95. Billy Joel - The Stranger

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In this work Billy Joel is  playing chess with The Stranger.  I thought his deep concentration was too much for a harlequin mask.
Well, actually it's just a mirrored image with the reversed letters removed and the chessboard and pieces added.  Some Liquify
filter applications on the pillows and the sheets and. . . , well it looks like a draw.

The real story is told below.


The Stranger’s cover art shows Joel lounging on a bed, glancing down with a look of despondent  contemplation at a (harlequin)
mask.  On the wall  behind  him hangs a pair of boxing gloves  (Billy Joel used to box).  Coupled  with the  lyrics  from the title
track,  a story is  created  that differs from  the other tracks.  Joel ditches  pseudonyms and  third-person  narration  and tells a
personal tale of doubt and identity.  The first words  Joel lets out are,  “Well we all have a face that we hide away forever/And
we take them out and show ourselves when everyone has gone.”

With this introspective  song and artwork,  Joel “hung up the gloves”  and fell victim to someone  who had a side that was never
shown. The personality from the cover and vulnerability of the song set up the rest of the tracks to undertake a deeper meaning,
transcending beyond entertaining tunes. Review by Ryan Glaspell on Puluche; notes in parenthesis are by Bob Egan on PopSpots. 

Photo from PopSpots

No. 70,  Rolling Stone,  The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time;  No. 138,  Billboard,  The 300 Best-Selling Albums of All Time;
No. 246, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000.


Photo by Jerry Abramowitz. Album produced by Phil Ramone. Family Productions/Columbia 1977.


Joel describes the sessions for the album as "a blast" and as the breakthrough album with four hit singles. The Stranger contains
nine songs.  Songwriting  on "Movin' Out  (Anthony's Song),"  "She's  Always a Woman,"  "Just the Way  You Are,"  "Everybody Has a
Dream," and "Only the Good Die Young"  was completed  before recording,  while "Vienna," "Scenes from an  Italian Restaurant,"
"The Stranger," and "Get It Right the First Time," which originated as short tunes  or musical fragments, were completed  in the
studio.

Lyrically, the album's approach is decidedly narrative; each song tells a story. The seven-and-a-half-minute epic "Scenes From an
Italian Restaurant" began as a shorter song entitled "The Ballad of Brenda and Eddie," which became the third section of "Italian
Restaurant." While composing "The Stranger,"  Joel whistled the track's signature theme for producer Phil Ramone, claiming that
he (Joel) needed to find an instrument to play it. Ramone replied: "No, you don't. That's 'The Stranger,' the whistling." wikipedia

(A) Movin' Out (Anthony's Song) - The Stranger - Just the Way You Are - Scenes from an Italian Restaurant

(B) Vienna - Only the Good Die Young - She's Always a Woman - Get It Right the First Time - Everybody Has a Dream/The Stranger (Reprise)

"Just the Way You Are" live from MAXFMTV on YouTube.

                                                                                                                                               

    

www.billyjoel.com

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91. Ramones - Ramones

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On this work, the original album cover art design is at centre. Its bottom had been converted to negative. The uncoverted bottom half was then flipped and pasted on the left and on the right sides in
order to fill the remaining spaces of an 18x10 resolution frame. Finally, the whole image was processed with Angled Strokes.


Initially, the Ramones wanted an album cover similar to  Meet the Beatles! (1964), and subsequently had pictures  taken in that style by Danny Fields  but Sire was dissatisfied with the results. The art
direction was by Toni Wadler and,  according to cartoonist  John Holmstrom,  the Meet The Beatles!  cover idea came out "horribly."  Wadler later chose a photo by  Roberta Bayley,  a photographer for
Punk magazine for the cover.The black and white photograph on the front of the album was originally in an issue of Punk.

The cover photo features (from left to right)  Johnny,  Tommy, Joey and Dee Dee Ramone,  staring at the camera with blank faces.  They are all wearing  ripped/faded blue jeans and leather jackets,
standing upright against the brick wall of a private community  garden called  Albert's Garden, located in the Bowery  neighbourhood of New York City  between Bowery Street and Second Street. The
stance of the group  members in the photograph would influence their future cover designs as well, with  the majority of their succeeding  albums using a picture of the band on the front cover. Music
historian Legs McNeil states that "Tommy [is] standing on his tip-toes and Joey [is] hunched over a bit." 


The artwork became one of the most imitated album covers in music. The image of a band in front of a brick wall dressed in ripped jeans and leather jackets was copied by Alvin and the Chipmunks
in Chipmunk Punk. Ramones's artwork was ranked number 58 on Rolling Stone's 1991 list of 100 Greatest Album Covers. wikipedia




No. 33, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time; No. 52, Rate Your Music, The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time;
No. 100, Entertainment Weekly, 100 Greatest Albums Ever; No. 232, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000.

