32. Uriah Heep - Very 'Eavy. . . Very 'Umble

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This image is not from Tales from the Crypt. This is David Byron on the cover of the UK release of Uriah Heep's debut album. His cobwebbed face occupies the whole front sleeve and
is here reproduced six times to fill the 18x10 canvass. The recolouring of the image at bottom right was done in order to match the letters of the band's name which, together 
with the album title, has been distorted with the wave filter.


The album was generally panned by the mainstream critical press upon its release, although it has since been acknowledged as an early classic of the heavy metal genre.
The harshest critic was Rolling Stone magazine reviewer, Melissa Mills, who began her review, "If this group makes it I'll have to commit suicide. From the first note
you know you don't want to hear any more." Source

That's a rather horrific note, but a mouth agape could be making a sound begging to be heard. Byron is the lead vocalist and he wrote almost all of the songs
in this album. And 46 years on the band was still touring.
Down Under. 

Here's David Byron not singing.

Artwork by Robin Nicol, photo by Pete Smith. Album produced by Gerry Bron. Vertigo (UK) 1970. 


Uriah Heep are considered one of the most underrated progressive rock bands to come out of Britain's acclaimed classic rock era of late 1960's and early 1970's. A very diverse band, 
comprised of many individual talents, namely David Byron's incredible and iconic falsetto voice, Mick Box's roaring wah-wah virtuoso guitar style and Ken Hensley's raging organ,
Uriah Heep never seemed to gain any recognition, not even in Britain. Though being considered a progressive rock band in every sense of the word, Heep's first studio album,
Very 'Eavy... Very 'Umble, released in June 1970, is a much more diverse album in style, ranging from blues to hard rock and heavy metal. Critics quickly dismissed any potential 
of Uriah Heep becoming big, but regardless of critics, Very 'Eavy... Very 'Umble presents itself as a promising debut. More

The album's US release (Mercury 1970) has a different album sleeve design, also by Robert Nicol.

(A) Gypsy - Walking in Your Shadow - Come Away Melinda - Lucy Blues

(B) Dreammare - Real Turned On - I'll Keep on Trying - Wake Up (Set Your Sights)

"Gypsy" live in London 2014 from Frontiers Music srl on YouTube.

            

  

www.uriah-heep.com

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30. The Band - The Band

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On this work, the bottom third of the the photo on the original album cover art design was cropped off and the remaining image was mirrored. The resulting image, now about equal in
measurement on all sides was positioned to the right of the brown canvass which had already been set to measure 18x10. A smaller reproduction of the original album cover photo
was pasted at left and the album title was enlarged and pasted above it.


Here's the original album cover art design.  

No. 45, Rolling Stone, 500 Greatest Albums of All Time; No. 45, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000.


Album design by Bob Cato, photo by Elliot Landy. Album produced by John Simon. Capitol 1969.


Designed by the great Bob Cato, using an Elliot Landy photograph, this simple cover speaks volumes of what waits inside. Their first album, Music From Big Pink
did not show the members of the group on either the front or the back; you had to open it up to see the group. Here they confront you head-on, staring at you
from another time. This was the time of paisley and psychedelic design and fonts. Not this band, there were dressed as workers, laborers, as if they stepped
out of 1940’s  America. Hell, they could’ve been mistaken for hobos then. The album was sepia toned as if taken from our grandparents’ scrapbook. And
the music reflected it all, and magnificently. A masterpiece. Source


It's as if an itinerant old-time medicine show somehow skipped a few generations, pulled off a two-lane Arkansas highway in 1910, and woke up in 1968, with
its remaining potions turned to hallucinogens. Of course the time travellers had stories to tell—about the wily old South, where men with names like Virgil
and Eustace tended the land, and there was pride just in surviving.

