84. Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Brain Salad Surgery

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This image is a collage of the original album cover art design (at centre) and reproductions of the image from the inside of the album and their negatives

(on the sides).  The whole original image has been  converted to monochrome and tinted with purple and the skull has been modified with the addition of

the eyes one of which has been intentionally  misplaced in order to add expression to the face (or whatever is left of it). The meaning of the expression is

left to the beholder. The eye is borrowed from pngimg.com.

Emerson Lake and Palmer’s  logo is actually the most reputed  anagram in rock music.  This work is  an excellent  example of how to make  a long name  fit into a simple  and effective logo.

Giger found a clever way to  make the anagram work by  balancing the circles in the letters 'E' and 'P' to encircle the whole thing.  He also balanced  the rest with a long vertical centre spinal

formed by 'L' and 'P'.  This is a wonderful lesson of balance and economy in logo design. The ELP logo has been used practically ever since.  T-Shirts, prints, posters, backdrops, tons of reissues

and one of the most frequent images was painted on the side of vans and motorcycles.

Giger’s images have  stood the test of time  and this album cover has became  one of the greatest album covers of all time.  Hans Rudolf Giger went on to

become a world famous artist and designer, his paintings and prints are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. He won an Oscar for his  spectacular work

for the movie "Alien" and he has contributed works for the films "Species", "Poltergeist" and others.

The album cover is considered one of the most memorable (and often disturbing) of its time.  It features the  distinctive Giger monochromatic biomechanical artwork, integrating an industrial

mechanism with a human skull  and the new ELP logo. The lower part of the skull's face is covered by a circular screen, which shows the mouth and lower face in its flesh-covered state. In the

original LP release, the front cover was split in half down the centre, except for the circular screen section  which was attached to the right half. Opening the halves revealed a painting of the

complete face:  a human female  (modelled after Giger's wife),  with 'alien' hair and multiple scars,  including the  infinity symbol  and a scar from a frontal lobotomy.  The two images of the

woman are very similar, but the outer image (in the circle) contains what appears to be the top of a phallus below her chin, arising from the 'ELP' column below (the second painting originally

had the complete phallus, but this was removed at the insistence of the record company). The back cover was solid black with the album title in plain white lettering.

Image from Sacred Metal Board

According to a book written by Giger, the band never paid his bill for the artwork,  even though the imagery has become part of the band’s overall brand.

www.brainsaladsurgery.de

These are the original album  cover art design and the image from the inside of the album cover.  "Work No. 217 ELP I" (left) and "Work No. 218 ELP II" (right),

are acrylic-on-paper paintings by H. R. Giger, done in 1973. 

The paintings were last seen at the artist's 2005 retrospective at the National Technical Museum of Prague in the Czech Republic. A reward of $10,000 is being

offered for information leading to the recovery of these two world famous paintings. www.hrgiger.com 

No. 56, Music Radar, The 50 Greatest Album Covers of All Time


Album produced by Greg Lake. Manticore 1973.


(A) Jerusalem - Toccata - Still. . . You Turn Me On - Benny the Bouncer - Karn Evil 9: 1st Impression, Part 1

(B) Karn Evil 9: 1st Impression, Part 2 - Karn Evil 9: 2nd Impression, Karn Evil 9: 3rd Impression

"Karn Evil 9: 1st Impression, Part 1" live cover by the Morgaua Quartet from edamame365 on YouTube.

              

    

emersonlakepalmer.com

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72. Natalie Cole - Unforgettable

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As a young boy growing  up in the country in the early 60s my musical preferences were formed by the few people  who played the standards  and  who owned the even fewer battery-operated turntables
around town.  The natural offshot was that we or I really had to  memorize the song lyrics if there was one I liked.  And yet there were even  fewer records than turntables that were really worth playing
again and again. And there were even fewer songs worth remembering.

And then I learned to play guitar. The people who owned those turntables and records and guitar were of course very much older than me, and I was very much aware of our age gaps. Very few boys my
age had the same inclination as I had. I learned to love rock and roll but I was different.

