The Stories Behind Album Covers - Classic Album Covers Explained
May 4, 2015We all know the bands and musicians in this article, we enjoy listening to their music and we know the lyrics by heart, but have you ever wondered the story behind the album covers?
In this article, we take a look at the true stories and meaning of some classic album covers, from Bob Dylan and The Beatles to Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Bjork and other great musicians and bands.
Now, it’s time not only to enjoy the music and know what the lyrics and songs mean, it’s time to know what the album covers mean and the true story behind them.
Satan is Real (The Louvin Brothers, 1960)
Album cover designed by Ira Louvin
Charlie Louvin said that Ira built the set for this album cover with the devil being 12 feet tall and was built out of plywood. The story of this cover continues with Charlie describing how it was done – going to a rock quarry and taking old tires after soaking them in kerosene.
The tires burned, but it was just starting to rain at the time when they shot the album’s cover. The interesting thing is that those same tires when they got hot, they began to blow up and thus threw pieces of rock all the way up in the air and everywhere around them.
Is that not just like in hell?
They survived this album cover shot and in reward got this album to be their best-selling album.
The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (Bob Dylan, 1963)
Album cover designed by Don Hunstein
The breakthrough album of Bob Dylan features Dylan and Suze Rotolo on the cover. She was his girlfriend from 1961 to 1964, and this photo was taken in 1963 by Don Hunstein on Jones Street in Greenwich Village. Bob Dylan was only 21 and Soze Rotolo was 19, so young and in-love.
Hunstein said that when he took this photo he didn’t think about an album cover and that it never crossed his mind. He brought only one roll of color and he added that most of the photos that were taken were not good at all.
This photo is one of few that was really successful and it allows to see Dylan young and happy with his old girl-friend. Sadly, Soze Rotolo died in 2011, but this great photo will be with us and in our hearts forever.
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Rubber Soul (The Beatles, 1965)
Album cover designed by Robert Freeman and Charles Front
This album cover has an interesting story as the slightly warped angle of the sleeve was actually an accident.
Paul McCartney remembers that Robert Freeman was showing the band members the slides, he had a piece of cardboard that was in the size of an album cover and on it he was projecting them the photos that he took in order to select the one that will be the cover for their new album.
The band members selected their desired photo to be the cover when at that moment the cardboard fell backwards just a little bit, causing the photo to be in the angle you actually see on the cover. It was stretched and all The Beatles band members loved it and immediately told Freeman that this is it!
Charles Front also added the eye drop lettering and if you hold it upside down in front of a mirror, it looks like it says “Road Abbey.”
The Velvet Underground & Nico AKA “The Banana Album” (The Velvet Underground & Nico, 1967)
Album cover designed by Andy Warhol
One of the most famous bananas in the world is Andy Warhol’s banana on this album cover. To make it provocative (because Andy loved that) he Warhol added “Peel slowly and see” and beneath the sticker was a pink, flesh-covered fruit. Singer Lou Reed said that the banana even made it into an erotic art show.
This banana was a production nightmare for Verve Records because someone had to sit with piles of albums and actually peel off the yellow banana skin stickers and place them over the pink fruit all by hand. By the year 1968, the peelable banana was dropped, but the image of this fruit thrived and was published on everything since then, from art prints to handbags, T-shirts and other products.
Who’s Next (The Who, 1971)
Album cover designed by John Kosh and Ethan Russell
This album cover has an interesting story as you’re about to read. Located in Easington, an old English mining town, the cover shows the band members turning away from a concrete piling as they just left their urine signatures on the stone. But, Russell recalls that most of the band members were unable to go, so the solution was to tip rainwater from an empty film canister in order to achieve the desired effect.
You think maybe they were just too shy?
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Skull and Roses (Grateful Dead, 1971)
Album cover designed by Stanley Mouse
The album cover comes to illustrate a poem from the 11th century. Yes, way back…
Painter and album cover designer, Stanley “Mouse” Miller says he found the original image in the stacks of the San Francisco Public Library. The image was created by artist Edmund Sullivan in order to illustrate a poem in The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
He thought that this can work great for a band like the Grateful Dead and his work with the band continued through many great and classic albums including ‘American Beauty’ and ‘Workingman’s Dead.’
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Houses of the Holy (Led Zeppelin, 1973)
Album cover designed by Hipgnosis
It was a nightmare making this cover and being a model on it. One of the male models for the album’s cover recalls freezing rain, bad food and turpentine, indeed not an ideal way to shoot an album cover.
In order to make the cover as intended, every morning for a whole week at 4 a.m. three adults and two children were sprayed silver entirely, so this means from head to toe. After the spraying process was complete, they were driven to Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland for them to crawl on rocks toward a sunrise which actually never rose.
Because they were facing deadlines and a budget that was ending, design company Hipgnosis decided that they will be in-charge on the weather aspect, and so they decided to paint the cover with a honey-peach dawn and now you had your sunrise.
I just hope those male models and children got compensated since then for the horrible conditions they had to work at.
Dark Side of the Moon (Pink Floyd, 1973)
Album cover designed by George Hardie and Hipgnosis
Pink Floyd band members were bored with earlier LP covers and thus wanted something else, unique and smarter.
Designer Storm Thorgerson said that this album cover represents both the cleanliness and diversity of the sound of music. He added that the triangle symbolizes ambition which is one of the themes Roger Waters wanted to highlight.
Thorgerson summarized that this cover is either a brilliant piece of art direction or maybe just a jammy idea, but it worked perfectly in its context.
Brain Salad Surgery (Emerson, Lake & Palmer, 1973)
Album cover designed by H.R. Giger and Fabio Nicoli
The original title for this album was actually ‘Whip Some Skull on Ya’ and this term is a slang for oral sex. The band members decided eventually to change the name, but what about the album cover?
