A friend of mine took me to task last month for wimping out and not listing my favorite album covers. I had my excuses. In the first place, last month's column was long enough to begin with; I had other issues I was more interested in.
Secondly, I didn't want to take the time to decide on my personal favorites. I don't have a ready mental list of my favorite album covers, like I do for my favorite albums (and books and movies). I'm not sure why this is true. I certainly appreciate a good album cover; I've enjoyed quite a number of them over the years.
Despite the fact that I consider myself a visually oriented person, I also lack a mental list of my favorite paintings or photographs (I can barely put together a list of my favorite artists). I can only guess that the reason for this is that, while I appreciate visual art, I'm not a student of it. It don't study it, like I do books and music.
There is a further problem as well. Every time I do try to make a list of my favorite covers—Patti Smith's Horses, The Rolling Stones' Let it Bleed, Bowie's Aladdin Sane, Blue Oyster Cult's Tyranny and Mutation—it starts to look suspiciously like a list of my favorite albums. Which raises the question—do I like these covers for themselves, or because they remind me of the music inside?
I think this is a problem many of us share, that an album's cover and its music become so intertwined in our mind that if becomes hard to separate one from the other. To reverse the question, when you think of your favorite album, do you hear one of its songs, or do you picture its cover in your mind? Perhaps both together?
This deep relationship between album covers and their music led my friend and I to start proposing other categories: great albums with lousy covers, and lousy albums with great covers. And one which I'll call "supremely fitting album covers." That's a great album with a great cover, where the cover perfectly fits the music inside. And that is a list I can assemble. So here it is:
G. Murray Thomas' Top 13 Supremely Fitting Album Covers:
1. Animals – Pink Floyd. I think this might be the most supremely fitting album cover ever. The cover art looks exactly like the music inside sounds. Dark and depressing, imposing and industrial, with just the tiniest hint of life and hope. The album is all about how our industrial/capitalist society wears us down and crushes our spirit. What better depiction of that than a factory, a factory that looks ready to crush us right now? But the pig is floating above it—a hint at a slight bit of hope for our spirit. Perfect!
2. Sgt. Pepper – The Beatles. I give this one a place on the list for two reasons, one historical and one artistic. At the time of its release, the sheer audacity of the cover, the amount of work that obviously went into it, announced that this album was a major piece of work. While Sgt. Pepper was neither the first coherent album, nor the first great piece of cover art, it still announced a revolution—from now on, this would be the standard—great albums with great covers.
Regardless of its historical value, the cover still makes my list because of how well it fits the music. Like the cover, the music of Sgt. Pepper is brightly colored, elaborately presented, and draws on a huge pantheon of influences. Further, it is rich and deep, yet purely pleasurable. You can spend hours analyzing it, or you can just enjoy it.
3. Nebraska – Bruce Springsteen. Another dark cover for a dark album. A black and white shot, through a windshield, of an endless highway in a featureless prairie. The sky is overcast, it might even be raining. Not only can you picture mass-murderer Charles Starkweather (anti-hero of the title track) in that car, but almost all the songs on the album are about people driving (sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively) through the barren landscapes of their lives. Furthermore, the extremely basic cover fits the sparse music; these home recordings are the equivalent of a B&W photo.
4. Aqualung – Jethro Tull. As with Nebraska, this one first works as a literal interpretation of the title song. Who can doubt that man pictured on the front cover is the pervert Aqualung? On the back cover, the same (probably) bum is slumped in the gutter, reflecting side 2's themes of a church and/or God which neglects the neediest. The cover works on a deeper level as well. The Gothic lettering and faux-Old Master look of the artwork hint at the traditional folk influences in the music. Jethro Tull rocked hard, but they always looked back at a deep folk tradition in English music and culture as well.
5. Three (Melt) – Peter Gabriel. This cover tells you flat out that the music inside is going to be a distortion of reality. There's the electronic processing Gabriel forced his music through, and the rhythmic innovation he applied to basic rock structures. And since it is Gabriel's face which is melted, it also refers to the questions of identify and control he raises throughout the album.
