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A Review of 2015 – Covers by Warhol, Blake, Voormann, Hirst & Banksy

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My collection of record cover art by my favourite five artists continues to grow. 2015 provided almost fifty new covers on record and CD. The statistics show there were:
– Twenty-seven covers with Andy Warhol‘s art (eleven on CD) and four covers that were Warhol related – more of those later.
– Five covers (well three really) with Klaus Voormann‘s art,
– Five covers with Peter Blake‘s art
– Three covers with Damien Hirst‘s art
– Two covers with Banksy‘s art
– One cover with Nat Finklestein‘s portrait of Andy Warhol
– One cover with images of diverse pop artists works.

ANDY WARHOL COVERS
There were four really rare covers that I got hold of in 2015. These were:
1. Ultra Violet‘s 1973 album “Ultra Violet“, which I bought in April,
2. A copy of The Rolling Stones‘ “Sticky Fingers” nicely autographed by Andy Warhol,
3. A copy of The Rolling Stones‘ “Love You Live” autographed on the inner spread by Andy Warhol and
4. Carlos Chavez‘ “A Program of Mexican Music” with the rarer blue cover.

Other vinyl releases that I found during the year included.
“Tennessee Williams reading from The Glass Menagerie” with the alternative colour variation, I also bought two copies of The Rolling Stones‘ “Sticky Fingers“, an original US release with the title printed over the belt at the top left of the cover and the 2015 reissue with the working zipper, but with the brass drawpull in the shape of John Paiste’s “tongue” design.
Other LPs included The Velvet Underground‘s “Psychedelic Sounds From the Gymnasium” and two versions of The Velvet Underground‘s “Velvet Underground & Nico” – one a picture disc and the other the limited edition “45th Anniversary edition” with the original torso rear cover picture and a peelable banana on the front. I found a UK pressing of Artie Shaw‘s “Any Old Time“. There was also another bootleg, “In 1966 There Was…“, a double album on red vinyl and the official release “The Velvet Underground Live – With Lou Reed“. I also got hold of a Rolling Stones bootleg “Lonely at the Top“, purported to be a limited edition of only 55 copies. I happened upon a modern box set of Margarita Madrigal‘s “Magic Key to Spanish” with the original book and two LPs in a custom box that, however did not use Warhol’s art anywhere.

I also bought some vinyl singles and EPs: John Lennon‘s “Imagine / It’s So Hard” and “Jealous Guy / Going Down on Love” 7-inch singles, Debbie Harry‘s “In Love With Love” 12-inch picture disc, Diana Ross‘s “So Close / Fool for Your Love” and Paul Anka‘s “Happier / Closing Doors” 7-inch singles.

The CDs included both the Q Magazine various artists releases entitled “Lennon Covered #1” and “Lennon Covered #2“. Other official CDs were The Museum of Modern Art‘s various artists release “Open Ends: Musical Exploration in New York 1967 to 2000“, a first CD re-issue of Moondog‘s “The Story of Moondog” on the Prestige label and David Jones & Bill Shute‘s collection of children’s songs “Widdecombe Fair” with beautiful Warhol art on the gatefold cover and the CD booklet. There was also a promotional CD-r collected by MPHO (MPHO Skeef) with DJ Beware called “MPHO and the Art of Pop, Vol 1” with cover art including pictures of record covers and art works by a variety of American Pop Artists.
Sinner that I am, I also bought six bootleg CDs, three by The Rolling Stones: “Marquee ’71 + Sticky Out“, “Rare Tracks +” and “Stereo Baby“. The latter a three CD set in a foldout cover.

The Warhol-related issues included the bootleg LP of Lou Reed’s & John Cale’s “Songs for Drella” LP featuring Nat Finklestein’s Warhol portrait with tambourine and John Cale‘s live recording of “Two Songs for Drella” with cover portrait of Warhol by Robert Mapplethorpe. I also found a cheap sealed copy of “15 Minutes – Homage to Andy Warhol“. This various artists release includes four LPs, three CDs and prints by the artists featured. I am not really clear as to exactly what relationship, apart from the title,  this box set has to Andy Warhol, though.

PETER BLAKE COVERS
This was the area where I expected least and found more than I had ever expected. 2015 turned out to be an exciting year! While there was only one official release with Peter Blake‘s art I found four bootleg CDs. The official release is Mark Knopfler‘s “Tracker” LP which has a picture of Peter Blake‘s painting “I Love You” on its inside spread.

