Here’s another artist whose record cover art I don’t really collect. But as you probably know by now I do have a penchant for Pop Art and I put Ed Ruscha in that class. However… I did pick up the Beatles’ Now and Then / Love Me Do single on seven- and twelve-inch vinyl, so I have the beginnings of an Ed Ruscha collection.
Yesterday (18th May, 2025), I went to Stockholm’s Wetterling Gallery to see the Ed Ruscha exhibiton Figure It there and was honoured to be given a guided tour by Björn Wetterling himself. He also dug around for a copy of the exhibiiton catalogue which is housed in a twelve-inch record sleeve. Thus I have two Ed Ruscha record covers, so I decided to see what other covers he has made.
First off, there’s Paul McCartney‘s 2020 album McCartney III, which wasn’t designed by Ruscha but he provided the typography on the front cover. Photography was by Mary McCartney, so Paul kept that in the family.
The first cover Ruscha painted was for Mason Williams ‘1969 album Music.
2. Ruscha did the title on the cover of Talking Heads‘ 1992 compilation album Sand in the Vaseline. The cover art, however, is credited to Frank Olinsky and Manhattan Design.
3. Van Dyke Parks released a seven-inch single in 2011 called Dreaming of Paris / Wedding in Madagascar (Faranaina) and used a photo of Ruscha’s Paris print on the cover.
4. The two remaining memebers of the Beatles, with the help of AI reworked John Lennon‘s demo of Now and Then and in 2020 released it as a single on seven-, ten-, and twelve-inch vinyl coupled with a Giles Martin remastered version of the Beatles‘ first single Love Me Do. This time Ruscha designed the cover.
5. In 2023, Interscope Records celebrated its thirtieth anniversary and invited several “fine” artists to reimagine the cover art of many of the label’s back catalogue. Damien Hirst reimagined twelve of Eminem‘s covers and Richard Prince reimagined Nine Inch Nails‘ The Downward Spiral cover. Ed Ruscha reimagined 2Pac‘s All Eyez on Me album from 1996. There were two versions; a picture disc version in a ‘limited’ edition of 500 copies and a black vinyl edition of 100 copies that included a giclee print of the cover art signed by Ruscha. The picture disc edition sold for USD 100 and the 100 copy edition for USD 2,500!
6. Dead End. This is the cover from the Wetterling Gallery‘s recent Ed Ruscha exhibition. The Dead End print looks like it’s made of metal but it is actually a multi-layered print on hand-made paper. The typeface is Ruscha‘s typical Boy Scout Utility Modern with its squared off, geometric letter forms. Insted of a record, there is a card insert along with the actual catalogue.
I haven’t been able to find any more Ed Ruscha covers so I might be tempted to try to collect the few that I don’t actually have.
I don’t normally write about record cover artists that I don’t collect. However, A friend has nagged me about William Eggleston’s covers and I felt I had to look into them.
Eggleston, born July 27th, 1939 in Memphis, Tennessee, was apparently an introverted child who his mother described as “a brilliant but strange boy”. He taught himself to play the piano and drawing. He was drawn to visual media and collected postcards and cut out pictures from magazines. Eggleston first became intrested in photography while at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and bought his first camera after a friend who recognised his fascination with visual imagery and his interest in mechanics suggested he buy a camera.
He turned to colour photography and in 1976 the Museum of Modern Art organised the first exhibion of Eggleston’s photographs–an exhibition that for the first time showed colour photographs. This seminal show was accompanied by the Catalogue Willim Eggleston’s Guide and showeed, for the first time, that colour photography could be raised to the level of art. Two of the photos in this book would turn up on record covers.
Eggleston has had many impressive exhibitions since.
Record covers
1. Eggleston‘s first record cover image was on Big Star’s album Radio City, released in 1974. The cover featured Eggleston’s 1973 photograph Red Ceiling. Alex Chilton (1950-2010) was a founder member of Big Star. Eggleston was a good friend of Chilton’s parents and Alex’s father championed Eggleston’s work. Alex knew him well and also admired his work, so it was natural to ask Eggleston for an image for Big Star‘s album, In addition Eggleston was later to play piano on Nature Boy, one of Big Star‘s songs on their third album.