Four Canadians and one Southern "ringer" (drummer Levon Helm, who grew up in Arkansas), the Band caught what was wild and romantic about America,
and framed it in ramshackle grandeur with a touch of a hippieera batik. The musicians first played together backing rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins,
but became cohesive backing Bob Dylan during his shift from acoustic folk to rock. When the Band moved out of the Big Pink house in Woodstock,
New York, the group of talented multi-instrumentalists discovered they had something different, but no less profound, to say on their own.
That's instantly evident in the story-songs on their first album, Music from Big Pink, and this masterpiece — a one-two punch the likes of
which rock and roll hasn't seen since. Full article


(A) Across the Great Divide - Rag Mama Rag - The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down - When You Awake - Up on Cripple Creek - Whispering Pines

(B) Jemima Surrender - Rockin' Chair - Look Out Cleveland - Jawbone - The Unfaithful Servant - King Harvest (Has Surely Come)

"King Harvest (Has Surely Come)" live from Robbie Robertson's studio in Woodstock NY from promised land on YouTube.

            

  

www.thebandofficial.com

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28. The Rolling Stones - Let It Bleed

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The album title says so.

There's the album cover art standing at right while a vinyl record with a blank label rolls down from the bottom in the same speed at the blood is dripping from top left.

You can keep the music playing while the blood starts to spill on the record and comes into contact with the tip of the needle.

Would you wish you could feel it?

Here's the Bleed without the blood.

No. 32, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time; No. 37, Rate Your Music, The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time; No. 40, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000.

No. 29, Music Radar, The 50 Greatest Album Covers of All Time.

Art design by Robert Brownjohn. Album produced by Jimmy Miller. Decca (UK), London (US), 1969.


The Guardian reported on 22 November 2011 that the artwork for one of the most famous album covers – the Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed –
is expected to fetch up to £40,000 at auction.


The album cover displays a surreal sculpture designed by Robert Brownjohn. The image consists of the Let It Bleed record being played by the tone-arm of an antique phonograph,
and a record-changer spindle supporting several items stacked on a plate in place of a stack of records: a tape canister labelled Stones – Let It Bleed, a clock dial,
a pizza, a tyre and a cake with elaborate icing topped by figurines representing the band. The cake parts of the construction were prepared by
then-unknown cookery writer Delia Smith. The artwork was inspired by the working title of the album, which was Automatic Changer. 

The album cover for Let It Bleed was among the ten chosen by the Royal Mail for a set of "Classic Album Cover" postage stamps issued in January 2010.
Full Article



(A) Gimme Shelter - Love in Vain - Country Honk - Live with Me - Let It Bleed

(B) Midnight Rambler - You Got the Silver - Monkey Man - You Can't Always Get What You Want

"Gimme Shelter" live from The Rolling Stones on YouTube.

            

  

www.rollingstones.com

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26. Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols

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This work is an experiment with the glass distortion and liquefy filters. The basis I chose is the album cover version which has pink instead of the more common dayglo red for the band's letters. It's the
pink as in punk that created the rush to add the bright blue bar at left and supplied the devilish creative adrenalin to arouse the X and drop the O. 

One can have it any which way but Jamie Reid's original album art has already gone down in history as one of the standards of punk visual aesthetic. 


Here's the original album cover art design.

No. 29, The Virgin all-Time Album Top 1000; No. 29, Rate Your Music, The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time; No. 41, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

No. 2, Rolling Stone, The 100 Greatest Album Covers; No. 14, Music Radar, The 50 Greatest Album Covers of All Time.

Design concept by Jamie Reid, phrase supplied by Steve Jones. Album produced by Chris Thomas and Bill Price. Virgin 1977.

The album was originally going to be titled God Save Sex Pistols. The album's title changed in mid-1977, based on a phrase supplied by Steve Jones. Jones said he picked up the phrase
"Never mind the bollocks" from two fans who would always say it to one another. Johnny Rotten explained its meaning as a working-class expression to "stop talking rubbish".

In the UK, the album was subject to what (writer Clinton) Heylin described as "blatant acts of censorship exercised by media and retail outlets alike". London police visited the 
city's Virgin record stores and told them they faced prosecution for indecency if they continued to display posters of the album cover in their windows. The displays were either
toned down or removed. However, on 9 November 1977 the London Evening Standard announced on its front page headline "Police Move in on Punk Disc Shops", and reported 
how a Virgin Records shop manager was arrested for displaying the record after being warned to cover up the word "bollocks". 