The bootleg CDs were all of concerts by Eric Clapton, who’s 70th birthday was on 30th March 2015. To celebrate this Clapton performed two concerts at Madison Square Garden in New York on May 1st and 3rd – he had intended to play the second concert on May 2nd, but the venue was booked for the New York Rangers playoff. A bootleg tripple CD was released on the Mid Valley label with the complete playlists from both nights entitled “Eric Clapton–Madison Square Garden 2015 – 70th Birthday Celebration” with a cover picture of Eric Clapton painted by Sir Peter Blake earlier in the year. Clapton followed up with seven concerts at London’s Royal Albert Hall between 14th and 23rd May. These concerts were also recorded and released in a 14 CD called “Eric Clapton–Royal Albert Hall 2015” set by Mid Valley using the same cover portrait of Eric Clapton. I managed to find the programme from both concerts on Ebay and Blake’s portrait of Eric Clapton is on both front and rear covers.
Finding these two bootlegs inspired me to look for other bootlegs of Eric Clapton’s live shows. I was amazed to find that what appears to be all of his live appearances – at least since the 1980s – seem to be available on bootlegs. However, only two of the hundreds available appeared to use Peter Blake‘s art. These are CDs of the first and fourth nights of Clapton‘s 1991 “24 Nights” series of concerts at The Royal Albert Hall. So I had to chase those, too.

KLAUS VOORMANN COVERS
I have several times thought that I had collected all of Voormann’s covers but I am continuously proved wrong. 2015 was no exception. The first cover I discovered was Harry Nilsson‘s 1982 LP “Flash Harry“, which has a 5 x 5 cm line drawing of Harry by Klaus Voormann on the rear cover. Then towards the end of the year I saw a copy of 10″ EP by Paddy, Klaus & Gibson called, not unsurprisingly “Paddy, Klaus & Gibson“. These three were the remaining members of Voormann‘s group The Eyes when guitarist/vocalist John Frankland left the band. The trio recorded three singles and it is these six songs that make up this EP. The record is a private pressing organised by orthopaedic surgeon Dr Dieter Hoffmann and only 300 copies were pressed, 100 on red vinyl, 100 on clear vinyl and 100 on back vinyl. In order to support this great effort, I ordered one copy of each vinyl colour! There is Japanese glamrock band called GLAY and Klaus drew the cover image for their 2015 CD “Music Life“.

There was, however, some not so good news – Thorsten Knublauch, from whom I had bought one of the copies of the Paddy, Klaus & Gibson 10″ – told me about a record with cover art by Klaus Voormann that I had never heard of. The record is a recording of a jazz radio programme. The cover picture is of a man lying in a hospital bed connected to drip bottles. The title is “Wer nie im Bett Programm gemacht“, or something like that. So far I haven’t been able to find a copy… So my Klaus Voormann collection is still not complete!

DAMIEN HIRST COVERS
I was surprised to see two promotional folders for Dave Stewart‘s 1992 “Heart of Stone” single appear on Ebay at ridiculously inflated prices. They didn’t sell and eventually the price came down to affordable levels when I hopped in. The CD singles came in A5 folders with slightly different texts and different catalogue numbers – explaining why I had to have both. In addition I found a promotional copy of the The Hours “Narcissus Road” CD with a cover that I had not seen before.

BANKSY’S COVER ART
There do not seem to have been any new record or CD covers that use Banksy’s cover art since 2008. I did manage to get hold of one version of Blur‘s “Think Tank” CD in a box set with postcards. Then in the last days of December I saw a copy of a test pressing of Junichi Masuda’s LP “Pokémon” with a hand sprayed image of Banksy’s “Flower Thrower” but with a coloured ball substituted for the flowers. There are purportedly on 100 copies of this test pressing and I managed to get one relatively cheap-

So, another successful year’s collecting. But I still guess that none of my collections are complete yet. So I look forward to 2016.

Klaus Voormann's Record Cover Art, Record collecting

A New Klaus Voormann Record Cover – And An Old One I Didn’t Know Existed

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The Internet is a fantastic research tool for collectors. One doesn’t have to buy anything but it provides a wealth of databases from which to search. Researching record covers has been made so much easier thanks to record databases such as Discogs, Musicstack and others. Even Ebay and Etsy are great databases to use in searches.

I researched my post on Kate Moss on record covers entirely via the Internet. I owned three covers with Kate Moss’s portrait and bought a fourth as I found it available despite apparently being very rare. I have even researched Roy Lichtenstein‘s art on record sleeves via Ebay and Discogs without buying a single cover.

