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f all the great album covers dom expanded the art form and O over the years, how do the “canvas” was the 12x12- you select 30? We started with inch LP sleeve. After an unscien- some rules: We wanted covers tific poll, we had to leave a lot featuring photos, as opposed to of great covers on the cutting- illustrations or pure typography. room floor (visitpopphoto.com We limited picks to one per to see more, or to name your artist (listed alphabetically). We own). Though chosen for their mined the Golden Age of album artwork, these are also classic design, beginning in the 1960s— albums—if the music’s no good, when budgets and creative free- who remembers the cover?

s Björk: Homogenic (1997) Along led to lots of “Paul is Dead” hog- with photographer Nick Knight, wash). The shot capped a decade designer Paul White, and computer of brilliance. manipulation, this Icelandic genius created an eye-grabbing image with : Aladdin Sane antenna-like hair buns, spiked fin- (1973) Having reached super- gernails, an elongated neck, stardom after creating his Ziggy stretched facial features, and an Stardust character, Bowie felt oversized kimono. The alien look fit ambivalent about fame, reflected in her emotionally complex music. this makeup job and image (by Duffy Design and photographer Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Sukita) in which glittery lightning Brass: Whipped Cream & Other seems to split the singer’s head in type treatment copied Elvis Pres- (or is that a nerve chart?) behind Grace Jones: Nightclubbing Elvis Costello: This Year’s Model the 30 best Delights (1965) Frothy, sexy two. A lad insane, indeed. ley’s first RCA album sleeve. “It Mary Rozzi’s backlit silhouette shot (1981) It’s possible that the ironic (1978) Of course we love Elvis images have graced many covers, was intended as a genuine hom- of the artist, signifying her colorful femininity of the 1980s—big shoul- with a Hasselblad! Photographer but this one takes the cake. Model Captain Beefheart and His age,” said designer Ray Lowry, “to singing and many-mooded songs. ders, angular androgeny—started Chris Gabrin set up Costello as a Dolores Erickson posed for photog- Magic Band: Trout Mask Replica make plain the obvious sources of here. Photographer Jean-Paul mirror image of himself, asking the rapher Jerry Whorf wearing a sheet (1969) This album’s avant-garde our insanities.” Peter Gabriel: Peter Gabriel Goude hand-colored the photo a singer to copy his exaggerated ges- photographic slathered with shaving cream; she stew of psychedelic rock, raucous (1980) A hyper-creative guy who bluish tint, which he later said sug- tures. Costello reportedly put on an later said her pregnancy accented blues, and free-form jazz had an The Doors: Strange Days (1967) couldn’t be bothered to name his gested “a strange menacing alien, Eagles album during the shoot. “I her pulchritude. “I thought, ‘Just equally bizarre cover, featuring Cal With a freak show of performers on early albums outdid himself, visu- when all I had wanted to do was bloody hate them,” he said, “but I another job,’” she recalled—but it Schenkel’s photo of a fish-head a Manhattan side street, this pic- ally, with his third one. Hipgnosis sublimate her African roots.” want to look in a really bad mood.”

album was far from just another picture. apparition (long before Tony ture by Joel Brodsky looked strange designer Storm Thorgerson sug- s Soprano ever dreamed of one) that indeed in 1967. “We didn’t want gested the melting effect, obtained The Beatles: Abbey Road (1969) drew on the lyrics of the Beefheart anything psychedelic as we weren’t by prodding a Polaroid print as it In ’69 the Fab Four decided to tune “Old Fart at Play.” that kind of band,” said keyboardist was developing. covers name their last recording after the Ray Manzarek. What Brodsky gave street in front of their studio and : them was weirder, befitting the Hair (1968) In 1968, the idea of pose there. They gave photographer (1979) This image almost didn’t album’s darkly carnivalesque mood. a Broadway musical based on the Iain McMillan about ten minutes. become a cover—photographer era’s antiwar activism and hippy Most frames didn’t work—but one fought it because it Bob Dylan: Bringing It All Back idealism seemed otherworldly, just We pick the coolest, sexiest, and most iconic was perfectly symmetrical, except was grainy—but the Clash liked Home (1965) This record like the color-saturated, mirrored that McCartney was out of step the nihilism of Paul Simonon launched Dylan’s electric phase, as picture on the original Broadway photo album covers ever. By Jack Crager and he’d shed his sandals (which smashing his bass onstage. The he churned out increasingly surreal cast soundtrack. It’s been going in songs and improvised in the studio. and out of style, but the play, like Photographer Daniel Kramer cap- the image, was built to last. tured the blur of changes by posing the bard with cultural artifacts (and Jane’s Addiction: Nothing’s Sally Grossman, wife of Dylan’s Shocking (1988) Perhaps noth- manager) and by creating a streaky ing’s shocking except nude Sia- vignette in the darkroom. mese twins with their heads on fire. Bandleader and photographer Perry Feist: The Reminder (2007) Ferrell dreamed up this image, cre- This is the new cover on the ated the twins out of plaster using block—how can an image become his girlfriend as a model, and “iconic” after only one year? We’re experimented with flames until he mesmerized by the rainbow swash got his shot.

