Artist Biographies – Sorted by Last Name – D – F
D –
Frank Dandridge – notable album package credits include – The Temptations – Getting’ Ready and Greatest Hits; Joan Baez – In Concert and In Concert Part 2; Mary Wells – Vintage Stock; Marvin Gaye & Kim Weston – Take Two; The Supremes – A’ Go Go and Right On; Smokey Robinson & The Miracles – Away We A Go Go and Make It Happen; Martha Reeves & The Vandellas – Watchout!, Greatest Hits and Dancing In The Street; Stevie Wonder – Down To Earth, Someday At Christmas, I Was Made To Love Her and 1962-1974 Wonderland; Four Tops – On Broadway
(b. 1938) Frank Dandridge got his first instruction on how to use a camera after winning one in a poker game from a fellow soldier while the teen-aged Marine was stationed at Camp Lejune in North Carolina. After his stint in the Marines, Frank went home to New York City and started working on his portfolio, looking for unique opportunities to show off his talents. He sent a letter to labor leader Jimmy Hoffa asked for permission to photograph him and was rewarded with an invite to travel with him to Miami. His goal was to have his photos featured in LIFE Magazine and, in early 1963, an editor for the publication called him to offer him a chance to tag along with a group of protesters marching for racial equality in Cambridge, MD (the group requested that LIFE send a black photographer). The results of this assignment convinced the magazine to give him more work and also introduced him to one of the top local civil rights leaders – Gloria Richardson, who he’d later marry.
Later that year, Frank shot one of his most-famous photos, that of young Sarah Collins, a young victim of the horrific bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama that killed four of her friends (including her sister). He’d go on to build an archive of notable shots of those involved in the civil rights movement – including Dr. Martin Luther King’s March on Washington and the riots in Harlem, NY in 1964. As a freelancer, he found work as a photojournalist for other leading publications including Good Housekeeping, Look, Pageant, Parade, Playboy and the Saturday Evening Post in the U.S., as well as Paris Match and other international magazines. In addition to his hard news coverage, Frank was also priviledged to photograph and interview many celebrities of the day, including Muhammad Ali, James Baldwin, Alex Haley, Robert F. Kennedy, President Lyndon Johnson and entertainers including Sammy Davis, Jr., Frank Sinatra and Diana Ross & The Supremes. His work caught the eye of the art directors at Motown Records, who hired him to craft cover and record package photos for their biggest stars.
With Hollywood also taking note of Dandrige’s keen eye, he moved to the LA area in 1969, working on film projects for Jules Dassin, Elia Kazan, and others and serving as one of the first Fellows at the American Film Institute (AFI), soon winning a top prize for his film Pas Dex Deux (1970). After LIFE Magazine shuttered its doors in 1972 and recognizing his innate abilities as a writer and editor, Frank shifted his focus from the camera to the pen and typewriter, going on to a long career in television, working to create hit shows such as Baretta, Chips, Fantasy Island, Generations (the first soap opera to feature an African-American family as regulars), Kung Fu, In The Heat of the Night, The Six Million Dollar Man, St. Elsewhere and They Came From Outer Space, among others.
More information on this artist is available at https://www.discogs.com/artist/2256850-Frank-Dandridge
Nic Dartnell – Notable album cover work includes – Emerson Lake & Palmer – Emerson Lake & Palmer (debut); Randy California – All Along The Watchtower
(b. 1950 in Northampton, U.K.) Nic spent his childhood in Malaysia, kicking off his life as a painter when he began painting in oils at age 13. He attended the Leicester Art School (Foundation) in 1968-69 and then attended Newcastle Art School from 1970-73. While in school, he worked at at Bruce’s Record Shop in Edinburgh, Scotland. The shop was run by Bruce Findlay, who later became the manager of the band Simple Minds. Bruce’s shop imported American LPs well before their UK release dates and was quite a cult place to work. At that time, Nic thought that paintings deserved a place on album covers and came to the U.S. to immerse himself in both the psychedelic culture and the works of East Coast artists (Rothko, Johns, Pollock, etc.), hoping that they would have a positive influence on his paintings. He created a painting he called “Bird” and added it to his portfolio.
