Tag Archives: The Strokes

Uncategorized

The New Abnormal — The Cover Art of The Strokes.

2 Comments

When LPs were first invented in 1948, the covers weren’t terribly exciting. By the mid fifties many classical releases had chosen to borrow classical paintings for cover images. At the same time graphic designers were making original art for record covers; people like Alex Steinweiss, Jim Flora , Neil Fujita, Andy Warhol, and Reid Miles among others. Records of popular music, though, mainly relied on photographs of the bands or singers. By the mid sixties, particularly in Britain, many musicians in up-and-coming bands had an art school background and insisted on designing their own covers. Design companies, some independent and some part of record companies were common by the 1980s. Hipgnosis is probably the most famous independent design company, record labels like Factory (Peter Saville), 4AD (Vaughan Oliver, Nigel Grierson and Chris Bigg) and Fetish (Neville Brody) had their own in house designers. And so borrowed art sort of disappeared from record covers.

But suddenly, in 2001, the Strokes burst in on the music scene. And the cover of their first album “s This It”caused an immediate controversy. Julian Casablancas had chosen Colin Lane’s photo of Lane’s then girlfriend’s right hip with her resting her black-gloved hand on her rear end as the cover art. Lane, who only took about ten Polaroids in this session, has explained that he was just trying to take a sexy picture. The Chanel glove had been left behind from an earlier photo shoot and Lane just asked his. girlfriend to put it on. A year or so later, Casablancas was going through Lane’s portfolio and was immediately taken with the photo.

But this was considered too daring for the US market. It was feared that Walmart and K-Mart might nor stock such a ‘daring’ cover. So Julian Casablancas contacted RCA product manager Ryan Gentles and asked to replace the photo with a bright, psychedelic graphic. The graphic is actually a zoomed-in photograph of subatomic particle tracks inside a liquid hydrogen bubble chamber taken by Patrice Loiez.

This was the third album to use the same photo! First was Bruce BecVor on his 1988 album “The Nature of Things”, and two years later Prince used bits of it on the cover of “Graffiti Bridge”.

Bruce Becvor’s The Nature of Things ,Prince’s Graffiti Bridge and the Strokes’ U.K & Europe cover for: Is This It”.

The cover of Is This Is as Julian Casablancas intended.

The Is This It album was planned to be released in October 2001, but because of the September 11 attack on New York, the band withdrew the New York City Cops track from the US album and replaced it with “When It Started”.

For Room on Fire“, the Strokes’ second album from 2003, Casablancas chose two widely different artworks from two artists from the same generation, Peter Phillips (1939-2025) and Anselm Kiefer (born 1945). The front cover of Room on Fire shows Phillips’ 1961 painting War/Game. while the album’s rear cover has Kiefer’s(literally: Germany’s spiritual heroes) from 1973. Both these works are anti-war paintings.

The “Fire” and Wood Themes: Room on Fire is an album deeply rooted in anxiety, relationship friction, and internal intensity. Casablancas wanted the artwork to literally look like it was “on fire” or radiating heat.

The Role of the Kiefer Painting: Anselm Kiefer’s Deutschlands Geisteshelden depicts a vast, oppressive, wooden hall—resembling a grand hunting lodge or a Nordic hall—with burning torches lighting up the pillars. According to forum discussions among fans on Reddit, the band chose to frame and tint the image so that the fiery, glowing tones matched the “Room on Fire” motif perfectly. The wooden textures of the hall also mirrored the polished wood textures found in Peter Phillips’ front cover painting, unifying the album’s presentation. [1, 2]

Phillips, a founding member of the British pop art movement, was a contemporary of David Hockney and R. B: Kitaj at the Royal College of Art and was one of four pop artists featured in the B.B.C.’s Monitor programme “Pop Goes the Easel” in March 1962, together with Peter Blake, Pauline Boty and Derek Boshier.

Here’s Phillips’ painting currently in the Buffalo AKG Art Museum.