The members liked Swiss designer H.R. Giger and when they contacted him, he was working on a project which themes were skulls, penises and a woman’s mouth. The main part of his project became the album cover of Brain Salad Surgery, so what you were supposed to see on the cover are a woman’s lips being squeezed between some sort of metal vice with a protruding phallus.
Atlantic Records were against this design and objected it, so Giger had to airbrush the offending member into a shaft of glowing light. If you look real close and real hard, you’ll be able to see it.
London Calling (The Clash, 1979)
Album cover designed by Ray Lowrie and Pennie Smith
One of the most important albums of The Clash is featuring Paul Simonon crashing and smashing his guitar on stage, so what’s the story behind this album cover?
Paul Simonon said that the show was great that night when the photo of the album cover was taken, but for him something did not work, he did not feel as great as the show went. So, he decided to crash his guitar, just take out all his emotions on it. He also stated that when he looks at this incident today, he wished he’d lifted his face up a little more.
The Joshua Tree (U2, 1986)
Album cover designed by Steve Averill and Anton Corbijn
Okay, so what is the Joshua tree? It is a slow growing shrub that has sharp tapered leaves, indigenous to the desert in Southwest America. The tree got his name in the 19th century by a band of Mormons and its unique shape reminded the Mormons of a Biblical story about Joshua reaching out to heaven.
The tree appealed to U2 band members as drummer Larry Mullen said that this tree is supposed to be the oldest living organism in the desert. The photo of the album cover was taken by Anton Corbijn U2 members and the tree, but in the year 2000 this very tree fell down and died.
There’s a beautiful thing fans of U2 did and that is to build a makeshift shrine in the desert in order to commemorate this famous tree.
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Licensed To Ill (Beastie Boys, 1986)
Album cover designed by Steve Byram and World B. Omes
Rick Rubin who was the producer of this album said the idea for the cover came from reading about the luxurious private jet of Led Zeppelin. He said that the Beastie Boys were just little guys and he wanted them to have their own Beastie Boys jet. The intention was to distinguish but in a sarcastic sort of way the larger than life rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, as well as the destruction of it.
Their jet was assembled by World B. Omes from photographic elements, who then drew over and colored it by hand using water soluble crayons.
The plane’s identification number on its tail is 3MTA3, but if you hold the album cover up to a mirror, you’ll notice that it actually reads EAT ME.
Nevermind (Nirvana, 1991)
Album cover designed by Robert Fisher and Kirk Weddle
The boy in the album cover is Spencer Elden and believe it or not, it was his first time swimming at the age of only 4 months old, and what a memorable moment it is.
Fisher remembered showing Kurt Cobain the picture of the baby, but Kurt thought it’s not enough and that they have to do something else, add something to the album cover besides the picture of the baby. There were suggestions about a fish hook and what can be put on the hook, yet to this day no one really knows what Kurt Cobain had in his mind for the album cover or the rationale for it.
Fisher says he thinks the naked baby symbolizes Cobain’s innocence with the water being an alien environment and the dollar bill and hook his creative life, entering into the world of rock music.
If you wonder what Spencer Elden had to say, well now that he’s all grown up he says that most bands today are not even close to do what Nirvana did on that album and that he’ll always be happy to have been a part of it.
Indeed, something to show the grandchildren, along with great music.
Post (Bjork, 1995)
Album cover designed by Paul White and Stephane Sednaoui
Funny as it may sound, this album cover was actually Bjork’s postcard to herself, but I guess when it comes to Bjork nothing should really surprise us.
The idea behind this cover was Bjork’s desire to be surrounded by her own possessions from home. White said that Bjork felt very isolated from everything in her home which is in Iceland when she was recording this album, that’s because she was away from her family and her friends and she only communicated with them using messages.
The background of the cover which is in blur symbolizes a tumbling house of cards and flying postcards, meanwhile musician Bjork remains on this cover calm, still and with the airmail braiding around her jacket symbolizes her longing for home.
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Odelay (Beck, 1996)
Album cover designed by Beck Hansen and Robert Fisher
When this album was released, it caused a lot eyebrows to be raised and that is exactly what Beck intended. Beck stumbled on this Komondor picture in a vintage book about dog breeds and Robert Fisher said this photo was shot by a Ludwig who is a famous dog photographer.
Ludwig was in her late seventies and lived only a few blocks away from the office. Beck felt that this photo was somehow unrelated to the music, but the reader could read into the album cover whatever they wanted.
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OK Computer (Radiohead, 1997)
Album cover designed by Stanley Donwood
Radiohead’s lead singer, Thom Yorke said that this cover symbolizes for him someone who is being sold something that he doesn’t really want, while the other guy is being friendly just because he’s trying to sell something. To him he said, it’s both sad and real funny.
Thom Yorke also addressed the album’s title, saying Radiohead did a promo in Japan and on the last day they visited a record shop. There was a kid that shouted really loud “OK Computer!” and shortly after nearly 500 people started chanting it all at once. Yorke said he even has it tapped on video.
Now you know what the album cover means to Yorke and how the band decided on their album title, an idea that traveled all the way from Japan.
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (Wilco, 2002)
Album cover designed by Lawrence Azerrad
When fans of Wilco saw the album cover of the 2002 album, they didn’t know what to think because they were not sure of what they were looking at. Towers? Poker chips? Something else?
On the other hand, anyone who lived in Chicago knew to recognize this cover, Marina City that was designed by Bertrand Goldberg in 1959 is actually two commercial towers which represent a somewhat futuristic profile on the ChiTown skyline.
So, there you have it…now you know what it really is, you can now enjoy Wilco’s music and know what the heck this cover is all about.
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