So, despite a smug feeling that I already had ALL his record covers, I was doing my usual weekly search for Klaus Voormann’s record cover art a couple of weeks ago when a new cover appeared. A record by a group which went by the (not so lyrical) name of Paddy, Klaus & Gibson.

Paddy, Klaus & Gibson's 10
Paddy, Klaus & Gibson’s 10″ EP.

A copy was for sale on http://www.ebay.de and I jumped at the chance. It turned out that the seller was famous German Thorsten Knublauch, collector of Beatles material from their Hamburg days and author of books on the Fab Four. He told me that fellow Beatles expert Dieter Hoffmann had produced this compilation album to document an early phase in Klaus Voormann‘s musical career.

The following information comes from a blog post by Thorsten Knublauch reviewing the album (see: http://wogew.blogspot.de/2015/02/paddy-klaus-gibson.html). Klaus Voormann had bought ex-Beatle Stuart Sutcliffe‘s Höfner bass when he left the band and hopped into a band together with Paddy Chambers (guitar) and John Frankland (vocals, guitar) and Gibson Kemp (drums) called The Eyes. The Eyes released two singles and Klaus Voormann drew a band portrait on their “She / Peanut Butter” single cover. Paddy Chambers had previously been a member of legendary Liverpool band The Big Three, Gibson Kemp (who later married Astrid Kirchherr) has been drummer for The Hurricanes and John Frankland who had been a member of Kingsize Taylor & The Dominoes.

The Eyes
The Eyes “She / Peanut Butter” single cover drawn by Klaus Voormann.

And, yes, it’s the same drawing on the cover of the “Paddy, Klaus & Gibson” album, but with John Frankland (he in the cap peering over Gibson’s head) removed as he had left the band. Klaus Voormann had approved the revised cover design.

The “Paddy, Klaus & Gibson” album was produced by Dieter Hoffmann to collect the six tracks released by the trio in 1965-1966. He produced 300 copies – 100 copies each on black, clear and read vinyl. After contacting Dieter – a fellow medical doctor – I also bought the black and red vinyl versions to complete the collection.

So, once again I started to congratulate myself on “completing” my collection of Klaus Voorman record cover art when Thorsten Knublauch mentioned an early jazz album that Klaus had done a cover drawing for, much in the same style as his series for the “Pioneers of Jazz” series on the Coral Record label. The record, a radio broadcast recording, has the impossible title “Wer noch nie im Bett Radio gemacht hat“, which he translated as “Who never ever did radio in bed“. He even had a picture of the cover – a patient in a hosital bed hooked up to drop bottles.

The cover of Klaus Voormann's early Jazz LP
The cover of Klaus Voormann’s early Jazz LP “Wer noch nie im Bett Radio gemacht hat”.

Well, I really have to do some serious research to find a copy of this, not only because it’s a Klaus Voormann cover, but because I really love the medical subject! So, dear readers, please excuse me if I do not post any further posts for the foreseeable future – I’ll be out looking for this album.

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A review of 2014 – my collections grow

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Readers of this blog will by now know that it deals with collecting record cover art by five designers

  1.     Andy Warhol
    2. Peter Blake
    3. Klaus Voormann
    4. Damien Hirst
    5. Banksy

When I sat down to put my thoughts together on the past year’s collecting I could not immediately recall any real high points. Then I started to look through my list of acquisitions and soon saw that 2014 had been another successful year. Let’s take things in order.

Andy Warhol
Well, I’ve managed to add twenty-one covers to my collection of Andy Warhol sleeves – surprisingly, the majority by The Rolling Stones. I have added three variations of the “Emotional Tattoo” bootleg cover. Frank Edwards very kindly sent me his extra copy of the 1983 version on orange vinyl in exchange for a set of “Giant Size $1.57 Each” covers and I bought the two variations of the 2014 numbered reissues of the album, one on black and the other on green vinyl.

Early in the year I had decided to go for the Rolling Stones singles with variations on the “Sticky Fingers” cover art. I had previously not been interested in singles or EPs but the wonderful RCA and RCA Camden covers with Warhol art have changed my mind. Anyway, fellow Warhol Cover Collectors Club member Guy Minnebach had tipped me off about the Mexican “Brown Sugar” singles (entitled “Azucar Morena” in Spanish). One was a two-track single and the other a three-track EP that happened to pop up on Ebay soon after he had told me about them.

The Rolling Stones “Azucar Morena” single in a fold out cover.