No. 33, Music Radar, The 50 Greatest Album Covers of All Time; No. 58, Rolling Stone, The 100 Greatest Album Covers. 


Photo by Roberta Bayley, courtesy of Punk magazine. Album produced by Craig Leon & Tommy Ramone. Sire (US & UK), Philips
(Europe), 1976.


Nearly 40 years after its release,  one of rock's landmark  albums is reported to have achieved gold status in the US. Ramones,
first released on 23 April 1976 was certified as gold by the Recording Industry of America on 30 April 2014. That means it has
now sold more than 500,000 copies.

Ramones was greeted  ecstatically by critics on its release, especially in the UK. "As a punk artefact, it separates the men from
the boys,"  wrote Nick Kent in NME.  "If you love  hard-ass  retard rock,  you'll  bathe in every  groove.  If you  pride  yourself on
being a sensitive human-being, this record will gag on you like a gatorade and vermouth fireball."

In the Detroit magazine Creem,  which always championed loud guitar rock, Gene Sculatti wrote:  "Serving its radical function,
the Ramones'  debut  drives a  sharp  wedge  between  the  stale  ends  of a  contemporary  music  scene  bloated  with graying
superstars and overripe for takeover. Right now, the Ramones have their hands on the wheel." The Guardian


(A) Blitzkrieg Bop - Beat on the Brat - Judy is a Punk - I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend - Chain Saw - Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue - I Don't Wanna Go Down to the Basement

(B) Loudmouth - Havana Affair - Listen to My Heart - 53rd and 3rd - Let's Dance - I Don't Wanna Walk Around with You - Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World

"Beat on the Brat" live from Elias Merida on YouTube.

              

    

www.ramones.com

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89. Traffic - The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys

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This 'paste-over' work was done with in the intention of making a three-dimensional image look flat. This looks arresting, but to me, it doesn't look three-
dimensional at all.  It does feel spacey and seems  to float over the black background, and the only space it will occupy would be  the space on your 18X10
resolution screen.  The purpose is to not attain  anything in spite of the effort,  to not feel the joy in spite of the cheer and to show the bleakness without
the frustration.

The traffic is stalled and no new heights are reached. And as the song goes, "Don't worry too much, it'll happen to you; we were children once playing with
toys." The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys

This was the first album cover ever  designed by artist Tony Wright.  It has been said that this art "looks like

Traffic's music sounds",  and we  heartily agree.  The different shapes  and textures are very  similar to how

the music of Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi sounds. As most people who own this record know, the corners

are chopped off.  This was done to  create  the cube effect that the art was designed to portray.  It worked

brilliantly! Visual Gallery

The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys' cover is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

No. 625, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000.

No. 76, Rolling Stone, The 100 Greatest Album Covers.


Cover design by Tony Wright, photography by Richard Polack. Album produced by Steve Winwood. Island 1971.


An incredible  collection of talent made  up this band and it shows  through on  both sides of this record.  The
voices,  instruments and arrangements  seem to be unique to this place and time.  Who else besides could pull
off a 12:10 "Low Spark"  and  make you want  more when it finishes?  And the record  still sounds  fresh today.
Jazz inflections, world-beat percussion and that voice of Steve Winwood plaintive yet strong at the same time.
And you get the die-cut cover to top it all off. Who could ask for more? tralfaz-archives.com


(A) Hidden Treasure - The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys - Light Up or Leave Me Alone

(B) Rock and Roll Stew - Many a Mile to Freedom - Rainmaker

"The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys" live from Jam & Psych on MV on YouTube.

              

    

www.stevewinwood.com

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88. Genesis - Selling England by the Pound

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The cover of Selling England By the Pound features a painting by Betty Swanwick, one called "The Dream". Her style is noted as being “quintessentially English,” according to the British Council for Visual
Arts. Peter Gabriel must have thought so, too.  In his quest to make Selling England more applicable to a British audience,  he chose an image for the cover that  evoked the fussiness and the passive
grandiosity that Brits do so well. In the forefront of the painting is a man sleeping on a park bench in the middle of a garden. While Selling England was still in production, Peter saw "The Dream"
and thought it’d be perfect. A big reason, I think, was that the song “I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)” featured the lyrics “When the sun beats down and I lie on the bench. . .”


Peter asked Betty to add a little  something to the painting to make it even more applicable to the song – a lawn mower standing up next to the park bench.  It looks like it’s really supposed to be there,
perfectly  married to the song.  The Dream visually  tells a story of  a man who  simply wants to be left alone, but has other people  constantly making demands of him.  The same exact theme is
presented in “I Know What I Like.” That is truly a piece of synchronicity and the larger framework is the British character. N. Neal Paradise on Album Oriented.