2. Alex Chilton‘s 1979 album Like Flies on Sherbert features Eggleston’s Dolls on a. Cadillac photo from his Los Alamos series made between 1965 and 1974. Again, Chilton asked his friend for a suitable cover image.
3. Green on Red, from Tucson, Arizona, was a quartet made up of Dan Stuart, Jack Waterson, Chris Cacavas and Chuck Prophet. The band released their fourth long player Here. Come the Snakes in 1988 with Egglesgon’s Near the River at Greenville, Mississipi from 1975 on the cover.
4. Primal Scream went to Ardent Studio in Memphis to record Rocks and recorded their 1992 EP Dixie Narco there.Intgerestingly, Big Star had recorded Radio City at Ardent studio and Alex Chiltern’s mother had an art gallery in Memphis showinfg Eggleston’s photography. It seems likely that Primal Scream would have been exopsed to Eggleston’s work during that visit to Memphis and resulted in the band using four of Eggleston’s photos on record sleeves.
5. Another Big Star album came out in 1993 when the re-formed band made up of Alex Chilton, Jody Stephens and new recruits Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow from the Posies released Live at Missouri University. Once again Chilton turned to Eggleston for a cover image. The picture of a ceiling fan is reminicent of the Red Ceiling photo on the band’s Radio City cover. the photo is titled Washington D.C:, 1970.
6. The following year (1994) Primal Scream used a cropped version of Eggleston’s Troubled Waters on their 1994 Give Out But Don’t Give Up album. According to Primal Scream the image of a Confederate Flag was a reference to the fact that the band had been to the South to Memphis to record with legendary producer Tom Dowd.
7. Gimmer Nicholson moved in the same Memphis circles as Eggleston and recorded his Christopher Idyll album in 1968, produced by Terry Μanning, a photographer and friend of Eggleston. Eggleston had helped edit the photography on Mannings’s own 1970 album Home Sweet Home. Nicholson‘s Christopher Idyll was first released as a limited edition LP in 1981 and later as a CD in 1994.
8. The title of Jimmy Eat World‘s 2001 album Bleed American echoes the title of Eggleton’s photo, which is also from the Los Alamos series (1965-1974). The photo shows sports trophies on top of a cigarette vending machine supposed to rerpresent “the fragilityof success.”
9. The photo on thee cover of The Derek Trucks Band‘s Soul Serenade album is Eggleston’s Untitled (Near Minter City and Glendora, Mississippi) from 1970 and is the first to come from the William Eggleston Guide book.I haven’t been able to establish a direct connection between the band and Eggleston, but the fact that the band comes from the American South makes using a photo from a fellow southener (Eggleston) logical.
10. Chuck Prophet, as previously mentioned, was previously a member of Green on Red and was a confirmed Eggelston fan. His Age of Miracles album was released in 2004. The photo, from 1975, was of Eggleston’s friend Martha Hare spaced out on half a Qualude taken in Memphis. It would turn up again on Primal Scream‘s 2006 single Country Girl.
11. Primal Scream seem to like Eggleston’s work as the band released two singles in 2006 with cover photos by him. Here’s the cover of Country Girl. The other was Dolls. (see No. 12)
12. David Berman, formed the Silver Jews in New York together with Stephen Malkmus and Bob Nastanovich from Pavement in 1989. Berman was living in Memphis when the band’s Tanglewood Numbers came out in 2005 and he felt that one of Eggleston’s photos from Memphis suited the album’s cover.
13. The second Primal Scream single from 2006 was Dolls with Eggleston’s Untitled, Memphis, 1972-73 photo on the cover. I’m not sure who the model was on this one.
14. It is unclear why Joanna Newsom decided to use a modified version of Eggleston’s Kenya, 1980 photo on the cover of her 2007 release Joanna Newsom and Ys Street Band E.P. The cover shows a rotated version of the original photo. Eggleston’s original has the branch sticking out from the left of the picture. The record’s title is supposed to be a play on Bruce Springsteen’s E. Street Band.
15. Spoon, a band from Austin, Texas, released their seventh album, Transference, in 2010 and selected Eggleston’s photo of his nephew from his Sumner, Mississippi, series. This photo was also included in the 1976 MoMa exhibition of Eggleston’s owork and included in the exhibition catalogue.
16. 2017 William Eggelston’s Music, his first release of his own musical improvisations with two tracks by well-known composers; Lerner & Loewe‘s On The Street Where You Live and Gilbert & Sullivan’s Tit Willow.