Upon his return to the U.K. (and his gig at the record shop), he showed his painting to Bruce. Coincidentally, Bruce had worked in London and knew David Betteridge of Island Records and after he’d seen Nic’s painting, he suggested that he send it to them. Evidently, they showed the painting to Emerson, Lake and Palmer, because soon after, Betteridge called and asked if they could use it for the cover of their first LP. Although the image was cropped without approval, the LP proved to be quite popular and Nic’s talents were thrust into the limelight. In 1973, he was a prize winner in the Stowells Trophy Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts and exhibited his works in the Mall Gallery, London.
That same year, he moved to live and work in Hackney (North London) and, during the 1970s, he continued to work and exhibit, with highlights including special showings in London and Hackney. He was commissioned by a number of record companies, where he did a number of other rock-and-roll projects including a couple of paintings for Genesis that were used as box set sleeves for some special edition albums sold at their shows. He also did some artwork and photographs for his good friend Arthur Lee of Love and a band called “Starry Eyed and Laughing” but, along the way, he found himself exposed to (as he put it) “the nastiness of the ‘work for hire’ side of the publishing business which, ultimately, drove me completely away.” He stopped painting in oils in the 1980s and, funded by the British Academy, began studies of the art of Navajo sand-painting at Goldsmith’s College at the University of London, culminating in 1989 when he created a Navajo sand painting on the floor of the Kunsthaus in Essen, Germany, where he also lectured and exhibited various examples of Navajo art.
During the 1990s, he started painting in oils again and made a series of paintings based on photographs of children titled “Children of the Future”. He then put together a general collection of his work called ‘Silent Songs’ and have used this as the general title for his work ever since. Throughout the periods listed above, he travelled regularly within the USA and Germany and in 2002, moved to Bristol, U.K., where he currently lives and works.
For more information on this artist, please visit his website at www.nicdartnell.com
Chalkie Davies – notable album cover credits include – Pretenders – Pretenders; The Specials – The Specials and More Specials; Pete Townshend – All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes; Squeeze – Six of One; Elvis Costello – My Aim Is True, This Year’s Model, Armed Forces and In Motion Pictures; Stray Cats – Stray Cats; Paul McCartney – All The Best; Thin Lizzy – Live & Dangerous and Vagabonds Kings Warriors Angels
(b. 19__ in Sully – near Cardiff – U.K.) While Chalkie originally was trained as an aircraft engineer, when he was a young man, he’d shown promise as a photographer and, encouraged by friends and teachers, he abandoned his plans to fix airplanes in 1973 and started his life as a freelance photographer, shooting photos of a number of popular musical acts of the era (David Bowie, Pink Floyd and others) and then, in 1975, landing his first staff job as a shooter for the New Music Express (NME) publication in the U.K.. For the next four years, Davies provided editorial and cover imagery to the magazine, adding portrait and touring images of subjects including Elvis Costello, Thin Lizzy, Led Zeppelin, the Sex Pistols and Paul McCartney to his portfolio.
Deciding to focus on studio work rather than a life on the road, in 1980 Davies launched his own studio – called Davies + Starr, specializing in black & white portraiture and album cover imagery – with his partner, Carol Starr, adding music industry clients including David Gilmour, Debbie Harry, Robert Plant, The Pretenders, The Specials, Pete Townshend and Pete’s band, The Who. Also in 1980, Chalkie teamed with a former NME cohort – editor Nick Logan – to launch a new music, fashion and culture magazine called The Face. Working with art director Neville Brody, Davies contributed all of the covers, with the trio teaming again in the mid-80s to launch a new monthly upscale men’s entertainment magazine titled Arena. Who guitarist/songwriter Townshend was particularly impressed with Davies’ keen eye and worked with the photographer in 1981 to publish a book of his images for NME and The Face titled Pointed Portraits. Davies returned the favor the following year, directing a video album based upon Pete’s Psychoderelict rock opera.