On the work above,  the original album cover art design, 9 square inches in size was halved and restored at the centre of an 10 x 18 inch frame. This was repeated on exactly the same spot, making two
layers of the same image one on top of the other. A copy of the right half was then flipped  and added at left and a copy of the left half  was also flipped and added at right. The whole image was
now 9 X 18 inches. Positioned from the top, this still left a strip of 1 x 18 inches at the bottom of the frame.

The images on the sides were then  stretched in order to cover the  spaces below each of them.  Then the bottom layer of the left half of the image at centre was pulled  downwards to cover the space
below it and its top layer  was cropped in order  to reveal the upper body of the man below it.  The bottom layer of the right half was also  pulled down  to cover the remaining space. The whole
image was then processed in poster edges and crosshatched.


This is the original album cover art design.




Album art design from the painting "The Dream" by Betty Swanwick. Album produced by John Burns & Genesis. Charisma, Atlantic, 1973. 

Contemporary reviews for the album were mixed.  Rolling Stone's Paul Gambaccini praised the band for attempting  something utterly different amidst "a stagnant pop scene", but criticised the album's
lyrics, feeling they overused British pop culture references, and complained about some musical passages. Despite this, Gambaccini thought the album "merits some recognition". NME's Barbara Charone
said the album was "the band's best, most adventurous album to date". The Guardian's Robin Denselow wrote that "much of the material is indistinctive and tedious".

Retrospective reviews have been more favourable. AllMusic and BBC Music remarked that the album returned to the whimsical eccentricity of Nursery Cryme while retaining the hard rock intensity and
pessimism of Foxtrot,  combining the best of both elements to make Genesis's best album up to that point.  Robert Christgau, who thoroughly panned most of Genesis's albums, admitted that the songs
"Firth of Fifth" and "The Battle of Epping Forest" have "a complexity of tone that's pretty rare in any kind of art", though he summarised the rest of the album by saying "it sounds as snooty as usual."

Selling England by the Pound  has been praised  by other songwriters and musicians.  Rush drummer  Neil Peart has said:  "I think  Selling England by the Pound is an enduring masterpiece  of drumming.
Beautiful drumming, lovely sound,  and the arrangements, I think they really nailed the best of what that band as an entity could have done with that album."  Fish, solo artist and former lead singer of
Marillion,  has called it "the definitive Genesis album",  praised its "emotive" quality,  said the wordplay was  "one of the things tha t became quite an influence on me - the games within  the lyrics" and
concluded it "took a whole jump forward and was the album that really got me into Genesis". Singer and songwriter Robert Pollard of Guided by Voices  considers Selling England by the Pound one of his
ten favourite records of all time. John Lennon said he really liked the album during a radio interview, which the band took great encouragement from. wikipedia

(A) Dancing with the Moonlit Knight - I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe) - Firth of Fifth - More Fool Me

(B) The Battle of Epping Forest - After the Ordeal - The Cinema Show - Aisle of Plenty 

      
"I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)" live from RHINO on YouTube.

              

    

genesism3w.com

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87. Queen - A Night at the Opera

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"Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality.
Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see,
I'm just a poor boy, I need no sympathy,
Because I'm easy come, easy go, little high, little low,
Anyway the wind blows nothing really matters to me. . .
To me." www.azlyrics.com

So goes the opening lyrics of "Bohemian Rhapsody", widely regarded as one of the most significant rock songs in history. wikipedia 


"Bohemian Rhapsody" is the penultimate track in the album A Night of the Opera.  Back in the 70s, before the advent of MTV,  I remember seeing a music video of the song on TV
before the station signed on. The video opens with the silhouette of the band as it starts to sing a capella, and somewhere along the third line they appear in much the same way 
as they do below. This image, however, is on the cover of Queen II, the band's second album (Opera is their fourth), which does not include "Bohemian Rhapsody."


Here's the cover of Queen II, released in 1974.

www.wall321.com

On my work, the image of the band was split to give way to the Queen logo,  known as the Queen crest, which serves as the cover art design for A Night at the Opera. The cover
art design was cropped at the sides, toned to sepia and positioned at centre. The whole image was then texturized. Finally, Freddie Mercury's hands were converted to black and 
white to signify his death.


Here is the original album cover art design for A Night at the Opera.



