29. Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

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This work is a combination of the front of the original album cover art design and part of the back cover. The brick wall at centre was cut and pasted at left to complete the 18X10 screensaver.
So here we have the artist stepping into the yellow brick road which is actually just a picture while looking back on the outside which has his own picture on the wall.

We read about the Yellow Brick Road in The Wizard of Oz from 1939.
We heard "this boy's too young to be signing the blues" back in 1973.
"Candle in the Wind", originally composed in honour of Marilyn Monroe, was re-written in 1997 as a to tribute Diana, Princess of Wales.


This is the original album cover art design.

No. 80, Entertainment Weekly, 100 Greatest Albums Ever; No. 81, Rate Your Music, The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time; No. 86, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000;
No. 91, Rolling Stone, 500 Greatest Albums of All Time; No. 171 Billboard, The 300 Best-Selling Albums of All Time.


Illustration by Ian Beck. Album produced by Gus Dudgeon. MCA (US) DJM (UK) 1973.


In 1973 there was no indication that one day Elton John would become one of the leading Friends of Dorothy, but he unintentionally hinted at the yet-to-be-invented
codeword with the metaphors in the title and on the cover of his album. The album’s title, also the name of the lead single, seems to be at odds with the artwork
on the cover. Both song and cover, take their imagery from The Wizard Of Oz, in which the yellow brick road played as much a central role as any thoroughfare
ever did in the movies. Where the song tells of disillusion at the end of that road, the cover promises the beginning of an escape from reality as Elton steps
into a poster and on to a yellow brick road.

The poster is on a tatty wall, covering a previous poster (the font of which suggests that it might have advertised a music hall), with chimneys in the background
telling of a drab existence, quite at odds with Elton’s flamboyant get-up. The cover was drawn by Ian Beck, who was 26 at the time. Beck has since illustrated
magazines, greeting cards, packaging and a few children’s books. He has also written a few novels. Beck came to LP cover design through John Kosh, whose
credits included the Abbey Road cover.

Beck was given tapes of the songs (which included future classics like Benny And The Jets, Saturday Night Is Alright For Fighting, Candle In The Wind and the
title track), and typed lyrics sheets, and began working on a concept. His friend, fashion illustrator Leslie McKinley Howell, stood in as a model for Elton
John in polaroids which Beck took (hence the long legs) in preparation for his watercolour, pastel, and coloured crayon pencils artwork. The piano on
the front cover and the teddy bear at the back were placed there at the request of Elsie, as Beck only later realised Elton was known to his staff.
More


(A) Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding - Candle in the Wind - Bennie and the Jets

(B) Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - This Song Has No Title - Grey Seal - Jamaica Jerk-Off - I've Seen That Movie Too

(C) Sweet Painted Lady - The Ballad of Danny Bailey (1909-34) - Dirty Little Girl - All the Girls Love Alice

(D) Your Sister Can't Twist (But She Can Rock 'n Roll) - Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting - Roy Rogers - Social Disease - Harmony

The Tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales from musicaltranslator1 on YouTube.

            

  

www.eltonjohn.com

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25. David Bowie - The Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders from Mars

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It's not difficult to find the original album cover art design on this work. It is mirrored at right and partially reproduced at left. The mirroring doubled up what looks like a heap of radioactive garbage but
it has to be left lying there. The mirroring also inverted K. West so the original had to be cut and pasted and tilted and positioned where it should be. 

Here's David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust posing at 23 Heddon Street, London on a rainy night in January 1972.

No. 27, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000; No. 30, Rate Your Music, The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time; No. 34, Entertainment Weekly, 100 Greatest Albums Ever; 
No. 35, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Design by Terry Pastor of George Underwood's company, Main Artery, photo by Brian Ward. Album produced by David Bowie and Ken Scott. RCA 1972.


The album cover photograph was taken outside furriers K. West at 23 Heddon Street, London, looking south-east towards the centre of the city. Bowie said of the sign,
"It's such a shame that sign was removed. People read so much into it. They thought 'K. West' must be some sort of code for 'quest.' It took on all these sort of mystical 
overtones." The cover was among the ten chosen by the Royal Mail for a set of "Classic Album Cover" postage stamps issued in January 2010. Full article

Right where the Starman touched down: From left, Spiders from Mars members Trevor Bolder and
Mick Woodmansey join Spandau Ballet's Gary Kemp to unveil a plaque where Bowie's creation was
once photographed in Heddon Street, London. The Crown Estate, which runs a £7 billion property
portfolio on behalf of the Queen and the public estate, installed the plaque 28 March 2012. Article


(A) Five Years - Soul Love - Moonage Daydream - Starman - It Ain't Easy

(B) Lady Stardust - Star - Hang On to Yourself - Ziggy Stardust - Suffragette City - Rock n' Roll Suicide

"Five Years" live for BBC from sante3d on YouTube.

            

  

www.davidbowie.com

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15. The Who - Who's Next

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This work consists of two 9X9 images on an 18X10 frame. The two 1X9 blank spaces that were left allowed the placement of one image slightly above the other. If you see that the horizons of the two
images are perfectly joined together at the centre, that is purely coincidental. I didn't see it myself. I was too preoccupied with deciding which image should be on the left
and which should be on the right. It was good to retain the album title on the original image alone, and so I positioned it at right.

The seemingly endless heap of slag somewhat spans the sluggishness of decaying English cities in the 1970s; an unwanted overgrowth the Industrial Revolution. That was
a time when "summer" and "spring" and "fall" were common in song lyrics and "sunshine" and "rain" equated with love and loneliness in romantic melodies.
But when you look up at an oncoming storm while standing on a potentially cancer-causing junk of metal leftover, the comfort of having
discharged seems forgotten. There is much uncertainty about the future on this image. What we were afraid of back then are
unfolding now. The continuous horizon portends painfully - or maybe it's just a "teen-age wasteland".