In 1988, Davies and his cohorts left the U.K. to open a larger studio in New York, where he expanded his client base to include a number of commercial clients including AARP, Apple Computer, Ciroc, Ducati, Moss (housewares), Revlon, Target and Westin Hotels & Resorts. His training in engineering came in handy as the advent of tools for digital photography and editing allowed him to provide new creative services for his clients, with his being the first large-scale studio in NYC to go fully digital (in 2001). Since then, the team of Davies and Starr have added projects – photo and video – for a list of satisfied clients including American Express, Armani Exchange, Banana Republic, Bloomberg, Calvin Klein, Dell, ESPN, Federal Express, ID Magazine, Krups, Martha Stewart, New York Times, Nike, Rolling Stone, Starwood Hotels, Timberland, Vanity Fair and many others.
As a fine art photographer, Chalkie creates collector’s editions, with each edition containing anywhere from 30-45 prints – truly, “limited editions”. His photos are included in a number of museum and gallery collections, including three of his 1978 portraits of Elton John which are part of the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London. In May, 2015, the National Museum Cardiff hosts a comprehensive exhibition titled “Chalkie Davies Photographer: The NME Years” that will highlight a broad selection of Chalkie’s images of famous rock music acts from the 70s and 80s.
More information on this artist is available on his studio’s website – http://www.chalkiedavies.com/
Roger Dean – Notable album cover work examples – YES – Fragile, Relayer and Tales from Topographic Oceans; Uriah Heep – Magician’s Birthday; Asia – Asia (AKA “Asia Dragon”, voted the second most successful album cover design of all time, – after The Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s.. – by readers of Rolling Stone magazine).
(b. August, 1944 in Ashford, Kent, England). Dean’s mother studied fashion design at Canterbury School of Art, while his father was an engineer in the British army where, as a result, most of Roger’s childhood was spent away from England – in Greece, Cyprus and Hong Kong. The family returned to Britain in 1959 and Dean continued his studies, graduating in 1964 from a three year course in Industrial Design at Canterbury School of Art, leading to a National Diploma of Design, studying both silver-smithing and furniture design. He then entered the Royal College of Art and graduated in 1968.
Beginning with his first album cover in 1968, Roger Dean has become an internationally recognized artist and designer, whose evocative and visionary images with associated graphics, logos, and lettering, were soon made popular through the media of album covers, posters and fine art prints, where his work has sold in excess of sixty million copies world-wide. His designs for the Prog-rock band Yes – one of the most successful bands in the world at the time – gained him massive exposure; his covers for hit albums such as Tales from Topographic Oceans, Close to the Edge, Yessongs and Fragile won admiration from millions of fans globally. Roger’s artwork and trademark calligraphy became synonymous with the identity of the band and when, along with his brother Martyn, he was invited to conceive the stage set for the Yes USA tour it was seen as a natural progression. Even if you’re not aware of his identity as an artist, if you’re of a certain age, you’re likely to find his work quite familiar, and with good reason – he was responsible for some of the most iconic rock and roll imagery of the 1970s and 80s, and its popularity has gone on to span more than four decades. The inclusiveness of his work means that it is just as likely to be found tacked to the wall of a suburban bedsitting room as it is hanging in an international art gallery.
Although perhaps best known for his paintings, Roger is also an accomplished designer and publisher and also has a passionate interest in building design. The full-size prototype of his ‘curvilinear house’ – an organically inspired space for alternative living – made a dramatic impact at the Birmingham International Ideal Home Exhibition, where it became the focal point of the event with nearly 200,000 people passing through its doors. The house was also shown at the Tomorrow’s World exhibition at the National Exhibition Centre, and later visited the Glastonbury Music Festival Published through his own Dragons Dream imprint, Roger’s first book, Views, went straight to number one in The Times best seller list, stayed there for eleven weeks and went on to sell over a million copies. He later produced a second book of his work, the highly acclaimed Magnetic Storm, in collaboration with his brother, Martyn. Roger continues to work and exhibit and is also involved in the design and production of computer games and several major architectural design projects.
More information on this artist is available at www.rogerdean.com
Bob Defrin – notable album cover credits include – Motley Crue – Shout At The Devil and Theater of Pain; Hall & Oates – War Babies; Eric Clapton – 461 Ocean Boulevard; AC/DC – Let There Be Rock, Powerage, If You Want Blood You’ve Got It and Highway To Hell; Foreigner – Foreigner, 4, Agent Provocateur and Records
(b. August, 1940 in Brooklyn, NY, USA) After receiving a solid background in design at the Pratt Institute in New York City, Bob got his first job in the music business working at RCA Records under famed art direct Bob Jones, who’d serve as his mentor. Defrin then joined Atlantic Records in 1972, where he remained for the next 20 years, moving up the ranks to the position of Vice President and Creative Director at the label.
