way) and made a new version of Kim Gordon’s cover art. This EP has been pressed in a limited edition of just twenty-six copies, numbered from A to Z. I got number J.

Doeringer (born 1974) has achieved serious acceptance for his art by being awarded gallery exhibitions and thus a degree of fame. I find his story encouraging and a stimulus for my own continuing appropriation of other artists’/designers’ work. Hopefully my works will be suffiently “transformative” to be considered “fair use”.

There is a lot more to be said about appropriation art. There are several artists reproducing record covers commercially that could possible fall foul of copyright law. So far, though, they do not appear to have been challenged.

Barney Bubbles art, Record collecting, Record cover art, Uncategorized

Barney Bubbles – the Anonymous Record Cover Designer.

Leave a comment

One of the first things I look for when I see a record cover I like — or have just bought — is to check the liner notes, back cover or possibly the printed inner sleeve to find out who was responsible for the cover artwork/design. I never knew I had a collection of Barney Bubbles’ record covers despite having (at least) thirteen in my record collection. If he did allow a designer credit he would, as often as not, use a pseudonym.

I suppose I knew that Barney Bubbles (born Colin Fulcher on 30th July 1942, died 14th November 1983) had designed the logos for Stiff and F-beat record labels but none of my Elvis Costello albums or my Wreckless Eric records mentioned a designer. I did like a couple of Hawkwind’s covers, but I never bought any. No mention of a designer on those anyway. Other artists include Nick Lowe, Ian Dury, Quintessence and Billy Bremner. Barney Bubbles even released his own album, Ersatz, credited to The Imperial Pompadours

I recently starteed reading Kenneth FitzGerald’s Process Music: Songs, Stories and Studies in Graphic Design. FitzGerald writes beautifully — the book is a collection of his writings on graphic design with focus on a number of designers, one of whom is Barney Bubbles. There I read descriptions of many covers but there aren’t any pictures, so I was constantly searching Discogs to see what FitzGerald was describing. Then I found Discogs list of seventy-two Barney Bubbles cover designs, though incomplete, it is a good way to see images of most of his covers.

Here are a couple of other Barney Bubbles covers not included in the Discogs list:

These eclectic designs show that Barney Bubbles knew his design history. The Art of Roger Bechirian cover referencing Alex Steinweiss’ early designs for Columbia Records in the 1940s and fifties.

FitzGerald is impressed by the sheer amount of work Barney Bubbles produced between 1977 and his death at the age of forty-one in 1983. In addition to record covers he designed advertising material, posters and was an accomplished draughtsman and painter. He was suppported by Stiff Records, and later Radar Records, founder Jake Riviera.

Paul Gorman, who manages Barney Bubbles’ estate, has written a book, about Barney Bubbles’ art. Reason to Be Cheerful: The Life and Work of Barney Bubbles that was originally published in 2010 and an updated version came out in 2022. There is also a 500 copy, limited edition, box set of Barney Bubbles’ work called A Box of Bubbles.

Uncategorized

Richard Prince’s Record Cover Art.

2 Comments

I can’t remember how, or why, I became interested in Richard Prince’s record cover art. I was a fan of Sonic Youth and saw them live at Hultsfreds Festival in 2002. I already owned the Ciccione Youth Burnin’ Up 12″ and Perhaps it was through listening to Sonic Youth and then buying the Sonic Nurse album that introduced me to his art.

Richard Prince was born on 6th August 1949, 21 years to the day after Andy Warhol. He grew up fascinated by Jackson Pollock’s art and that hinted to him that it might be possible to make a living as an artist. The coincidence of Price’s birthday is not the only similarity to Warhol’s art. Like Warhol, Prince has used appropriated images from adverts (his Cowboy series) and photographs. He started by rephotographing pictures and, working for a time at Time Magazine and had his first solo exhbition in 1980 and has had many later exhibitions at prestigious galleries and museums including the Guggenheim (2007).

Like Andy Warhol before him, Prince began appropriating advertisments for his art. He made a series of Cowboy paintings based on the Marlboro Man adverts. And like Warhol, who was sued by Patricia Caulfield for appropriating her photograph of hibiscus flowers for his Flowers paintings and prints, Prince (together with the Gagosian Gallery and Lawrence Gagosian) was sued by photographer Patrick Cariou whose photographs he had appropriated for a series of paintings shown at the Gagosian Gallery. Emily Ratajkowski, another photographer, used a different method to get retribution for Prince appropriating one of her Instagram posts. She photographed herself in front of Prince’s painting and made an NFT of the image that sold at Christies, New York, for $175,000!