  
Here's the original album cover art design.

No. 11, Rate Your Music, The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time; No. 28, Rolling Stone The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time;
No. 39, Entertainment Weekly, 100 Greatest Albums Ever; No. 48, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000.

No. 100, Rolling Stone, The 100 Greatest Album Covers.


Photo by Ethan Russell. Album produced by The Who and Glyn Johns. Track, Decca 1971.

The cover artwork shows a photograph, taken at Easington Colliery, of the band apparently having just urinated on a large concrete piling protruding
from a slag heap. The decision to shoot the picture came from (band members John) Entwistle and (Keith) Moon discussing Stanley Kubrick
and the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. According to photographer Ethan Russell, most of the band members were unable to urinate,
so rainwater was tipped from an empty film canister to achieve the desired effect. In 2003, the television channel VH1
named Who's Next's cover one of the greatest album covers of all time. Full article


(A) Baba O'Riley - Bargain - Love Ain't for Keeping - My Wife - The Song is Over

(B) Getting in Tune - Going Mobile - Behind Blue Eyes - Won't Get Fooled Again

"Oh yeah, It's only teen-age wasteland!" 

The Who performing "Baba O'Riley" with Nigel Kennedy at the Royal Albert Hall, 27 November 2000 to benefit the Teenage Cancer Trust.

From DustyKater on YouTube.

               

      

thewho.com

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4. Fleetwood Mac - Rumours

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The basis of this work is not the original album cover art design, but the altered version, shown below. The alteration was done by extending the sides to form a rectangle out of a square and transferring the calligraphy from top right to where it is now. The altered album cover art design was further extended by adding the margins of darker yellow; wider at the sides to fit an 18 x 10 resolution screen,
shown above.  

This is the extended album cover art design. See the original.

No. 10, Billboard, The 300 Best-Selling Albums of All Time; No. 26, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time; No. 29, Entertainment Weekly, 100 Greatest Albums Ever; 
No. 31, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000; No. 44, Rate Your Music, The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time.

No. 27, Music Radar, The 50 Greatest Album Covers of All Time; No. 87, Rolling Stone, The 100 Greatest Album Covers.


Art design by Desmond Strobel, photo by Herbert Worthington, calligraphy by Larry Vigon. Album produced by Fleetwood Mac, Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut. Warner Bros. 1977.

Rumours is a tangled web of neuroses as it is, but the cover, which features Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nicks (who were not yet lovers) engaging in something resembling old-fashioned courtship, seems designed to stretch relationships to breaking point. This cover is very simplistic, featuring only two characters on a plain, off-white background. The composition of the image reinforces the title of the album as it’s as if the characters are conveying rumours to each other and then by having one of the characters facing the viewer, as if they’re then conveying the rumour to us.

The use of black highlights the mournful meaning behind the creation of the album, yet also makes the characters stand out against the background.
Yet despite the fact that this album is about the falling apart of Fleetwood Mac, by having the female member having her leg
over the male member also indicates some sort of together-ness which the listeners of Fleetwood Mac would crave for
(or was it just about legovers in general and the impending one between Fleetwood and Nicks in particular!). More


(A) Second Hand News - Dreams - Never Going Back Again - Don't Stop - Go Your Own Way - Songbird

(B) The Chain - You Make Loving Fun - I Don't Want to Know - Oh Daddy - Gold Dust Woman

  "Dreams" with lyrics from Peruven on YouTube.




     

www.fleetwoodmac.com

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6. U2 - The Joshua Tree

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This one was quite simple. The original album cover art design was pasted at left. That left a 8X10 space at right. Part of the original image that was pure landscape was then flipped and then pasted on that space. That still left a 3.4x10 space at right. The flipped image was then reverted and used to cover that remaining space. At last, the band's image was cropped, flipped and pasted at bottom right.

Extending the desolate landscape in this work is the main point. The interesting part lies in discovering that the mirroring of images produced mounds of earth where once
there were none and they seem to add a bit of symmetry on the craggy terrain. There is still no tree in sight, and no prophet. You just have to believe.

Here's the original album cover art design.

No. 10, Rate Your Music, The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time; No. 25, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000;
No. 27 Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time;No. 28 Billboard, The 300 Best-Selling Albums of All Time.

No. 97 Rolling Stone, The 100 Greatest Album Covers.

Art design by Steve Averill, photo by Anton Corbijn. Album produced by Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno. Island 1987.

The initial concept for the sleeve was to represent where the desert met civilisation. From 14-16 December 1986, the band travelled with Corbijn and Averill on a bus around the Mojave Desert in California for a three-day photo shoot, beginning at the ghost town of Bodie before moving to locations such as Zabriskie Point and other sites on Death Valley. Lack of experience with a panoramic camera led Corbijn
to focusing on the background leaving the band slightly out of focus. He later recounted that the main idea of the shot was to juxtapose "man and environment, the Irish in America." 

On the evening after the first day's shooting, Corbijn told the band about Joshua trees, hardy and twisted plants in the deserts of the American Southwest. Bono was
pleased to discover the religious significance of the plant's etymology; early settlers, according to Mormon legend, named the plant
after the prophet Joshua, as the tree's stretching branches reminded then of Joshua raising his hands in prayer.
The following day, Bono declared that the album should be titled The Joshua Tree. More

(A) Where the Streets Have No Name - I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For - With or Without You - Bullet the Blue Sky - Running to Stand Still

(B) Red Hill Mining Town - In God's Country - Trip Through Your Wires - One Tree Hill - Exit - Mothers of the Disappeared


"With or Without You" official music video from U2Vevo on YouTube.

   

visit www.u2.com

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