Three decades later I would be  sitting in my work place  listening to FM radio in the office.  There was Nat "King" Cole  singing a duet with her daughter.  The time came when I have  to leave for three
months in order to go to head office and train for a promotion.

I stayed in a hotel. I was far from my wife and daughter now. I bought the compact disc. I played it in my loneliness. 

It was this album.

Art direction and album design by Drentel Doyle Partners. Photo by George Hurrell. album produced by Andre Fisher, David Foster, Tommy LiPuma and Natalie Cole. Elektra 1991.
  

A major change of direction for Natalie Cole, Unforgettable found the singer abandoning the type of R&B/pop she'd been recording since 1975 in favor of jazz-influenced pre-rock pop along the lines of

Nat King Cole's music.  It was a surprising risk that paid off handsomely - both commercially and artistically.  Naysayers who thought  that so radical a change would be commercial  suicide were proven

wrong when  the outstanding Unforgettable sold a shocking five million units.  Quite clearly, this  was an album Cole was dying to make.  Paying  tribute to her late father on "Mona Lisa," "Nature Boy,"

"Route 66," and other gems that  had been major hits for him in the 1940s and early '50s, the 41-year-old Cole  sounds more inspired than she had in  well over a decade. On the title song, overdubbing

was used to make it sound as though she were singing a  duet with her father - dishonest perhaps, but certainly enjoyable.  Thankfully, standards and pre-rock pop turned out to be a primary direction

for Cole, who was a baby when the title song became a hit for her father in 1951. AllMusic Review by Alex Henderson

(A) The Very Thought of You - Paper Moon - Route 66 - Mona Lisa - L-O-V-E - This Can't Be Love

(B) Smile - Lush Life - That Sunday That Summer - Orange-Colored Sky - For Sentimental Reasons/Tenderly/Autumn Leaves

(C) Straighten Up and Fly Right - Avalon - Don't Get Around Much Anymore - Too Young - Nature Boy - Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup 

(D) Almost Like Being In Love - Thou Swel - Non Dimenticar - Our Love is Here to Stay - Unforgettable

"Unforgettable" live from car2929 on YouTube.

            

  

www.nataliecole.com

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70. Little Richard - Here's Little Richard

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People called  him the architect  of rock and roll.  He claimed that as a child he felt feminine and played with girls.  In 1984 he told Charles  White that he was "omnisexual." In 1995, he told
Penthouse that he always knew he was gay. In 2007, Mojo magazine described him as a "bisexual alien". Source


 Little Richard's (Richard Wayne Penniman, b. 5 December 1932) most celebrated work dates from the mid-1950s, when his dynamic music and charismatic showmanship laid the foundation for
rock and roll. His music also played a key role in the formation of other popular music genres, including soul and funk. Little Richard influenced numerous singers and musicians across musical
genres from rock to  hip-hop;  his music impacted the rhythm  and blues era for future generations to come,  and his performances and headline-making  thrust his career right into the mix of
American popular music. Wikipedia


"I came from a family where my people didn't like rhythm and blues," Little Richard told Rolling Stone in 1970.  "Bing Crosby, 'Pennies From Heaven,' Ella Fitzgerald was all I heard. And I knew
there was something that could be louder than that, but didn't know where to find it. And I found it was me." Richard's raucous debut collected singles such as "Good Golly, Miss Molly," in which
his rollicking  boogie-woogie piano and falsetto  scream ignited the unfettered possibilities of rock & roll.  "Tutti Frutti" still  contains what has  to be considered the most inspired rock lyric on
record: "A wop bop alu bop, a wop bam boom!" Rolling Stone

No. 50, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time; No. 525, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000.

Information wanted for original album art design concept and photo.

Album produced by Bumps Blackwell. Specialty 1957.

Little Richard had been making records for four years before he rolled into Cosimo Matassa's J&M Studio in New Orleans and cut the epochal "Tutti Frutti" in the fall of 1955, but everything

else he'd done faded into insignificance when Richard wailed "A wop bop a loo mop a lomp bomp bomp" and kicked off one of the first great wailers in rock history. In retrospect, Little

Richard's style doesn't seem  so strikingly innovative  as captured in 1956's Here's Little Richard - his boogie-woogie  piano stylings weren't all  that different from what Fats Domino

had been laying down since 1949, and his band pumped out the New Orleans backbeat that would define the Crescent City's R&B for the next two decades, albeit with precision

 and plenty of groove.

