Tag Archives: The Who

Guitars, Peter Blake's Rwecord Cover Art, Record colecting, Record cover art, Teenage Cancer Trust

Peter Blake’s Cover for Mark Knopfler’s Guitar Heroes’ “Going Home” Single Revisited.

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This single was made to raise money for the Teenage Cancer Trust and Knopfler put together a stellar crowd of international guitarists for the re-recording of Knopfler’s “Going Home (Theme from Local Hero)”. Knopfler named them Mark Knopfler’s Guitar Heroes and features a line-up of some of the greatest guitarists and musicians in history[1]. The track was recorded was recorded in late 2023 and early 2024 at British Grove Studios in West London with additions from the various contributors recorded in their own studios. The recording, produced by Knopfler’s long-time musical partner Guy Fletcher, was condensed to the nine minute track on the record. The guitar intro, played by Jeff Beck, turned out to be his final recording before his death on 10th January 2023.

I haven’t been able to find out how Blake became involved in this project but given the charity connection and Roger Daltrey’s and Pete Townshend’s involvement I would hazard a guess that Pete suggested that Blake provide the cover art.

Roger Daltrey has been an Honorary Patron of the Teenage Cancer Trust, founded by Dr Adrian Whiteson and his wife, Myrna. Daltrey has organised concerts in support of the trust and this charity single was released in aid of the trust and Teen Cancer America. I don’t know how Mark Knopfler became involved in the trust, but he decided to re-record his hit from the 1983 film “Local Hero” with a galaxy of guitar heroes, starting with Pete Townshend, Eric Clapton and Albert Lee, and many others. Daltrey plays harmonica and Ringo Starr, and his son Zak play drums. I got my copy of the U.K. version as soon as it was released

I had no idea that Peter Blake had designed two cover variations. The one for the U.K. and European release shows a collage of the guitarists in front of Hanks Music Store (located in London’s Denmark Street) while the cover version released in the U.S. shows the same guitarist collage but in front of Rudy’s Music Store in SOHO, New York. Interestingly, the US version has a circular “Who cares” sticker in the left upper window that doesn’t appear on the UK version. I only found out about the U.S. version eighteen months after it had been released and it’s now quite hard to find..

Both the U.K. and U.S. singles were single-sided with an etched B-side and both versions were manufactured in the Czech Republic.

[1] The complete list of all 66 participants in the “Going Home” recording:
Joan Armatrading, Jeff Beck, Richard Bennett, Joe Bonamassa, Joe Brown, James Burton, Jonathan Cain, Paul Carrack, Eric Clapton, Ry Cooder, Jim Cox, Steve Cropper, Sheryl Crow, Danny Cummings, Roger Daltrey, Duane Eddy, Sam Fender, Guy Fletcher, Peter Frampton, Audley Freed, Vince Gill, David Gilmour, Buddy Guy, Keiji Haino, Tony Iommi, Joan Jett, John Jorgenson, Mark Knopfler, Sonny Landreth, Albert Lee, Greg Leisz, Alex Lifeson, Steve Lukather, Phil Manzanera, Dave Mason, Hank Marvin, Brian May, Robbie McIntosh, John McLaughlin, Tom Morello, Rick Nielsen, Orianthi, Brad Paisley, Nile Rodgers, Mike Rutherford, Joe Satriani, John Sebastian, Connor Selby, Slash, Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Starr and Zak Starkey, Sting, Andy Taylor, Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, Ian Thomas, Pete Townshend, Keith Urban, Steve Vai, Waddy Wachtel, Joe Louis Walker, Joe Walsh, Ronnie Wood, Glenn Worf, Zucchero

The WHO - Face Dances

The Cover of the Who’s “Face Dances” Album.

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.Richard Evans (born 1945) is a designer who began his career with the legendary design group Hipgnosis before starting his own company. He has designed record covers for many bands including Robert Plant, Van Morrison and World Party. But he is best known for his covers for the Who and Pete Townshend, including “Who’s Missing”–with it’s nod to Peter Blake’s “Got a Girl” painting and its companion “Two’s Missing”

The first Who cover he worked on was their 1981 “Faces Dances” LP. This was the first Who album after Keith Moon’s death and the band had recruited former Small Faces drummer Kenney Jones to replace him. Pete Townshend met Peter Blake on the set of the television show “Ready, Steady, Go!” in 1965 and they became friends, which is how Townshend came to ask Blake to design the cover for what would be the Band’s nineth album. Evans also designed the cover for “Filling in the Gaps” the promotional album for “Fasce Dances”, a recording of Pete Townshend discussing the album.

Blake’s four-by-four square layout with four individual portraits of the band members has become a classic cover. Blake got fifteen of his artist friends to each paint one band member.

 Gavin Cochrane took a photo of each member of the band, which the 16 artists used to paint on 6 in × 6 in (150 mm × 150 mm) canvases the portraits of each member of the band for the front cover , although it seems that Jo Tilson based his painting of Kenney on Blake’s portrait  rather than the photograph.