During that time, Bob won scores of awards (over 200!), including four Grammy Award nominations for “Best Record Package” (1974, 1975, 1977 and 1983) along with a Gold Medal from the New York Art Directors Club. In 1992, Bob hung out his own shingle (Bob Defrin Design, Inc. Armenia, NY) and has continued to please his clients in a variety of industries ever since.
Bob’s work has been included in several exhibits (including a 1979 retrospective exhibit at the New York Art Directors Club), while two of his posters are part of the permanent collection of the Museum Of Modern Art in New York (inc. a wonderful image of singer Nina Simone). He’s also been featured in a number of books and publications, including a number of Art Directors Club Annuals, Brad Benedict and Linda Barton’s fine 1977 album cover book Phonographics: Contemporary Album Cover Art & Design and in Francois Brunet’s 2013 book on the history of the visual arts in America titled L’Amérique des images : Histoire et culture visuelle des Etats-Unis
More about this artist can be found on his LinkedIn page at https://www.linkedin.com/in/bob-defrin-6478b013/
Patrick Demarchellier – notable album cover credits include – Billy Joel – Greatest Hits, Vol. 1 & 2 and The Essential Billy Joel; Quincy Jones – Q: The Musical Biography of Quincy Jones and Listen Up Now; Celine Dion – A New Day Has Come; Britney Spears – In The Zone; Madonna – I’m Breathless; Janet Jackson – Janet
(b. August, 1943 in Le Havre, France; d. March 31, 2022 at the age of 78) After receiving the gift of a camera from his step-father on his 17th birthday, Patrick Demarchelier’s career path as a photographer began just a few years later when he moved to Paris and, via a series of jobs as an assistant, he improved his photo lab skills and techniques as well as his portfolio (mostly portraits of friends and wedding photos) and, by the end of the 1960s, his works were published in magazines including Elle, Marie-Claire and 20 Ans. His work also impressed one Alexander Liberman, Vogue Magazine‘s creative director and, by 1974, Patrick was working on assignments for American Vogue.
Moving to New York in 1975 and working freelance alongside top fashion photographers in the area, he accepted a broad range of assignments that has resulted in his shooting covers and spreads for nearly every major U.S. and International fashion and lifestyle magazine, including Elle, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, Mademoiselle, Vanity Fair and three Vogues – American, British and Paris. Outside of fashion, Patrick has produced striking cover images for Life, Newsweek and Rolling Stone Magazine as well as two coveted Pirelli Calendars in 2005 and 2007. Since 2004, he has been under contract with Conde Nast.
Commercial photo clients from many industries fill his portfolio – Fashion and household brands including Ann Taylor, Elizabeth Arden, Armani, BCBG, Chanel, H&M, Carolina Herrera, Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, Lancel, Ralph Lauren, Tag-Heuer, Versace, Louis Vuitton, Harry Winston, YSL and Zara; Cosmetic/fragrance brands such as Chanel, Dior, Guerlain, Lancome, L’Oréal, Maybelline and Revlon. He has a long list of film credits, as well, shooting publicity and promo poster images for films such as Blow Out, Blue Lagoon, James Bond: Die Another Day, Bullworth, Bugsy, Coyote Ugly, Dick Tracy, Endless Love, Mystic Pizza, Reds, Sex and the City, Something Wild and Staying Alive. Music industry clients have included Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, Janet Jackson, Billy Joel, Elton John, Quincy Jones, Madonna and Britney Spears. In 1989, Britain’s Princess Diana requested that Patrick become her official photographer – this first non-Brit to receive such an honor. Shooting many family portraits of “The Peoples’ Princess”, this relationship lasted until her death in 1997.