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Led Zeppelin: Houses of the Joni Mitchell: Hejira (1976) Holy (1973) The design firm Hip- A painter before she was a singer, gnosis wanted to illustrate this Mitchell illustrated many of her album title with innocent children album covers; here she art-directed climbing rock formations at sunrise. a photomontage of road scenes But the weather on location in and a portrait by Joel Bernstein, Northern Ireland was dreary, so a echoing the album’s themes of black-and-white image was color- wanderlust and self-reflection— ized. Three children posed in vari- what Mitchell called “the sweet ous shots; the rocks hid the edges loneliness of solitary travel.” of the joined frames in a pre-Photo- shop montage. Pink Floyd: Wish You Were Here (1975) This LP originally appeared : True Blue (1986) in navy plastic wrap (black in Having quickly mastered the art of Europe) to accent its themes of image making, Madonna asked her “nothingness” and the fallacies of friend Herb Ritts to shoot the cover fame. But the Hipgnogsis cover of her third album. His black-and- shot inside led many a stoned white vertical photo was cropped space-rocker to wonder: Is that square and hand-tinted by designer real fire? It is, according to stunt- Jeri Heiden. “It was like she was man Ronnie Rondell (right), who floating,” Heiden said of the result. wore a wig to save his scalp in the “She took on the appearance photo shoot. of a marble statue, goddess-like.” Ohio Players: Honey (1975) Marilyn Manson: Mechanical A continuation of the group’s sexy Animals (1998) My my, what a album covers, this foldout sleeve guy! (we think). Manson cemented featured Playboy playmate Ester his androgynous and freakish image Cordet and a honey jar, with the with this portrait by Joseph Cultice, interior photo even racier. (A daft in which the nearly nude singer urban myth grew around the model wore prosthetic breasts (the nipples and an audible scream in the were later retouched out), a plastic band’s hit “Love Rollercoaster.”) cup, and a coat of latex paint. Not Shot by Richard Fegley, the cover to mention the sixth finger added won a Grammy Award but got the onto his left hand. album banned in many stores.

How about a baby in a pool? asked Kurt Cobain. Chasing... a dollar bill?

Nirvana: Nevermind (1991) s As an obscure indie band prepared its major-label debut, singer Kurt Cobain imagined a cover photo of an underwater birth, which was deemed impractical. How about a Rage Against the Machine: baby in a pool? Chasing...a dollar Rage Against the Machine bill? With an underwater housing, (1992) This heavy rock band photographer Kirk Weddle shot lit- appropriated a Pulitzer Prize–win- tle Spencer Elden on his first ning 1963 photo by Malcolm swim—Elden’s dad held him but Browne of a Buddhist monk self- was removed from the image, and immolating in protest of Ngo Dinh the dollar and fishhook were added. Diem’s Vietnamese government—

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a powerful cover for a politically The Who: Who’s Next (1971) The Rolling Stones: Sticky Fin- Bruce Springsteen: Born in the driven debut album. While driving to a cover shoot with gers (1971) For their first album U.S.A. (1984) After the stark members of the Who, photographer on their own label, the Stones Nebraska, Springsteen set out to The White Stripes: White Blood Ethan Russell noticed some other- tapped Andy Warhol to create the make a commercial album and hired Cells (2001) Who are the intruders worldly slabs in a heap and thought cover. He proposed a shot of artist Annie Leibovitz for the cover. “We on the White Stripes’ third album? of posing the group in a Space Joe Dallesandro’s crotch with a real took different types of pictures, and An inside photo reveals them to be Odyssey–like scene. But as they zipper, which caused distribution in the end, the picture of my ass paparazzi. The double edge of the approached, one of the lads peed on trouble because it damaged other looked better than the picture of my duo’s fame was reflected in Patrick a slab, and the others followed suit. albums. The band’s famous tongue face,” he said. The flag backdrop Pantano’s cover shot. “A lot of the They decided the shot fit their image. logo debuted on back of the sleeve. fueled a misperception that the lyrics are paranoid,” said Jack White. angry title song was blindly patriotic. “It does kind of match all these fig- ures coming at us on the cover.” The Edgar Winter Group: They Only Come Out at Night The Ramones: Ramones (1976) (1972) Would you buy...anything Photographer Roberta Bayley lined from this man? Winter pioneered up four former juvenile delinquents the gender-bender cover with from Queens against a wall and makeup and jewelry to accent his started a movement. The graphic, albinistic features. The image— gritty, no-nonsense cover shot per- which also evoked the 1910 film fectly fit the raw sound of the Frankenstein, the name of the genre-busting album, which Spin band’s monster hit—was out of char- later described as “Britzkrieg pop acter for both Winter and designer stripped down to its 1-2-3-4.” John Berg. But it sold millions.

Patti Smith: Horses (1975) Before s Roxy Music: Country Life (1974) either was well known, Patti Smith Bandleader Brian Ferry met two asked her pal Robert Mapplethorpe beauties at a bar on holiday in to shoot her debut cover. “We Portugal, and he asked Eric Boman always dreamed of becoming suc- to photograph them in a garden. “We cessful together,” she recalled. This thought it would be nothing but a photo launched both careers—hers holiday snap,” recalled Evaline as a poetess of punk, unkempt but Seeling (left). “We shopped for sexy elegant; his as the artist who had underwear.” Many stores banned the uncanny sense to pose her under the record; an alternate cover a triangular stream of sunlight. appeared with only the hedge. n

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