In 1985 Prince recorded his composition Loud Song onto a cassette tape and then rerecorded it onto a second cassette. Prince described the process thus: “Loud Song was recorded in Venice Beach California in a house that I rented in the winter of 1985.
I recorded the song on an electric keyboard.
I used two cassette tape recorders.
I Would play the keyboard and record what was played on the first cassette.
Then I would play what I recorded and play more keyboard and record both sounds on the second cassette.
Then I would play back what I recorded on the second cassette and play more keyboard and record all that onto the first cassette.
It was like I was using the cassette players as musicians.
I would record this way until the song got really loud.”

Kim Gordon painted the cover picture and a limited edition of 250 copies, signed by Prince, was published by 303 Gallery.

Loud Song 12″ single-sided vinyl, signed by Richard Prince.

There is also a 7″ version released in a limited edition by Eric Doeringer that has Loud Song as its A-side and two tracks, Catherine and My Way, by Doeringer on the B-side. I also feel that the cover is Doeringer’s re-imagination of Kim Gordon’s original painting. Doeringer took the Loud Song track from Richard Prince’s Loud Song CD.

Eric Doeringer is an artist living in Los Angeles, who often appropriates other artists’ works in his art. Many of them, including Richard Prince, have applauded his work, while others have treatened him with legal action to stop him using their work.

I found a further version of Loud Song when, in 2022, I bought Richard Prince’s High Times book. Inside was a single-sided, green flexidisc version released in 2018.

The “Loud Song” flexi from the “High Times” book.

There is also a Loud Song CD that I haven’t managed to find. I’m primarily interested in vinyl so I probably won’t go after the CD.

The next record produced by Richard Prince was Good Revolution / Don’t Belong, a limited edition artwork published in 1992 in an edition of 80 copies. These were presentation gold seven-inch records with an engraved plaque mounted on a C-print, framed, includes a playable black vinyl record by the artist, recorded both sides, “Good Revolution” (1:46) and “Don’t Belong” (1:46), arranged and performed by Richard Prince, recorded and mixed at Harmonic Ranch by Mark Degliantoni, September 1992 (20 1/2 × 16 1/2 × 1 1/2 in | 52.1 × 41.9 × 3.8 cm).

A Tribe Called Quest released their final album, We Got It From Here … Thank You 4 Your Service, in 2017 with cover art bt Richard Prince. Prince’s design harked back to the. femail form on earlier ATCQ albums, althoiugh, to my eyes the figure looks more masculine. The coloration would be repeated in the nine covers Prince produced for his Gagosian exhibiition in 2022 (see below).

In 2018, Prince released a single-sided, 12-inch picture disc in conjunction with the Brigade Commerz Gallery entitled It’s a Free Concert Now. There was a limited “Artist’s” edition of twenty-five signed copies and a further unsigned edition, also of 25 copies. Mine, I think, is the unsigned edition (it’s still sticker-sealed, so I haven’t been able to see the B-side where Prince’s signature would be.)

Then in 2022 Prince designed a series of nine record covers that were really just artworks. Each cover contained a random 12″ record. I haven’t been able to establish whether or not these were a limited edition. The covers were part of a Richard Prince exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in Burlingtin Arcade, London, and apparently sold for £30 each. Unfortunately, I arrived too late to get any.

Nine covers designed by Richard Prince to hold random records.

The final, and most recent, Richard Prince cover is his reimagining of the Nine Inch Nail’s The Downward Spiral album, commissioned by Interscope Records as part of the company’s 2023 thirtieth anniversay set of reissues. I’ve described the twelve Damien Hirst covers in this series in a previous post. Richard Prince only got to reimagine this one cover. It is available in two versions: a picture disc, double LP, in a sngle pocket cover in an edition of 500 copies and a 100 copy, deluxe black vinyl version in a gatefold cover packaged in Gucci packeting. Needless to say, I could only stretch to the picture disc version (I can survvive without the Gucci packaging.)

Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral cover reimagined by Richard Prince.

These are all the Richard Prince covers I have found so far. I’m sure there may be more. I’ll keep you posted.

Uncategorized

Further Damien Hirst and Peter Blake Additions to My Collection.

Leave a comment

Just when I thought my record buying days were over I got hit by the Interscope 30th anniversary reissues with covers of classic albums reimagined by contemporary artists including the whole Eminem album catalogue with covers reimagined by Damien Hirst and a Nine Inch Nails cover reimagined by Richard Prince. In all, Interscope reissued 47 albums with reimagined cover art.