Patrick’s keen eye and subject matter (celebrities, nudes, sumo wrestlers, world landmarks, wild animals, etc.) has made him a popular and collectible fine art photographer as well. He held his first one-man show in 1996 at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in NYC, going on to exhibit his works in gallery and museum shows in Mexico, Italy, Belgium and the U.S. . Books featuring Patrick’s work include: Patrick Demarchelier: Forms, (published in 1998 by Rizzoli) , Patrick Demarchelier: Photographs (1995, Bulfinch) , Patrick Demarchalier: Exposing Elegance, by Demarchelier & Martin Harrison (1998, by Tony Shafrazi Gallery) and Patrick Demarchelier by Patrick Demarchelier , (published by Steidl in 2008); He was also the primary photographer for On Your Own, a young women’s beauty & lifestyle guide written by Brooke Shields in 1985.
In 2007, the French Ministry of Culture honored Demarchelier as an Officer in l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Literature). Patrick resided in New York with his wife Mia until his death in March of 2022. He had three sons – Gustaf, Arthur and Victor – and had three grandchildren. Among those paying tribute to Demarchelier after his passing was designer Vera Wang, models including Bella Hadid, Cindy Crawford and Hailey Bieber, actress Kate Hudson and hair stylist Sam McKnight, among others.
More information on this artist is available on his website at http://demarchelier.com/
Nicholas (“Nick”) De Ville – Notable album cover credits include – Roxy Music – The Complete Studio Recordings, The Best of Roxy Music, The Thrill Of It All, Siren, Country Life, Stranded and Roxy Music; King Crimson – USA and The 21st Century Guide to King Crimson; John Wetton – Arkangel and King’s Road 1972-80; Bryan Ferry – Frantic, As Time Goes By, Mamouna, Taxi, In Your Mind and These Foolish Things; Phil Manzanera – Nowomova: Wasted Lands, Live At The Karl Marx, Southern Cross and Guitarissimo; UK – UK
(b. 1944 – UK) After attending art school both at the Derby College of Art in the early 1960s and then at the University of Newcastle–upon–Tyne from 1965 to 1969, Nick De Ville began his career as a lecturer in the fine arts in Derby before settling in to a variety of teaching assignments within the Dept. of Fine Arts at Goldsmiths’ College, a research university in SE London with a prestigious history of producing award-winning design and designers.
It was in the early 1970s that a former university classmate of his – musician Brian Ferry – asked him to join a group of creative individuals to help Ferry develop a unique image and style for his new group, Roxy Music. The resulting designs – covering the band’s complete public persona, touching on everything from record covers, promo materials, merchandise, stage set and music videos – helped set the standard early on for a new breed of musical acts who understood the connection between their music and how their “look” impacted on popular culture. Nick would go on to spend much of the 1970’s balancing his work as a teacher with his album cover design commissions, returning in the early 1980s to full-time work within the art department at Goldsmiths College, becoming the head of the department in 1987 and is currently Professor Emeritus of the School of Visual Arts there.
Continuing to teach both there and the University of London, his keen interest in the intersection of modern art, design and Pop culture brought him opportunities to enlighten students at colleges throughout the U.K. and Europe via lectures and in aiding in the design of a number of curricula. In 2003, De Ville authored a comprehensive book on album cover art titled Album: Classic Sleeve Design, which was published by Mitchell Beazley (the book was originally titled Album: Style and Image in Design for Music). More recently, Prof. De Ville served as a guest curator at the 2010 lecture/exhibition at the British Music Experience museum in London titled “The Art of Roxy Music & Nick De Ville”. According to the museum’s curator, Paul Lilley, “Nick De Ville’s impact on album design is undeniable and we are delighted that we will have the opportunity to share his talent and knowledge with our visitors. After the success of our previous “The Art of…” event, I’m certain that fans of music and art alike will not want to miss out on this event.”