Gavin Cochrane’s photos of the Who members that the artists used to paiint the cover portraits.

Pete Townshend on the top row, painted by Bill Jacklin, Tom Phillips, Colin Self and Richard Hamilton.
Second row: Roger Daltrey by Michael Andrews, Allen Jones, David Inshaw and David Hockney.
Third row: John Entwistle painted by Clive Barker, R. B. Kitaj, Howard Hodgkin and Patrick Caulfield.
Bottom row: New member Kenney Jones painted by Peter Blake, Joe Tilson, Patrick Procktor, and David Tindle.

Richard Evans provided the graphic design of the back cover that featured Clive Barker’s 1967 sculpture of a gold-plated, bronze paintbox. Barker had been one of four pop artists shown in a joint exhibition at Robert “Groovy Bob” Fraser’s Duke Street gallery in 1967 together with Peter Blake, Jann Haworth and Colin Self. I suppose the paintbox was on show there and Blake acquired it. Evans had Blake write the portrait credits on a card and he designed the paint tubes creating a typeface reminiscent of the one Windsor & Newton used on their paint tubes. Once again, Gavin Cochrane photographed the paintbox at his studio with Blake and Evans in attendance.

The ”Face Dances” album has become a classic Who album and has been reissued several  times. The 2021 reissue included four prints of the cover portraits.


One of the limited edition prints.

The prints included in the 2021 re-issue of Face Dances.

Autographs, Banksy's art on record, Klaus Voormann's Record Cover Art, Peter Blake

Banksy, Blake, Voormann Additions to My Collection.

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Here I go again! I regularly boast that I have complete collections of Banksy’s, Peter Blake’s and Klaus Voormann’s record covers (well, I usually admit to lacking one Klaus Voormann cover, but still) only to find out that none of these boasts is true.

I recently found the cover to an unreleased 7″ single version of DJ DangerMouse’s “Keep It Real” cover (you can read about it in an earlier blog post). Now it seems there are a couple of other Banksy covers that I had previously never heard of. I’m not going to say more at the moment, but you can be sure that I shall return to this subject in due time.

My blog posts on the latest record cover art by Peter Blake have only mentioned the various vinyl, CD and cassette versions of The Who’s latest album “WHO“. I had bought two limited edition issues of the album: the 45 rpm double LP version with extra single-sided 10” single “Sand” sold via The Who Store and the HMV “Nipper1” double LP. A mate in Liverpool popped in to see Sir Peter while on a recent visit to London and got him to sign both the 45 rpm and HMV covers for me as well as a copy of the reissued “Stanley Road” album (signed previously by Paul Weller himself.)

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Then I saw an ad for Dr. John Cooper Clarke’s 2018 book and CD “The Luckiest Guy Alive” whith its cover portrait of Cooper Clarke by Peter Blake and Blake’s classic alphabet tiles for the album title and artist’s name.

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The cover of John Cooper Clarke’s CD “The Luckiest Guy Alive”.

So, naturally, I ordered a copy of the book and CD. I wonder if my Peter Blake collection is complete now?

Then I saw an ad for The Blues Band’s album “Itchy Feet” that stated that the cover was designed by Klaus Voormann. I immediately went through my Klaus Voormann collection only to find that I had missed this album (though I had bought the other two Blues Band albums when they came out, and even seen the band live.)

fullsizeoutput_6569While going through the Voormann albums, I noticed that my copy of Gary Wright’s “Extractions” LP was in less than mint condition. It is a U.S. promo copy with a large cut-out hole through the top right corner of the cover, so I looked on Discogs for a better copy and saw that the U.K. original was released in a six panel poster cover that I had never seen.

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The six-panel poster cover for Gary Wright’s “Extractions” LP.

So I ordered both the “Itchy Feet” and the “Extractions” records to “complete” my Klaus Voormann collection even though I’m still missing at least one of his covers. I was lucky that the “Itchy Feet” LP was one of the limited edition pressings that included the large poster of the band in action.

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The poster from the “Itchy Feet” album.

I have to say that I feel I’m nearer to having complete collections of these three cover artists. I’ll just have to keep a lookout to see if I find further missing covers.

 

"Live at Leeds" Silkscreen print, Brian WIlson - That Lucky Old Sun, Peter Blake

A New Addition to My Collection of Peter Blake Prints and Another Peter Blake Rarity.

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I haven’t had any reason to write about Peter Blake‘s art recently. As far as I have been able to find out, he hasn’t done any record covers since Eric Clapton‘s “I Still Do” album—which was not actually designed by Peter Blake, but Clapton chose to use one of Blake‘s 2015 portraits of him as the cover art.

At last I have something to add to my collection. I saw a print of Peter Blake‘s “Live at Leeds 2” for sale on Ebay and made an offer, which was accepted. The print was an artists’ proof (No. viii/xxv).

Live at Leeds2-cut
Sir Peter Blake’s “Live at Leeds 2” silkscreen print.