The Slim Shady LP
The Eminem Show
Revival
8 Mile
The Marsjhall Mathers LP
Nine Inch Nails The Downward Spiral Reimagined by Richard Prince.

Here’s the full list (thanks to Vinyl Factory for the compilation):
1. Dr. Dre – The Chronic (Adam Pendleton)
2. 6LACK – FREE 6LACK (Amoako Boafo)
3. Billie Eilish – When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go? (Anna Park)
4. Gwen Stefani – The Sweet Escape (Anna Weyant)
5. Timbaland – Shock Value (Burnt Toast)
6. N.E.R.D. – Seeing Sounds (Burnt Toast)
7. Billie Eilish – dont smile at me (Cecily Brown)
8. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz! (Chloe Wise)
9. Eminem – Entire Catalogue (Damien Hirst)
10. Mary J. Blige – The Breakthrough (Derrick Adams)
11. 2Pac – All Eyez On Me (Ed Ruscha)
12. Nine Inch Nails – Broken (Emily Mae Smith)
13. Blackstreet – “No Diggity” (Ferrari Sheppard)
14. Summer Walker – Over It (Genesis Tramaine)
15. Olivia Rodrigo – SOUR (Henni Alftan)
16. Kendrick Lamar – DAMN. (“DNA”) (Henry Taylor )
17. Selena Gomez – Rare (Hilary Pecis)
18. Gwen Stefani – Love. Angel. Music. Baby. (“Cool”) (Issy Wood)
19. Lana Del Rey – Born To Die (Jenna Gribbon)
20. BLACKPINK – THE ALBUM (Jennifer Guidi)
21. U2 – “Beautiful Day” (John Currin)
22. Machine Gun Kelly – Tickets to My Downfall (“My Bloody Valentine”) (Jordy Kerwick)
23. No Doubt – Tragic Kingdom (“Just a Girl”) (Julie Curtiss)
24. Snoop Dogg – Doggystyle (KAWS)
25. Dr. Dre – The Chronic 2001 (Kehinde Wiley)
26. Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp a Butterfly (Lauren Halsey)
27. Billie Eilish – Happier Than Ever (Lisa Yuskavage)
28. Lady Gaga – Fame Monster (Loie Hollowell)
29. No Doubt – Tragic Kingdom (“Spiderwebs”) (Lucy Bull)
30. Machine Gun Kelly – Tickets to My Downfall (Mark Quinn)
31. Lana Del Rey – Paradise (Matthew Wong)
32. The Game – The Documentary (Fulton Leroy Washington
a.k.a. Mr. Wash)
33. Lady Gaga – Joanne (Nicolas Party)
34. 2Pac – The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory (Nina Chanel Abney)
35. Black Eyed Peas – The E.N.D. (OSGEMEOS)
36. Kendrick Lamar – Good Kid MAAD City (Rashid Johnson)
37. Lana Del Rey – Norman Fucking Rockwell (Raymond Pettibon)
38. Kendrick Lamar – Good Kid M.A.A.D City (“Swimming Pools” (Drank)) (Reggie Burrows Hodges)
39. Nine Inch Nails – The Downward Spiral (Richard Prince)
40. 50 Cent – Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (Sayre Gomez)
41. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Fever To Tell (Shepard Fairey)
42. Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp A Butterfly (“King Kunta”) (Stanley Whitney)
43. Juice WRLD – Goodbye and Good Riddance (Takashi Murakami)
44. Eve – Scorpion (Titus Kaphar)
45. Kendrick Lamar – DAMN. (Toyin Ojih Odutola)
46. Tupac – Me Against The World (Umar Rashid)
47. Helmet – Meantime (Will Boone)

So I reckoned I was up to date with my Damien Hirst collection even though I am going to have to forgo the full Eminem oeuvre as these 12 albums cost a prohibitive $2,500 each (but you get a giclee print of the album’s artwork signed by Damien Hirst in an edition of 100, so effectively you get a free album if you buy the print!) However, no sooner had these five new Damien Hirst creations arrived than I found out the he had designed the cover for Pete Townshend’s (he of The Who) latest single Can’t Outrun the Truth which was released last March in an edition of 200 all autographed by Pete. Despite being on the Who’s mailing list, I missed out on this and had to resort to Discogs to´find a copy. Not the cheapest way to get a rare record.