Rolling Stones “Azucar Morena” EP.

Then I had to add the original “Brown Sugar / Bitch / Let It Rock” single and a German pressing of the single, both of which used the “Sticky Fingers” rear cover photo on their rear covers. I also found a copy of the “Brown Sugar” shaped picture disc single to complete the set.

“Brown Sugar / Bitch” picture disc single.

When it comes to “classic” Warhol covers, I – like most collectors of Warhol’s cover art – had been looking for a cheap copy of the Lew White “Melodic Magic” EP. Well, I found the single on Discogs for $3.86 plus $12 shipping. Unfortunately, the record had no cover, but I bought another RCA Camden EP with the same rear cover list of other artists on the Camden label and peeled off the cover slick and stuck a Lew White cover slick in its place and – wonder of wonders – I have the Lew White EP, indistinguishable from the real thing – as it IS the real thing (almost) and all for about $40!

The next “classic” cover I managed to get hold of was the “Alexander Nevsky” re-issue sleeve with the green colour blocks. I already had both the original “blue” and the re-issue “orange” covers. Now all I need to find is the “pink” cover variation.

My three “Alexander Nevsky” covers.

When I first started to seriously collect Andy Warhol’s record cover art I saw Wilhelm Loibner’s “Ballet From Vienna” listed as a Warhol cover. The cover is a solarised photo credited to William Hughes. The rear cover has no image. Guy Minnebach informed me that the original copies of this LP had an inner sleeve with Warhol’s drawing of part of an orchestra, the same image as used o the cover of “4 Divertimenti”. The “Ballet From Vienna” cover appears on Ebay with monotonous regularity, but almost NEVER with the inner sleeve. However, one did turn up advertised from Spain in mint condition so I added it to my collection.

“Ballet From Vienna” Front of inner sleeve and front cover.

The other Warhol covers I managed to find included Diana Ross’ “Muscles” and “So Close” seven-inch singles and Billy Squier’s “Everybody Wants You” single.

And then there was an unusual CD that came up on Ebay in August. It was a Japanese promotional double CD with a line drawing of an ear and some arrows with the sole word “ear” beside the drawing. The handwriting was so like Andy Warhol’s that I took a chance and bought the set. Guy Minnebach immediately recognised the drawing as one of a series in a Warhol portfolio entitled “Playbook of you S Bruce 2:30-4:00”.

The other covers with Warhol art were two Velvet Underground bootlegs; “NYC” and “Orange Disaster” which both had pictures from Warhol’s Deaths and Disaster prints.

Peter Blake

There were no new record sleeve designs by Sir Peter Blake in 2014 but one old one did surface – the rejected cover for the group Landscape’s 1982 album “Manhattan Boogie-Woogie”. I saw an art gallery advert for a 2009 silkscreen of the cover image. I managed to find a high-resolution copy of the image and could resize it to LP-format and get several slicks printed. I stuck one slick of the front cover to one of the rear cover from the issued album and there was (my version of) the original cover restored.

Klaus Voormann

2014 saw many additions to my Voormann collection. The first cover I found was the last cover needed to complete my set of all twenty “Pioneers of Jazz” EPs. I had managed to find nineteen previously and been searching the Internet for Volume 18, the only one I lacked. In February I finally found it.

The next cover I found was George Harrison’s “When We Was Fab” promo box with the seven inch single. I already had the twelve-inch version and this was a nice addition. I felt I had just about completed my Voormann collection when I found some purely German releases: “Stinker” LP and seven inch single “von Drüben” by Marius Müller-Westernhagen.

Klaus Voormann’s first official cover was for a band called The Typhoons about which I have failed to find any information. Klaus has informed me that he never met the band and could only say that it was a German combo active in the early sixties. Heliodor records had released their cover of “Walk… Don’t Run”, the old Ventures hit. I had made a copy of the cover from an image on Klaus Voormann’s portfolio and I have seen a cover in poor condition sell on Ebay for over €100 but never seen the record until one turned up without the cover. So, true to form I bought the single to live in the cover I had made. I’m still looking for a proper cover…

I had already bought Klaus Voormann’s album “A Sideman’s Journey” on LP with a limited edition poster and eyed the limited edition box set, which included the album on CD, a DVD of the making of the album, a book of drawings and the poster – signed by Klaus. The box was expensive and I felt I did not really need it until a second-hand copy came up for half the normal price.

My friend, gallery-owner Daniel Brant found two copies of Voormann’s poster of John Lennon and Paul McCartney eating breakfast in the Abbey Road canteen during the “Revolver” sessions and he let me have a copy.