Some background:
As everyone knows, The Who played the Leeds University Refectory on Valentine’s day 1970 and the 3-hour concert was recorded and released only 3 months later on 16th May 1970 as The Who’s “Live at Leeds” album. During preparations for The Who’s upcoming 2006 tour, Andy Kershaw, an alumnus of Leeds University—and who had had a hand in booking the band to play that historic 1970 concert managed to persuade the two remaining original band members to return to the Refectory as part of their planned 2006 tour.

In February 2005 Peter Blake opened a unique gallery dedicated to his music artwork at Leeds University’s School of Music. Among the prints on permanent loan to the gallery are ”Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, Band Aid’s ”Do They Know It’s Christmas”, The ”Live Aid” poster design, Paul Weller’s ”Stanley Road” cover art, The Who’s ”Face Dances” as well as albums by Eric Clapton, Brian Wilson and Ian Dury.

I haven’t been able to work out exactly how Sir Peter Blake became involved but suspect that Pete Townsend—a long-time friend of Blake’s—might have suggested that the artist design a poster for the return concert and Blake turned to the cover art of the original “Live at Leeds” album for inspiration. The gatefold cover of the original “Live at Leeds” album was designed by Graphreaks (Wikipedia credits Beadrall Sutcliffe with the design). Blake took the cover design and added the date of the original concert (14.02.70) at the top and that of the return (17.06.06) at the bottom and a large red “2” at bottom left.

Peter Blake made a limited edition print of the design–a silk screen using 14 colours plus glaze in an the edition of 250 + 25 artist proofs–and published in 2006. Peter Blake donated a copy to Leeds University’s collection of his prints.

Back to my print.
The seller in the U.K. sent the print rolled, inside a large sheet of 200 g paper and wrapped in bubble plastic all put inside a wellpapp outer. There was no poster tube to prevent crushing and—not surprisingly—the package arrived crushed with the print considerably creased. After email discussions with the seller, I was advised to lodge a ”damaged item” report with Ebay, which I did sending photos of the packaging and the damaged print. And to my total amazement, the following day Ebay refunded the total cost of the print and shipping! So the print has cost me nothing!

My collection of Peter Blake prints.
The ”Live at Leeds 2” print joins my collection of Peter Blake prints started in 1968 when I bought ”Babe Rainbow” at Gear in Carnaby Street for, I think, 30/- (£1.50 to those of you who don’t remember predecimal currency). Wikipedia says it cost £1.00, but I think I paid 30/-.

I went to the Tate Gallery Peter Blake retrospective in 1983 and bought the catalogue which contained a limited edition print of the ”Owl & the Pussy Cat” print, which comes in an envelope stating ”Each reproduction has been signed by the artist”! The print was only included in the first 12,000 copies of the catalogue.

In 2009, when Jan Wimander, then director of Piteå Dansar och Ler Festival, and I decided to put on an exhibition of Peter Blake’s record cover art, called ”Peter Blake ’Pop’ Art” at Piteå Museum. We wanted to show LP covers but two of Blake’s covers–The John Peel compilation album ”Right Time, Wrong Speed, 1977-1987” and The Blockheads’ ”Staring Down the Barrel” were only available on CD so we wanted larger images for the show. We found a copy of Peter Blake’s portrait of the late John Peel that he created for Warner Brothers Music for the cover of Peel’s CD on Ebay. This was a limited edition of 45 copies–we got No. 5. I also approached The Blockheads to try to get hold of a promotional poster for their 2009 album ”Staring Down the Barrel”. I was told they didn’t have one, but referred to Peter Blake’s printers The Coriander Press and after month or so an artist proof of the cover art, signed by Peter Blake, arrived just in time for the exhibition.

In 2010, the late Daniel Brant, director of the A and D Gallery in London’s Chiltern Street, contacted me and asked if I would like to display my collection of Peter Blake’s record covers in the Gallery that would be hosting the launch of a new series of Peter Blake’s prints ”I Love London” and ”I Love Recycling”. John Wimander and I both flew over for the opening and met Sir Peter, who signed my ”Babe Rainbow” print as well as a book and the catalogue of our Piteå exhibition. We were both given prints of the ”I Love London” and ”I Love Recycling”!

So now my collection contains
– Babe Rainbow
– The Owl & the Pussycat
– John Peel
– The Blockhead’s ”Staring Down the Barrel”
– I Love London
– I Love Recycling, and (finally)
– Live at Leeds 2

A further Blake record cover art.
While researching the “Live at Leeds 2” print I came across another collaboration that I probably should have included in my collection of Peter Blake‘s record cover art. In 2007 Brian Wilson recorded his “That Lucky Old Sun” album and in 2009 Genesis Publications produced a lavish box set including a CD of the album, a book signed by both Brian Wilson and Peter Blake and 12 limited edition Peter Blake prints illustrating the songs. This deluxe production was produced in an edition of 1000 copies.

That Lucky Old SUn
Genesis Publications limited edition “That Lucky Old Sun” by Brian Wilson and Sir Peter Blake.

I shall have to start saving my pennies to get hold of a copy.