17. Eggleston‘s second full-length recording came out in 2023, when he was 84 years old! This album contained one of his own improvisations and five “standards”; Ol’ Man River, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,Over the Rainbow, That’s Some Robert Burns and Onward Christian Soldiers (which occupies the whole of side two. The title, 512, comes from the flat where he recorded the album,
18. J. Spaceman (Jason Pierce) and John Coxon, part of Spiritualized, one of my favourite bands, released a double album entitled Music for William Eggleston’s Stranded in Canton on 18th October 2024. They first performed the musical score in a show at the Barbican Gallery in 2015 but the record wasn’t released until nearly ten years later. Stranded in Canton is Eggleston’s 1974 raw Memphis film shot in bars and on street corners and showing Eggleton’s friends carousing, playing music and firing pistols into the night sky.
The album cover shows stills from the film rather than separate photographs. I have the standard edition but there is a deluxe white vinyl version with extra photos and a booklet and a different cover image (see the lower picture.)
I would advise anyone who wants to start collection any designer’s, illustrator’s or photographer’s record cover for simpliccity’s sake choose one with a maximum of, say, 200 covers to collect. That would rule out the likes of Alex Steinweiss (who has been estimated to have produced over 2,500 covers) or Anton Corbijn or even Rob Jones (I started collecting his covers but gave up), who designs many covers for Jack White’s Third Man Records.
I started collecting record covers by the artist known as Banksy–whoever he may be–in around 2005 not thinking there would be too many to find. So far my collection includes 180 items, admittedly with a few doubles, but I’m getting dangerously near the 200 cover limit!
Here’s my list as of May 2025. I make no claim that it is complwete. One can always find covers with minor details with Banksy art.
Artist–Title–Format–Label–Cat No. –Year Released
1. Mother Samosa[1]— The Fairground of Fear — Printers proof of cassette inlay — Mother Samosa — 1993
2. Mother Samosa* — Oh My God It’s Cheeky Clown — Printers proof of cassette inlay — Mother Samosa –1994
3. Revolucion X--Canciones electorales–Cassette — Not on label — 1997 (?)
4. One Cut — Cut Commander — 12” — Hombre Records — MEX 006 1998
5. Capoeira Twins — 4 x 3 / Truth Will Out — 12” promo — Blowpop Records — BLOWP 001 1999
6. One Cut — Hombre Mix — CD — Hombre Records — 666017004020 (CDX002) — 1999
7. Various Artists compilation — The Next XI — Sleazenation No 2, Sept 1999 — Wall of Sound — IMPRESS SN 01 — 1999
8. One Cut — Grand Theft Audio — Double LP — Hombre Records MEX 024 — 2000
9. One Cut — Grand Theft Audio Sampler — 12” promo — Hombre Records — MEX 025 — 2000
10. One Cut — Mr X / Rhythm Geometry — 12” — Hombre Records — MEX 029 — 2000
11. One Cut — Underground Terror Tactics — 12” — Hombre Records — MEX 016 — 2000
12. One Cut — Armour Plated, X-Rated — CD promo — Hombré Records — MEX 024cd — 2000
13. Monk & Canatella — Do Community Service — CD — Telstar Records — TDC 3112 — 2000
14. Various Artists — We Love You… So Love Us — LP — Wall of Sound AMOUR 1 — LP 2000
15. Various Artists — We Love You… So Love Us — CD — Wall of Sound — 72438491421 (AMOUR1CD) — 2000
16. Dynamic Duo / Nasty P — Skateboards — CD promo — Turntable Masochists — 2000
17. Dynamic Duo — Styles by the Dozen — 12” — Complex Broad — CB001 — 2000
18. Various Artists — Monkeys With Car Keys — CD — Natural Born Productions — 2000?
19. The Promise — Believer — Red vinyl LP — Deathwish — DW124 2022-07-15.
176. The New York Folk Music Hall of Fame–Eternal Bridges: Songs of Peace, Hope & Freedom–CD–NYFMHoF–8,88296E–2023
177. Fist2Fist–Hold the Gun–CD EP–Not on label–none–year?
I know you would like to see pictures of each release but there just isn’t time to add them. If I have missed any important releases, please feel free to cotact me in the Comments and I’ll try to add them.