 

The last item needed to complete my Voormann collection was the CD of covers entitled “A Guide to Modern Country Living” by The Twang. There is, however, one cover that has only been released as a digital download and that is “Picasso’s Party” by a band called The Dogs of Bali. I have the download.

So, with the exception of a proper cover for the “Walk… Don’t Run” single, my Klaus Voormann Collection seems complete – at least until Klaus produces more cover designs.

Damien Hirst

This has probably been the year when I have obtained the largest number of Damien Hirst covers. There were three covers for Babyshambles, including the LP “Prequel to the Sequel” and the two singles from the album, “Nothing Comes From Nothing” and “Fall From Grace”.

Next was The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ LP “I’m With You” with the cover picture of a fly on a medicine capsule. Then Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros promo CD “Tony Adams (The Morning Sun)” and the very rare twelve inch EP “Yalla Yalla”. Somehow, Thirty Seconds to Mars had been allowed to use one of Damien Hirst’s spot paintings for the cover of their CD “Love, Lust, Faith + Dreams”. I got hold of the limited edition box set of the album thinking the box and LP cover were also designed by Damien Hirst – but they aren’t! However, the box set did include a book with the spot painting on the cover. I had to get the CD as well for completeness. A seller in Germany advertised a twelve-inch EP of Dave Stewart’s “Heart of Stone (The Dance Mixes)” which I had never heard of. I could not find a copy elsewhere so I bought his expensive copy. Then I found out there was another remix EP of “Heart of Stone (The Sure Is Pure Remixes)”. That one was easy to find and did not cost an arm and a leg.

My final Damien Hirst find for the year was the USB promotional version of The Hours’ “See the Light” album. A nice little skull-shaped USB stick.

Banksy

I have not been able to find any new records with Banksy images in 2014. My collection of Bansky records has been touring Sweden throughout the year and I sincerely hope that they will return home in 2015.

Meanwhile, I wish all my readers a Happy and Prosperous New Year – and wish you all success with your collecting in 2015.

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At last I have completed my collections of Klaus Voormann’s and Damien Hirst’s record cover art.

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Most of my posts on this blog have been about Andy Warhol’s record cover art. However, I also collect record cover art by other designers. Currently these include Sir Peter Blake, Klaus Voormann and Damien Hirst and Banksy. I have sold my collection of Vaughan Oliver/V23 and most of my Martin Kann collection to be able to concentrate on these five designers, who have one thing in common – their production is fairly limited, which makes collecting all the record covers designed by each of them possible. Thus Andy Warhol is known to have designed almost 100 covers – although many records and CD use Andy Warhol’s art on their covers in addition to the ones he had a hand in. Klaus Voormann has thus far designed or illustrated sixty-two commercially released covers. Banksy has designed twenty covers and a further twenty-nine have used his images without his authorisation. Sir Peter Blake has thus far produced only 23 covers and Damien Hirst has just passed this total with twenty-four covers.

This month I completed both my Klaus Voormann and Damien Hirst collections. I found that when I sold my record collection one year ago I parted with my copy of Harry Nilsson’s “Sandman” LP which has Klaus Voormann’s maritime drawing on its inner spread.

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I found a replacement copy for SEK 80 (about USD 11) at a record store a short bus ride from my home. Accross the road was another secondhand record shop where I found a copy of Billy Squire’s “Emotions in Motion” single with cover design that uses a detail of Andy Warhol’s Squier portrait (for SEK 10, or about USD 1.50). So now I have all of Klaus Voormann’s sixty-two commercially released covers. I recommend readers to view his official site (www.voormann.com) to see some covers that he designed for his own amusement.)

I know I should have bought it when it first came out in 2011, but I didn’t; so I have been looking for a copy of Red Hot Chili Pepper’s album “I’m With You” and various record shops in Stockholm have told me that it no longer available. But Stefan at Pet Sounds said he could order me a copy and promptly did so. It cost me SEK 450 (USD 62) but I had to have it to complete my Damien Hirst collection. It is one of Hirst’s best covers, combining his love of pharmaceuticals with his early fixation with death and decay. The front of this gatefold cover pictures a house fly (Musca domestica) resting on a coloured medicine capsule.

 

The record labels have the fly feeding on a blue tablet (on two labels), and the fly on a white tablet (on one) and (on the fourth label) the fly lies on its back, apparently dead. The inner spread shows only a very faint splodge on the right hand side, that suggests where the fly had been swatted. I like this cover!

