Deviations from Select Albums 3: art

Saturday, April 30, 2016

85. Patti Smith - Horses

On the square original cover art design, the artist is a a bit off-centre to the left. That image has been positioned a bit off-centre to the right above,
and the sides were extended with the addition of flipped images of the portions required to fill the spaces required to make an 18X10 resolution image.
The whole image was then toned to sepia and posterized. Finally, the texture was applied with the Craquelure and Angled Strokes filters.

The peeled-off effect works nicely on the overall image including the figure of the artist and at the same time she is being set apart from the background.
The bonus is the figure of the head of a horse viewed up front which just happened to appear at left.

The cover photograph for Horses was taken using natural light by American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, a close friend of Smith's, at the Greenwich
Village penthouse apartment of his partner Sam Wagstaff. Patti Smith is depicted wearing a plain white shirt which she had purchased at the Salvation Army
on the Bowery and slinging a black jacket over her shoulder and her favorrite black ribbon around her collar. Embedded on the jacket is a horse pin that Smith's
friend Allen Lanier had given her. Smith has described her pose on the cover as "a mix of Baudelaire and Sinatra." The record company wanted to make various
changes to the photo, but Smith overruled such attempts. The black and white treatment and unisex pose were a departure from the typical promotional images
of "girl singers" of the time, but Smith maintains that she "wasn't making a big statement. That's just the way I dressed."

Writer Camille Paglia described the album's cover as "one of the greatest pictures ever taken of a woman." wikipedia

This is the original album cover art design.

No. 44, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time; No. 84, Entertainment Weekly, The 100 Greatest Albums Ever;
No. 91, Rate Your Music, The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time; No. 291, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000.

No. 26, Rolling Stone, The 100 Greatest Album Covers; No. 45, Music Radar, The 50 Greatest Album Covers of All Time

Photo by Robert Mapplethorpe. Album produced by John Cale. Arista 1975.

The simple black and white portrait gracing the cover of Horses was taken by Smith’s good friend, and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Smith had met
Mapplethorpe on her first day in New York City in 1967, when she accidentally wandered into his apartment looking for someone else. The two became close
friends, even sharing the smallest room at the Chelsea Hotel (as it was all they could afford), where they would stay up all night and work on their respective
art forms. Mapplethorpe has described his collaborations with Smith “like taking drugs; you’re in an abstract place and it’s perfect”. Lomography

(A) Gloria, Part I: In Excelcis Deo, Part II: Gloria - Redondo Beach - Birdland - Free Money

(B) Kimberly - Break It Up - Land, Part I: Horses, Part II: Land of a Thousand Dances, Part III: La Mer - Elegie

"Patti Smith "Land" (Horses/Land of 1000 Dances/La Mer(de))" music video from Singing Fools Video on YouTube.

www.pattismith.net

Previous: Emerson Lake & Palmer - Brain Salad Surgery

Next: Elton John - Captain Fantastic & The Brown Dirt Cowboy

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Thursday, February 4, 2016

75. Nick Drake - Pink Moon

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Nicholas Rodney "Nick" Drake (19 June 1948 – 25 November 1974) was an English singer-songwriter and musician, known for his acoustic guitar-based songs. He failed to find a wide audience
during his lifetime, but his work has gradually achieved wider notice and recognition. Drake signed to Island Records when he was 20 years old and was a student at the University of
Cambridge, and released his debut album, Five Leaves Left, in 1969. By 1972, he had recorded two more albums—Bryter Layter and Pink Moon. Neither sold more than 5,000 copies
on initial release. Drake's reluctance to perform live, or be interviewed, contributed to his lack of commercial success. There is no known footage of the adult Drake; he was
only ever captured in still photographs and in home footage from his childhood.

Drake suffered from major depression. This was often reflected in his lyrics. On completion of his third album, 1972's Pink Moon, he withdrew from both live performance
and recording, retreating to his parents' home in rural Warwickshire. On 25 November 1974, at the age of 26, Drake died from an overdose of approximately 30
amitriptyline pills, a prescribed antidepressant. His cause of death was determined to be suicide. Source

Keith Morris was the photographer who took Nick Drake's photo for the cover of Bryter Layter (1970) and he was commissioned to photograph Drake for the
cover of Pink Moon. However, the photos were not used as Drake's rapidly deteriorating appearance, hunched figure and blank expression were not
considered good selling points. Island's creative director Annie Sullivan, recalled the difficulty in making a decision around the cover of the LP:
"I remember going to talk to [Nick], and he just sat there, hunched up, and even though he didn't speak, I knew the album was called
Pink Moon, and I can't remember how he conveyed it, whether he wrote it down. . . he wanted a pink moon. He couldn't tell me what
he wanted, but I had 'pink moon' to go on." Island picked a piece of surrealist Dali-esque art by Michael Trevithick, who was
incidentally a friend of Drake's sister Gabrielle. Although Drake was not outspoken in his opinion on the cover art of
Pink Moon, many close to him felt that he approved.

David Sandison, Island's press officer stated that he found the original framed artwork for Pink Moon in among the
debris of the basement room that Island later allocated to him as his office, and he took it home and hung it
on the wall of his house for several years, before eventually presenting it to Drake's parents. An
undated photo of Drake's music room at his parents' house in Tanworth-in-Arden shows what appears
to be the artwork hanging on the wall. Full article