And then I read that Eric Clapton has released three albums of his legendary 1980-81 24 Nights concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, calling them the Definitive 24 Nights. The three albums called 24 Nights – Rock (3 LPs), 24 Nights – Orchestral (3 LPs) and 24 Nights Blues (2 LPs). There is also a deluxe box set of the eight LPs with three Blu-ray discs, a book and a signed lithograph of Eric Clapton. Of course Eric reuses Peter Blake’s sketches from the original 24 Nights album.


The limited edition deluxe box set was available from Clapton’s store but rapidly sold out. However, it is available from most record shops. I’ll have to wait for my copy to see exactly how much Peter Blake was involved in the design of these sleeves.

Uncategorized

Some New Re-imagined Covers by Famous Artists That are Way too Expensive for Ordinary Collectors.

Leave a comment

Ever heard of Interscope Records? I hadn’t until recently when a good friend and fellow collector tipped me off about a new Damien Hirst cover that was to be released by Interscope Records as part of their thirtieth anniversary celebration.

It turns out that the company released Eminem‘s first album The Slim Shady in 1999 and that they are releasing limited edition albums of the Eminem catalogue with new cover art by Damien Hirst. Five of the redesigned albums are picture discs in new Hirst designed covers produced in limited editions of 500, while a further seven are available on black vinyl, in signed editions of 100 that include a giclée print of the cover art packaged in Gucci-designed wrapping. Each picture disc version costs USD 100, and the signed editions cost USD 2,500 each. Damien Hirst has done these reimagined covers for free as the proceeds are going to charity. Despite the fact that the proceeds from the sale of these art covers are going to charity I feel that they are wildly overpriced. The picture discs are each produced in editions of 500 copies and USD 100 strikes me as too expensive. I think a more reasonable price would be around USD 50. I would expect a record priced at USD 2,500, like the black vinyl albums to be in much more limited editions, perhaps even unique items in order to motivate the price. These are probably aimed at galleries or institutions rather than individual collectors and the exorbitant price prevents serious collectos of the individual artists’ covers from buying them.

Five limited edition coloured Eminem vinyl LPs

In addition to these new Damien Hirst covers there is a redesigned Snoop Doggy Dogg Doggy Style LP cover by KAWS for USD 100 in an edition of 500 copies that sold out almost immediately it was released. However, there was only one further release that I was interested in, and that is Richard Prince‘s reinterpretation of Nine Inch Nails‘ The Downward Spiral LP.

Nine Inch Nails The Downward Spiral Reimagined by Richard Prince.

In addition to the Damien Hirst designed covers for the Eminem albums, Interscope have released twenty-one other albums with redesigned covers priced at USD 2,000-2,500 by artists such as Gwen Stefani, Lana del Rey, Helmet, Dr. Dre, Billy Eilish and others.

These are the black vinyl Damien Hirst albums:

The USD 2,500 limited editions.

I actually really like these Damien Hirst covers! Obviously I can’t afford the USD2,500 limited editions and so I can never own a complete set of the artist’s record cover art.

I have ordered the five Hirst and the RIchard Prince picture disc editions. Perhaps I’ll make my own versions of the USD2,500 editions later to complete my collection.

All these covers can be bought through the Interscope Records site or via NTWRK app, subject to availability.

Record collecting

Have I Bought My Last Record?

2 Comments

I bought a record the other day. But it wasn’t for me. My Internet friend Ruggiero needed a copy of RATFAB’s single Det brinner en eld / Mörka ögon to complete his collection of Andy Warhol record covers, and I found him one.

Otherwise I haven’t bought a record for over a month — that must be some sort of record for me! Strangely, I don’t feel the urge to buy any more records. I am beginning to realise that I have an impressive collevtion of record cover art — okay, there are a couple (or three) gaps that I could try to fill, but those gaps are so exceeding rare and filling them would be extremely expensive if I ever found any of them. Actually having these rarities might give me a moment of two’s joy, but then my collections would be COMPLETE, and where’s the joy in that? So — I’m thinking of stopping the search.

However, a new though occurred to me: what happens if one of the artists whose record covers I collect produces a new one? Should I go for that? Andy Warhol isn’t going to produce any new covers (though hi art may very well appear on a new cover somewhere.) I’m somewhat doubtful as to whether Sir Peter Blake will produce any either. I have heard that Damien Hirst has at least one cover in the pipeline, as has Richar Prince (another artist I like). Klaus Voormann is still active despite soon being 85 years-old and could well come up with another cover or two. David Shrigley is very much active and still interested in music and, in particular, records. Viz. one of his latest posters Awful Music.