For more information on this artist work in the field of album cover art, please visit https://www.discogs.com/artist/1827053-Nicholas-De-Ville
Henry Diltz – Notable examples of album cover work – The Doors – Morrison Hotel; Crosby, Stills & Nash – CSN; James Taylor – Sweet Baby James; George Harrison – Concert For Bangladesh; Jackson Browne – Jackson Browne; Dan Fogelberg – Souvenirs
(b. 1938 in Kansas City, MO) – For over 40 years, his work has graced hundreds of album covers and has been featured in books, magazines and newspapers. His unique artistic style has produced powerful photographic essays of Woodstock , The Monterey Pop Festival, The Doors, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Jimi Hendrix and scores of other legendary artists. Diltz continues his distinguished career, generating new and vibrant photographs that inspire the rock n’ roll fan in each of us. A founding member of the Modern Folk Quartet (formed in 1962 in Hawaii, moving to Los Angeles soon after to become regular performers at The Troubadour, tour the club circuit throughout the U.S. and release two albums on Warner Bros. Records before disbanding in 1966), Diltz is as much at home as a musician on tour, as he is a visual historian of the last four-plus decades of popular music. The rapport he’s developed with his musician friends, along with his down-to-earth-grin and frequent laugh, enables him to capture the candid shots that convey a rare feeling of trust and intimacy with his subjects. For Diltz, the pictures began with a $20 second-hand Japanese camera purchased while on tour with the Modern Folk Quartet. When MFQ disbanded, he embarked on his photographic career with album covers for The Lovin’ Spoonful, The Monkees, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and, during the next 40 years, over 80 other acts.
Despite his lack of formal training, Diltz easily submerged himself in the world of music: the road, the gigs, the humor, the social consciousness, the psychedelia, the up and down times. Henry Diltz is a partner in, and is exclusively published and represented by the Morrison Hotel Gallery. He’s still active, contributing photos to a variety of books, magazines and multi-media productions.
Biographical information excerpted from Mr. Diltz’s bio on www.morrisonhotelgallery.com
Stanley Donwood – notable album cover credits include – Radiohead – The Bends, OK Computer, Kid A, Amnesiac (Grammy Award, 2002), Hail To The Thief, In Rainbows (Grammy Award, 2009), The King of Limbs; Thom Yorke – The Eraser; Atoms for Peace – Amok
(b. 1968 in Essex, U.K.) Stanley Donwood is the pen name of artist Dan Rickwood. He began his formal art education at the North Essex College of Art, transferring in 1988 to the Exeter College of Art & Design (now the University of Exeter). It was there that he met another art student named Thom Yorke, who he’d form a long-term friendship with, first manifesting itself professionally in 1994 when Yorke asked him to produce the cover art and other materials for what would be his band’s (Radiohead) second album titled The Bends.
After graduating in 1991, Donwood began his career working as a freelance artist and writer based in Plymouth, England, where he’s produced all of Radiohead’s imagery and ancillary materials since that first effort in 1994, borrowing styling cues from a wide variety of sources – from Hieronymus Bosch paintings to Paula Scher’s artistically-rendered maps. A prolific writer as well as a graphic artist, Donwood’s literary works have been used on Radiohead’s album covers and web site, in addition to the website/blog he maintains called Slowly Downward. In 2002, Donwood and Yorke (who also works under a variety of pen names including “Tchocky” and “The White Chocolate Farm”) won Grammy Awards for “Best Recording Package” for their work on the album Amnesiac. That same year, Donwood was commissioned to produce the graphics for the annual Glastonbury Festival in Somerset, U.K., something he’s done ever since. He began producing fine art screenprints for gallery shows in 2006, with his first series titled “London Views”, featuring Donwood’s somewhat-apocalyptic renderings of famous London landmarks. One of the images was used on the cover of Thom Yorke’s solo record titled The Eraser.
Since then, his work has been on display in gallery shows world-wide, including exhibitions in Barcelona, Bath, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff, Chicago, Heerlen (Holland), London, Los Angeles, Rome, Rotterdam, San Francisco and Tokyo. Also in 2006, Donwood partnered with Richard Lawrence to launched an independent record company called Six Inch Records to produce hand-crafted, limited-edition (333 in each edition) CDs. The label closed in 2009 after selling out all of the records they’d produced. Another album cover project with Yorke and Radiohead – for the record In Rainbows – yielded another Grammy “Best Record Packaging” award nod in 2009.