First Impressions of Earth, released in 2005, had an even more abstract cover. Casablancas decided to give all the Strokes covers after Is This It more abstract covers, and this album has a 1968 painting Ohne Titel by Lothar Quinte, a German avant-garde artist, while the rear cover is Matematik der Intuition (Hommage á ARP) by Günther Fruhtrunk from 1961. The record labels have designs by Fornacetti and the trifold poster has fifteen panels, thirteen of which give a song’s lyrics on an artwork background. Only Evening Sun (track 13, co-written by Julian Casablancas and the Strokes’ drummer Fabrizio Moretti) is the exception and has no dedicated artwork or artist credit associated with it.

The thirteen tracks with each one’s artwork:
– You Only Live Once → lanthanum aluminate photo (Michael Davidson)
– Juicebox → “Rocketship” (Alex Schomburg)
– Heart in a Cage → “The Brain” (Henry Groskinsky)
– Razorblade → “Scout” (Richard Phillips)
– On the Other Side → multiple works (Guido da Siena, Rembrandt,
Samuel van Hoogstraten, Master of Saint-Germain-des-Prés)
– Vision of Division → “The Continuous Monument” (Superstudio)
– Ask Me Anything → music notes / “Yellow Room” (Milton Glaser)
– Electricityscape → Image #BB1863 (John Foxx)
– Killing Lies → Etoffe & Tapis Etrangers Plate 19 (Benigno Crespi)
– Fear of Sleep → “West 83rd St.” photo (Jeff Prant)
– 15 Minutes → “Loew’s Paradise Theater” (Henry Groskinsky)
– Ize of the World → “Gun Barrel Eyes” (Milton Glaser)
– Red Light: “Leopard” (1967) — Mel Ramos

This diversity of art shows Casablancas’ particular interest in 60s abstrct art.

The Deluxe Digipak CD of First Impressions of Earth includes a 35-page booklet with each artwork on separate pages.

The next Strokes album was Angles, released in 2011. The album was designed by Lizzie Nanut and Casablancas chose the Belgian artist Guy Pouppez’s untitled painting that he licenced from Pouppez’ daughter. The dazzling, multi-dimensional stairwell-like geometric pattern captures the fractured, multi-perspective approach of the record perfectly.

The Strokes had an intial five-album deal with RCA Records and their fifth album, Comedown Machine , was released two years after Angles and with a completely different type of cover art. The oversized vintage RCA logo and tape-box design are widely seen as a dry, slightly sarcastic way of marking that the contractual obligation was finished (the opening track is even called “Tap Out”). The Strokes did no publicity for the album and refused to tour the album, allowing it to quietly sit.

Art direction was by Brett Kilroe and band drummer Fabrizio Moretti and Design by Brett Kilroe and Tina Ibañez. Still-life photography: Jason McDonald.

Album number six: is The New Abnormal with a radically different presentation for the vinyl release. Instead of a card cover the record is housed in a 180g / Clear APET plastic outer sleeve that also contains the cover art and a large poster of the Basquiat painting–the central detail from Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Bird on Money painting from 1981. Casablancas licenced the work, which is owned by the Rubell family, from the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat (via their licensing agent Artestar). The whole package was designed by Tina Ibanez. Really great packaging.

The album title and the band’s name are on a large sticker affixed to the shrink wrap. Collectors who want to keep the sticker when opening the seal must either cut it off and store it in the plastic cover or peel it and stick onto an outer protective plastic cover. I solved the problem by opening the shrink wrap along the top margin, allowing me to keep the shrink wrap intact and still be able to remove the record!

The Strokes’ latest album, the 2026, Reality Awaits strikes an immediate chord with me as I collect record covers by arch appropriator, Richard Prince and the front cover image is one of Prince’s most famous appropriations from his 1989 Cowboys series that Prince lifted from Marlboro advertisements. Even the record labels have the Marlboro Man image.

Again, the band logo is on a large sticker on the shrink wrap, though the album title is this time printed on the cover. The centrefold of the trifold cover has designer Johann Rashid’s photograph of a a 1980s Nissan 300ZX (with the caption “In the flesh, it’s even sexier”).

I congratulate Julian Casablancas on his impeccable taste in art! And he’s given me added interest in the Strokes’ album covers. They are worth collecting for the album covers alone!

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.