Record covers that parody famous covers always interest me. I have some Sgt. Pepper parodies and a number of Velvet Underground “Banana” cover parodies. one by the aforementioned D. Shrig: his cover for Castle Face Record’s The Velvet Underground & Nico and another of his for Stephen Malkmus & Friends’ rerecording of Can’s Ege Bamyasi.

David Shrigley’s parody of the Velvet Underground & Nico cover.

I have always liked Kraftwerk — I’ve seen them live three times — and even have a pullover with the Die Mensche Maschine cover image. I painted a version of that cover not too long ago.

And I recently discovered that the Ebony Steel Band’s cover had recorded a cover version of the album:

Well, I very nearly pressed the Buy it Now button for this one but I realised that I didn’s actually own Kraftwerk’s original, so there was little point in buying this reverential recreation of that famous cover.

So, I don’t think I’ll be buying any new records for the foreseeable future. Unless…

Record cover art

Famous Artists’ Works on Record Sleeves. But are They Really by the Artist?

Leave a comment

The idea for this post came a couple of days ago when I discovered a “new” (well, new to me, anyway) cover for the Strokes’ 2020 album The New Abnormal (RCA Records), designed by Tina Ibanez that uses part of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1981 painting Bird on Money.

Here’s the complete painting: a tribute to Charlie “Bird” Parker.

Now I have a couple of record covers designed by Jean-Michel Basquiat — hos famous Beat Bop for Rammelzee vs K-Rob and the Offs First Record, and these were actually designed by Basquiat. I also have a 2020 reissue of Beat Bop and this is still a “genuine” Basquiat cover. However, can I accept Tina Ibanez’s use of the Bird on Money detail as a Basquiat cover? After all, there’s no offical acknowledgement that Basquiat’s estate had sanctioned the use of the painting.

Looking through my cover art collection these are other covers that are of doubtful provenance. There are a lot of covers on vinyl records and CDs that use Banksy’s art without the artist’s authorization — perhaps more than are actually approved! The last record cover with approved Banksy artwork appears to have been released as long ago as 2007 was Danger Mouse’s From Man to Mouse LP (not on label) that I assume was authorised as the artwork is credited on the back cover to Banksy.

Danger Mouse – From Man to Mouse double LP.

There is also one Peter Blake cover that I’m not sure Peter Blake even knows about. I’ve tried to ask him a couple times but without success. It’s the cover to the Fall’s I’m Frank promotional 12″ (Fontana Records).

This was released in 1990 when Blake’s painting Nadia was in private ago. It was donated to the Rhode Island School of Design in 1995 and no one currently at the School knows of it being used on this cover. It’s my guess that Peter Blake doesn’t know either.

In 1986, Debbie Harry released her second album, Rockbird (Geffen Records, 1986), and the cover is generally ascribed to Andy Warhol. However, he didn’t design it; Stephen Sprouse was responsible. The photogrpah of Debbie Harry was taken by the Canadian photographer couple Guzman, not Warhol. However, Sprouse asked Warhol for permission to use his Camouflage pattern as the backdrop. There are four colour variations of the Rockbird cover.

Another cover often included among Warhol’s sleeves is the East Village Other’s Electric Newspaper (ESP Records, 1966). This cover was not by Warhol and his only involvement is the inclusion of his track Silence on the record itself. Other trsck were by Warhol associates Gerard Malanga and Ingrid Superstar but the cover was by East Village Other founder Walter Bowart.

Andy Warhol’s input on the design of Moondog’s The Story of Moondog album (Presige Records, 1957) was limited. The design calligraphy was dione by his mother Julia and Andy only clipped the text to fit the cover frame.

The cover of Thelonious Monk’s 1957 album Monk (Presige Records) was designed by Reid Miles with calligraphy again by Julia Warhola, but the cover is still considered a “Warhol cover”.

The fourth “Warhol cover” not designed by Warhol is the Ultra Violet LP from 1973 (Capitol Records). The front cver photo of Superstar Ultra VIolet (real name Isabelle Collin Dufresne) was taken by photographer Lee Kraft but she icluded a picture of a Polaroid portrait taken by and autographed by Warhol.

And finally there is Loredana Berté’s album Made in Italy CDG Records, 1981). Berté became friends with Warhol and is said to have made him spaghetti dinners while she lived in New York to learn English. He intended to design the cover for this album but it never happened and Christopher Makos took the cover photo and the cover is cretidited to the “Warhol Studio.” Makos also took Berté’s portrait for her next album Jazz but that doesn’t seem to qualify as a “Warhol cover”.

I’m sure there must be other covers in my collection that are incorrectly attributed to a specific designer but I can’t come up with any others just now.

Record sleeve art by artists I collect