Some album covers are arguably better known than the music inside, having been parodied in pop culture, lauded with awards, used in advertisements or hung up in art museums. The artist might appear front and center, or perhaps they take a backseat entirely, letting evocative imagery pull the listener into their world. You might see photographic portraits, paintings, sketches, collages or nearly nothing at all. Some go for the less-is-more approach, while others are stuffed with a kaleidoscope of imagery for fans to pore over and decipher. Almost since the full-length album format began, cover art has been a key piece of the puzzle, adding visual interest (and occasionally a physically interactive component) to a work of art.įrom the fold-out gatefolds of the vinyl era to pull-out liner notes in CD jewel cases to the small icon on a digital player, cover art has changed over the years, but it still helps define how we look at a particular album. Yes, the sounds are certainly the most essential element, but a lot of other things go into making an album a classic. An earlier version said that artwork for the Sex Pistols’ single God Save the Queen featured a defaced portrait of Elizabeth II by Cecil Beaton it was in fact by Peter Grugeon.Music isn’t just about the music. This article was amended on 10 August 2023. In comparison to some of the rather tawdry and imitative punk graphics, Jamie’s came from a deep place.” He said that Reid’s grounding in radical politics gave “an added element of sophistication. It’s not black and white, whereas a lot of punk iconography was – here was something that was intensely colourful and very, very simple”. Savage pinpoints Reid’s style as containing “complex ideas in an apparently simple format. This was something very important that needed to be preserved.” The combined impact of that made an indelible impression – it was like finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. “I remember walking upstairs in a house, and there were these trunks full of Sex Pistols artwork. “I first met Jamie in late 1978,” Savage says. He also collaborated with the punk historian Jon Savage on a book of his work, Up They Rise: The Incomplete Works of Jamie Reid, published in 1987. His website described his work as blending “gnosticism and dissent”, with spirituality also a major component. I’ve always tried to encourage people to think about that and to do something about it.” Reid explained his ethos in 2015: “Our culture is geared towards enslavement – for people to perform pre-ordained functions, particularly in the workplace. He was inspired by the alternative politics of the late 1960s, and did graphic design for the 1974 book Leaving the 20th Century: The Incomplete Work of the Situationist International, which compiled translated texts by French situationist writers. His lettering mimicked the cut-and-paste style of an anonymised ransom note, a style he first developed with the countercultural publication Suburban Press, which he began in 1970 alongside Jeremy Brook and Nigel Edwards. Reid also worked on imagery for the Sex Pistols film The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle. He also created numerous alternative designs for singles – one for God Save the Queen features a safety pin through the Queen’s lip plus swastikas for eyes, while an alternative French-market cover for Pretty Vacant featured buses showing the destinations Nowhere and Boredom. His poster for the single Anarchy in the UK, featuring a torn union jack, was another image that defined the iconoclasm of the punk era. Reid’s best known work was for the covers of a series of Sex Pistols releases: the pink and yellow text of their only album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols God Save the Queen, the hit single banned by the BBC featuring a Peter Grugeon portrait of Queen Elizabeth II defaced by Reid the smashed empty picture frame for Pretty Vacant and a doctored comic strip for Holidays in the Sun.
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