An obscenity case was heard at Nottingham Magistrates' Court on 24 November. The defence presented the case as a matter of police discrimination. The arresting officer was 
asked why the newspapers The Guardian and Evening Standard (which had referred to the album's name) had not been charged under the same act. When the magistrate inquired 
about his line of questioning, the defence lawyer stated that a double-standard was apparently at play, and that "bollocks" was only considered obscene when it appeared on the
cover of a Sex Pistols album. The prosecutor conducted his cross-examination "as if the album itself, and not its lurid visage, was on trial for indecency. 

The lawyer produced expert witnesses who were able to successfully demonstrate that the word "bollocks" was not obscene, and was actually a legitimate Old English term 
originally used to refer to a priest, and which, in the context of the title, meant "nonsense". Full article


Case closed. 




(A) Holidays in the Sun - Liar - No Feelings - God Save the Queen - Problems

(B) Seventeen - Anarchy in the U.K. - Bodies - Pretty Vacant - New York - E.M.I.

"God Save the Queen" Live 2007 from djitras on YouTube.

            

  

www.sexpistolsofficial.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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23. Pink Floyd - The Wall

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The original album cover art design of The Wall is a white brick wall with no text. Roger Waters had fallen out with Hipgnosis designer Storm Thorgerson.
Later CD covers would bear the band's name and album title in either black or red text.

For this work, I have added two images from the movie The Wall and a fan-made calligraphy. The additional text is mine.


The Wall is a story of alienation, oppression, isolation, despair and bombing out. A wall is a symbol of separation, restriction and exclusion. It sends a message that means containment, 
debasement, lack of freedom and the forced imposition of someone else's will on another. Yet the human spirit is surprisingly insurmountable and history is replete with the fall
of famous walls. The walled city of Babylon was considered impregnable during its time until Cyrus the Great diverted the Euphrates River to lower its water level and thus 
enabled his army to enter the city through the river bed. The Storming of the Bastille was the flashpoint of the French Revolution. The Wall concert was one of the
events that marked celebrations over the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. 

Dynasties have built walls to contain themselves, exclude others or otherwise prove that what are within those walls are theirs. The erection of walls have
always been accompanied by blatant displays of power and have often been served in conflict and ushered in dominance and servitude. But for every
whack of the whip of authority is an echo of disillusionment, dismemberment and disintegration. The only man-made structure that is visible
from the dark side of the moon may yet be the next to fall.

"We don't need no thought control."

No. 16, Billboard, The 300 Best-Selling Albums of All Time; No. 30, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000;
No. 47, Rate Your Music, The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time; No. 87, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.


Design by Gerald Scarfe. Album produced by Bob Ezrin, David Gilmour, James Guthrie and Roger Waters. Harvest/EMI 1979.


Pink Floyd's the Wall is one of the most intriguing and imaginative albums in the history of rock music. Since the studio album's release in 1979, the tour of 1980-81, and the subsequent
movie of 1982, the Wall has become synonymous with, if not the very definition of, the term "concept album." Aurally explosive on record, astoundingly complex on stage, and visually
explosive on the screen, the Wall traces the life of the fictional protagonist, Pink Floyd, from his boyhood days in post-World-War-II England to his self-imposed isolation as a 
world-renowned rock star, leading to a climax that is as cathartic as it is destructive. Full article


(A) In the Flesh? - The Thin Ice - Another Brick in the Wall (Part I) - The Happiest Days of Our Lives - Another Brick in the Wall (Part II) - Mother

(B) Goodbye Blue Sky - Empty Spaces - Young Lust - One of My Turns - Don't Leave Me Now - Another Brick in the Wall (Part III) - Goodbye Cruel World

(C) Hey You - Is There Anybody Out There? - Nobody Home - Vera - Bring the Boys Back Home - Comfortably Numb

(D) The Show Must Go On - In the Flesh - Run Like Hell - Waiting for the Worms - Stop - The Trial - Outside the Wall

"Another Brick in the Wall" from mongchilde on YouTube.
         