No. 96, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000; No. 231, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Album cover art is from a design by Freddie Mercury. Album produced by Roy Thomas Baker & Queen. EMI/Parlophone (Europe), Elektra (USA)

Having attended art college,  Freddie Mercury also designed  the Queen crest, shortly before the  release of the band's first album.  The logo combines the zodiac signs of all four
members:  two lions for Leo (John Deacon and Roger Taylor),  a crab for Cancer (Brian May),  and two fairies for Virgo (Mercury).  The lions embrace a stylised letter Q, the crab 
rests atop the letter with flames rising directly above it, and the fairies are each sheltering below a lion.  There is also a crown inside the Q and the whole logo is over-shadowed
by an enormous phoenix. The whole symbol bears a passing resemblance to the Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom, particularly with the lion supporters. The original logo,
as found on the reverse-side of the first album cover, was a simple line drawing but more intricate colour versions were used on later sleeves. wikipedia



(A) Death on Two Legs (Dedicated to. . .) - Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon - I'm in Love with My Car - You're My Best Friend - 39 - Sweet Lady - Seaside Rendezvous

(B) The Prophet's Song - Love of My Life - Good Company - Bohemian Rhapsody - God Save the Queen

"Bohemian Rhapsody" music video from Queen Official on YouTube.

              

    

www.queenonline.com

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86. Elton John - Captain Fantastic & The Brown Dirt Cowboy

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This work is derived not from the original album cover art design but from the album's promotional poster that came with the album, released in 1975. Icons on the bottom left and bottom right of the

original image have  been removed and portions  on the sides have been extended with the use of the Liquify filter.  The contrast and brightness  were the adjusted and the whole image was stretched

and sharpened with the use of Crosshatch.

Folded at centre with the artist's name added at lower right and without the calligraphy at the bottom,  the original poster served as the album's  gatefold cover.

The album cover art by Alan Aldridge  features images of Elton John,  Bernie Taupin and the band (animated  elements of the artwork were used in a 30-second  television commercial  celebrating the

release of the album).  The front panel shows Elton breaking out of a dangerously dreary cityscape astride his piano while the back of the cover shows Bernie writing in a somewhat  protected pastoral

bubble. Keen-eyed fans can also identify Elton’s first music publisher Dick James and Bernie’s then-wife Maxine in the intricate illustration. www.eltonjohn.com

Bruce David Janu on The Vinyl Voyage: "When I was a kid, I used to check out record  albums from the public library. I was perusing  the LP bins one day and came

across Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy.  At the time I was perhaps 10 years old and knew nothing about Elton John,  other than the crazy outfits and

sunglasses he wore.  

Anyway, I checked out Captain Fantastic not because it was Elton John, but because the cover was so awesome. Although I hadn't yet been exposed to Hieronymus

Bosch, the cover must have been influenced by the paintings of the 15th century artist.  When I studied art in college I remember looking at The Garden of Earthy

Delights and immediately thinking of Captain Fantastic.  Like Bosch, the cover to Captain Fantastic is filled with other-worldly creatures: birdmen, naked bodies,

giant fish, men carrying large timepieces, creatures pooping gold. The only thing missing from the Elton cover is a man playing a flute out of his ass.

Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy came out in an era when album art mattered and bands spent a great deal of time and energy making the album art

part of the entire experience.  The packaging was almost as  important as the contents.  First, the introduction of compact discs diminished album art importance

and the evolution  to digital  completely killed this  time-honoured tradition.  The art of Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy  could never be shrunk to a

small LCD screen. Indeed, an album like Captain Fantastic would not even be produced today."

This is the original poster art.

www.gottahaverockandroll.com

This is the original album front cover.

No. 158, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time; No. 173, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000.

Original album art design and poster by Alan Aldridge. Album produced by Gus Dudgeon. MCA (USA), DJM (UK) 1975.

Written, according to lyricist Bernie Taupin, in chronological order,  Captain Fantastic is a concept album that  gives an autobiographical  glimpse at the struggles John (Captain Fantastic) and Taupin

(the Brown Dirt Cowboy) had in the early years of their musical careers in London (from 1967 to 1969). The lyrics and accompanying photo booklet are infused with a specific sense of place and time

that would otherwise be rare in John's music. John composed the music on a ship voyage from the UK to New York.

"Someone Saved My Life Tonight",  the only single released from the album  (and a number 4 hit on the US Pop Singles chart),  is a semi-autobiographical  story about John's disastrous engagement to

Linda Woodrow,  and his related 1969 suicide attempt.  The "Someone" refers to Long John Baldry,  who convinced him to break off the engagement rather than ruin his music career for an unhappy

marriage. It was viewed by Rolling Stone writer Jon Landau as the best track on the album: "As long as Elton John can bring forth one performance per album on the order of 'Someone Saved My Life

Tonight', the chance remains that he will become something more than the great entertainer he already is and go on to make a lasting contribution to rock." wikipedia

(A) Captain Fantastic & The Brown Dirt Cowboy - Tower of Babel - Bitter Fingers - Tell Me When the Whistle Blows - Someone Saved My Life Tonight

(B) (Gotta Get a) Meal Ticket - Better Off Dead - Writing - We All Fall in Love Sometimes - Curtains

"We All Fall in Love Sometimes" live from blog.naver.com/mvez on YouTube.

              

    

www.eltonjohn.com

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