This week I returned to Stockholm’s Spritmuseum to revisit the ArtPop exhibition and took my camera with me. There is a wall of Damien Hirst’s record covers including Babyshambles’ “Sequel to the Prequel” LP, a couple of singles by The Hours and Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros’ “Art Pop & the X-ray Style” album together with Dave Stewart’s “Heart of Stone” 12″ single cover.

 

 

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New covers and things by Klaus Voormann, Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons

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Most of my posts have been about record covers bearing Andy Warhol’s art. But, just as a reminder, I also collect record cover art by four other artists. I have an almost complete collection of Damien Hirst’s record covers, including the highly collectible “Use Money, Cheat Death” one-sided single released on his own label.

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This image first appeared on the cover of the February 2008 number of TAR Magazine. The record was released on white vinyl in a numbered edition of 666 copies. Damien Hirst’s most recent covers are for the British band Babyshambles’ 2013 releases “Sequel to the Prequel” (LP) and (so far) the two vinyl singles from the album “Nothing Comes from Nothing” and “Fall From Grace”:

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These covers all show examples of Damien Hirst’s spin paintings.

My friend Daniel Brant at the A and D Gallery in London, knows I collect Klaus Voormann’s record cover art and he recently induced me to buy a poster by Klaus Voormann that I had never seen before. It is a print of a drawing of Paul McCartney and John Lennon in the canteen at Abbey Road during the recording of “Revolver”:

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While on the subject of Klaus Voormann – I have a 12″ single of George Harrison’s single “When We Was Fab” from 1988. And just a few days ago I stumbled on the promotional issue of this release which comes in a limited edition box with a poster and a card, which I had not seen before, so I snapped it up! The illustration of the front of the box, and on the single itself, is another fine Voormann drawing – somewhat in the “Revolver” style.

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Fellow Warhol Cover Collectors Club member Kevin Kinney suggested I get hold of Lady Gaga’s 2013 album “ArtPop”, whose cover was designed and photgraphed by Jeff Koons. Now I do not collect Koons’ covers but – because of the ArtPop exhibition currently on show in Stockholm – I decided I would buy this album.

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This is the cover’s inner spread with photographer Koons photographing Lady Gaga.

Andy Warhol, Exhibitions, Music posters

A couple of interesting posters and an early catalogue

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I’ve divested myself of the majority of my concert and art posters but have kept a few that I particularly like. When I sold my record and poster collection, the buyers, knowing that I collect Klaus Voormann’s record cover art promised me a signed, numbered edition of Klaus Voormann’s portrait of John Lennon. I collected it the other day.

Signed limited edition poster: An Evening with Music of John Lennon.
Signed limited edition poster: An Evening with Music of John Lennon.

It joins my signed Banana poster from 1981-2. Nationalmuseum in Stockholm presented a huge exhibition of record cover art from 27th October 1981 – 17th January 1982. This was the year before the CD was introduced so all covers were of vinyl releases. I still have the exhibition catalogue from the Nationalmuseum’s exhibition – which has the Velvet Underground & Nico LP design on its cover. The catalogue has an eight page review of Warhol’s cover art and pictures six covers (two Kenny Burrell, one Johnny Griffin, Two Rolling Stones and – the obligatory – Velvet Underground & Nico) written by Bo Nilsson. This must be the first anaytical review of Warhol’s record cover art that I ever read. Of course, only a few warhol covers were recognised in 1981, so the choice of these six is hardly surprising.

I felt that the covers in the exhibition were arranged rather haphazardly and I wrote a three-page letter to Nationalmuseum suggesting how the covers could have been better presented. I did not expect a reply, but one came by return informing me that the exhibition was moving to Umeå’s Bildmuseum and that the museum would contact me to discuss which covers should be included. They did, too! and about thirty of my covers were included in the Umeå exhibition.

Catalogue from Nationalmuseum's exhibition of record cover art.
Catalogue from Nationalmuseum’s exhibition of record cover art.
Theposter from Stockholm's Nationalmuseum's record cover art exhibition 1981-1982.
Theposter from Stockholm’s Nationalmuseum’s record cover art exhibition 1981-1982.

In 2008, as discussions about putting on the “Happy Birthday Andy Warhol” exhibition in Piteå were underway a copy of the poster for the Nationalmuseum’s record cover exhibition came up for sale. This was a one-off and beautifully signed by Andy Warhol in pencil. So it was included in the Piteå exhibition and has since then hung on my wall.