              

    

www.pinkfloyd.com

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21. The Beatles - Abbey Road

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On this work, the top fourth of the original album cover art design (from above the street lamp near the black car at right) was stretched so that the square image could fit into half an 18X10 canvass.
It was pasted at right and was flipped and the flipped image was pasted at left.

The first impression that one will have upon seeing this image is that it is half real and half unreal - that is, the flipped image is unreal. On closer look, the flipped image is not totally unreal,
for its bottom half resembles the reflections of tree and sky on clear waters. And then I wouldn't mind answering the question why those reflections are above pedestrians' heads 
instead of below. But what if I saw that image in a record store and bought the album and played the record only to find that the music is playing backwards?

Backmasking is a recording technique in which a sound or message is recorded backward onto a track that is meant to be played forward. It was popularised
by The Beatles, who used backward instrumentation on their 1966 album Revolver. Backmasking was also used by Queen ("Another One Bites the Dust"),
The Eagles ("Hotel California"), Deep Purple ("Stormbringer"), and Led Zeppelin ("Stairway to Heaven"). More 


Here's the original album cover art design. A lot of rumours went with this image, mostly centred on the theory that 'Paul is dead.'

No.3, Rate Your Music, The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time; No. 8, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000; No. 14, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time;
No. 22, Entertainment Weekly, 100 Greatest Albums Ever; No. 32, Billboard, The 300 Best-Selling Albums of All Time.

No. 26, Music Radar, The 50 Greatest Album Covers of All Time.


Design by John Kosh; photo by Ian McMillan; suits by Tommy Nutter. Album produced by George Martin. Apple 1969.


The procession of The Beatles across the zebra crossing, say the conspiracy theorists, represents Paul's funeral. John Lennon leads in a white suit and symbolises the preacher; Ringo Starr is the mourner,
dressed in black; George Harrison, in scruffy shirt and trousers, denotes the grave-digger; Paul is wearing an old suit and is the only one who is barefoot. This, was a sign that Paul was the corpse. 

Paul McCartney is left-handed, but here holds his cigarette in his right hand. At the time, cigarettes were commonly referred to as 'coffin nails'. This, therefore, could be seen as a message
that Paul's 'coffin lid' had been nailed down and that the man in the picture was a lookalike. Paul is also out of step with the other band members. Each of the others has his left leg
forward, but Paul has his right leg forward - again marking him out as different. 

The VW Beetle in the background has the registration LMW 28IF - 28 being the age theorists say Paul would have been if he hadn't 'died'. In fact, Paul was 27 when
Abbey Road was released - but fortunately for the theorists, Indian mystics count a person's age from conception, not birth, in which case Paul would have
indeed been 28 at the time. The band were famous followers of the Indian guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It has also been suggested that the LMW
stands for 'Linda McCartney Weeps' - referring to his new wife whom he had married earlier that year. More

The fadeout of "Strawberry Fields Forever" has John Lennon seemingly saying "I buried Paul."

The image of the Beatles on the crossing has become one of the most famous and imitated in recording history. The crossing is a popular destination for Beatles fans. In December
2010, the crossing was given grade II listed status for its "cultural and historical importance"; the Abbey Road studios themselves had been given similar status earlier in the year.
In 2013, Kolkata (India) Police launched a traffic safety awareness advertisement against jaywalking, using the cover and a caption that read: "If they can, why can't you?" More


(A) Come Together - Something - Maxwell's Silver Hammer - Oh! Darling - Octopus's Garden - I Want You (She's So Heavy)

(B) Here Comes the Sun - Because - You Never Give Me Your Money - Sun King/Mean Mr. Mustard/Polythene Pam/
She Came In Through the Bathroom Window - Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End - Her Majesty

"Come Together" live from Brad Dilon on YouTube.

            

  

www.the beatles.com

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