But what set  Richard apart was his  willingness  to ramp up the tempos and turn the outrage meter up  to ten; "Tutti Frutti," "Rip It Up," and "Jenny Jenny" still  sound outrageous a half-

century after  they were waxed,  and it's difficult  but intriguing  to imagine  how people must have  reacted to Little Richard  at a time when African-American  performers were 

expected to be polite, and the notion of a gay man venturing out of the closet simply didn't exist. Mark Deming in AllMusic

(A) Tutti Frutti - True, Fine Mama - Can't Believe You Wanna Leave - Ready Teddy - Baby - Slippin' and Slidin'

(B) Long Tall Sally - Miss Ann - Oh Why? - Rip It Up - Jenny Jenny - She's Got It

"Tutti Frutti" live from MoondogMayne on YouTube.

            

  

  

"I am done."

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65. The Doors - The Doors

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The original album cover art design is a large photo of Jim Morrison and the rest of The Doors (Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore) combined in a relatively smaller image plus the familiar
calligraphy that many have rendered as one of rock music's most famous logos. It is positioned at right on the image above. Jim appears to be gazing at the distance while the rest of the band have
their eyes on the camera. My processing involved the use of the Cutout and Craquelure filters.

It might be difficult for the younger generation to understand why such imagery had focused so much on Jim Morrison. I couldn't find a better explanation than an article from the September
19, 2009 interview of Bob Heimall, who designed the cover of The Doors 13 album, released in 1970. The article goes:

"Consider, then, what it might have been like to produce an album cover for a band like The Doors – a band that fascinated their legions fans in a variety of thought-provoking (and often
outrageous) ways. Incorporating the moods and sensations produced by Jim Morrison’s lyrics and poetry (and sexually-charged on-stage antics) with the band’s superb musicality and
then taking into account the expectations of a world-wide fan base, this particular Art Director’s output would ultimately be measured on many levels. 

You need to understand that, by this time, The Doors had in effect become "the Jim Morrison Band", with Jim getting all the publicity and notoriety - he was truly one of the 
new "Rock Idols". However, the rest of the band members wanted as much credit as Jim - and they really should have, because of their respective and combined talents -
but the Doors' fans, the press and paparazzi remained focused in on Jim.

When they saw what I created for the cover, though, they were all blown away! Right then, all were in agreement that it should be used as their first "Best Of" album
cover.  The Doors absolutely loved the cover, and I was told later by Jac Holtzman - the owner of Elektra Records - that Jim later came into his office and told
Jac to "take care of me" as I was very talented!" Full article

No. 33, Rate Your Music, The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time; No. 42, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time;

No. 46, The Virgin all-Time Album Top 1000; No. 194, Billboard, The 300 Best-Selling Albums of All Time.

Photo by Joel Brodsky, calligraphy by Art Chantry. Album produced by Paul A. Rothchild. Elektra 1967. 

In 1967 at his New York studio, Joel Brodsky created what have now become the most recognisable portraits of Jim Morrison - capturing the self styled Lizard King

at the peak of his physical and artistic powers. The Doors were poised to release two magnificent albums that year, their self-titled debut, The Doors, and,

to many ears, their finest album, Strange Days. ‘Iconic’ is an overused word in the context of celebrity portraiture, but is bang on the money when used

to describe Joel’s famous portrait. Joel Brodsky’s photographs appeared on the covers of The Doors first two albums, and subsequently on The Soft

Parade and many Greatest Hits compilations. More

(A) Break On Through (To the Other Side) - Soul Kitchen - The Crystal Ship - Twentieth Century Fox - Alabama Song (Whisky Bar) - Light My Fire

(B) Back Door Man - I Looked at You - End of the Night - Take It as It Comes - The End

The Doors "Light My Fire" live In Hollywood Bowl from GilGarBal on YouTube.

            

  

www.thedoors.com

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