6. Hot Rats – Frank Zappa. For years I thought this was Zappa on the cover. It's not, it's Christine Tska, of the Zappa managed group the GTOs. In any event, her hair manages to look exactly like Zappa's guitar sounds on this (mostly instrumental) album—out of control, yet still coherent. The solarized red color further tells you that this is not normal music. It's shocking, it's otherworldly, it's crawling out of the depths of the earth to warp your mind.
7. Ziggy Stardust – David Bowie. That blue jumpsuit against a dark, grimy street perfectly expresses the combination of the alien and the familiar within. The music on Ziggy Stardust is basic rock'n'roll taken in bizarre new directions. Like Bowie on the cover, it seems to have dropped out of the sky. And, also like the cover, its coloration is beautiful, but just a little off.
8. Cheap Thrills – Big Brother and the Holding Company. What could be more fitting than an album cover which illustrates each song individually? But this one really places on the list because the R. Crumb cartoon perfectly captures the feel of San Francisco and the hippie movement as it passes over the crest of its wave. And Cheap Thrills is the epitome of the hippie sound. And there aren't many other covers as blatant about sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, especially for its time.
9. Imperial Bedroom – Elvis Costello. The music on Imperial Bedroom is, like the cubist painting ("Snakecharmer and Reclining Octopus" by Sal Forenza) on its cover, brightly covered and made of disparate elements which still fit together into a single picture. It is also charged with sexual tension, which is only occasionally stated directly. On the surface, it is very pretty, but there's a lot under that surface which is not so pretty.10. Marquee Moon – Television. Another dark, sparse cover holding dark sparse music. The sharp edges of Mapplethorpe's photo match the sharp edges of the music within; the colorized tint indicates music that's otherworldly. And the size of (guitarist) Tom Verlaine's hands give a clue to the guitar virtuosity you'll hear.
11. Let It Bleed – The Rolling Stones. This may well be the most eclectic Rolling Stones album of all. A wide variety of styles, from hard rock to acoustic blues, from straight country to orchestral pop, somehow manage to come together in a surprisingly coherent album. Similarly, the cover depicts disparate objects—a record, a tire, a pizza, a birthday cake—all united in a single stack.
To truly appreciate the cover, it does help to know some Rolling Stones history. In the middle of recording Let It Bleed, founding member Brian Jones quit the band, and then died. He plays on two tracks here, his replacement (Mick Taylor) on three, and potential replacement Ry Cooder on one (the blond haired guitarist statuette on the cake could be either Jones or Taylor), further increasing the centrifugal forces on this album, and the surprise that it holds together. On the back cover, everything has fallen apart; considering their situation, it's not surprising that the Stones might feel that way. (And Altamont was still a few months away.)12. Raw Power – Iggy and the Stooges. One of the most basic covers here—Iggy leaning aggressively on a microphone—it still tells you everything you need to know. Which is, some madman is about to assault you relentlessly.
13. Pretzel Logic – Steely Dan. One of Steely Dan's jazziest albums has a cover which evokes the jazz sound without any direct reference. The black and white photo of a pretzel vendor seems out of 1950's New York, the prime place and time for the cool jazz they emulate here. Like Steely Dan lyrics, the picture hints at some deeper story, without giving you a clue what it might be.
There you have it. Again, this is just my favorites. I'm sure most of you could put together a list of completely different albums. You should try it, it's a fun exercise. (Hint: if you can describe the cover and the music with the same words, you've got a candidate.)
And I do apologize that this list is all albums from the 60's and 70's. I really tried to find some more recent examples, but (other than some honorable mentions from the 80's—U2's Joshua Tree and Purple Rain by Prince) I came up blank. It may be that the 60's and 70's were the Golden Age of cover art. Or it may just be my own prejudices (and age) showing.
G. Murray Thomas writes and performs poetry because he can't sing. He can be found at myspace.com/gmurraythomas