Books featuring his writing and/or his artwork include Slowly Downward: A Collection of Miserable Stories (published in 2005 by Naked Guides, Ltd.); Dead Children Playing: A Picture Book (published in 2007 by Verso); Department of Reclusive Paranoia (2007, by Uitgeverij Artemis); Household Worms (by Richard Jones, 2011 by Tangent Books); Red Maze (2011, by Schunck), Holloway (with Robert MacFarlane and Dan Richards, 2013, by Faber & Faber) and, in late 2014, Humor (published by Faber & Faber). Also in 2014, Donwood was hired to produce twenty-one book covers for twenty-one JG Ballard books. Today, Donwood lives and works in the beautiful town of Bath, Somerset, U.K.
More on this artist is available via his web site at http://www.slowlydownward.com/
Mike Doud – Notable album cover credits include – Humble Pie – Smokin’; Vangelis – Heaven & Hell; Led Zeppelin – Physical Graffiti; Be Bop Deluxe – Sunburst Finish; Supertramp – Breakfast In America. Paris, Famous Last Words and Even In The Quietest Moments; Heart – Little Queen, Dog & Butterfly and The Collection (Box Set); Bonham – The Disregard of Timekeeping; War – Life (Is So Strange); The Go-Gos – Beauty & The Beat; Rick Springfield – Working Class Dog and Success Hasn’t Spoiled Me Yet; The Strawbs – Hero & Heroine; Chris De Burgh – Into The Light; Kool & The Gang – Ladies Night
In 1970, designer Mike Doud moved from the United States to London to work as an Art Director at A&M Records. Best known for his work with Peter Corriston on Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti, he returned to the U.S. in the mid-1970s to take on the role of Art Director at AGI, where he would go on to work with designer Mick Haggerty to produce the 1980 Grammy Award-winning (for “Best Recording Package”) album cover for Supertramp’s Breakfast in America.
More information available at – http://www.chrishigh.com/cdeb_mikedoud.htm
Ben and David Dragon (AKA “The Dragon Boys”) – notable album package credits include – The Cure – Three Imaginary Boys; UB40 – Labour of Love and Baggariddim; XTC – Skylarking, Oranges & Lemons and Nonsuch; Wire – Pink Flag and 154; Jimmy Cliff – Struggling Man; Osibisa – The Best of Osibisa; Glen Campbell – Rhinestone Cowboy; Janis Ian – Present Company; Linda Ronstadt – Different Drum; Rolling Stones – Solid Rock; Soft Machine – Land of Cockayne; Oasis – Lord Don’t Slow Me Down
This “band of brothers” design duo have combined their graphic design and illustration talents to create an impressive number of works for clients in the music/entertainment business. They employ a number of print-making and image-making styles in their work, including lithography, linocuts, woodcuts and painting.
While we work on a more-complete bio of these artists, you can learn more about them and their work on their website at http://www.thedragonboys.com/
Spencer Drate and Jutka (Judith) Salavetz – Drate/Salavetz Design – notable album cover credits include – Joan Jett & The Blackhearts – Album, Glorious Results of A Misspent Youth and Good Music; Bon Jovi – Bon Jovi; The Ramones – It’s Alive, Road To Ruin and End Of The Century; Richard Hell & The Voidoids – Blank Generation; Talking Heads – Fear Of Music; The Searchers – The Searchers; Billy Squier – Don’t Say No; Lou Reed – New York and Magic And Loss; Buster Poindexter – Buster’s Spanish Rocketship; Marshall Tucker Band – Walk Outside The Lines; The Fabulous Thunderbirds – Tuff Enuff; Bobby Brown – King Of Stage; The Beach Boys – Summer In Paradise; Dee Dee King – Standing In The Spotlight; Marshall Crenshaw – Marshall Crenshaw; Velvet Underground – The 1993 Live Tour
NYC-area team responsible for a large portfolio of design work for a broad range of entertainment industry clients and the authors of many notable books about music industry design. Among the books that Drate and Salavetz have written and published include Rock Art: CDs, Albums & Posters, published in 1994; SWAG: Rock Posters Of The 90s (with a forward by designer Art Chantry, published in 2003) and its follow up titled SWAG 2: Rock Posters Of The 90s And Beyond (2005); 45 RPM (the first visual history book on 7″ record sleeve design) and Five Hundred 45s (2010).
Since teaming up over 30 years ago, Drate and Salavetz have been the recipients of many design and music industry awards, including AIGA and Art Directors Club awards, Billboard Magazine‘s Billie award and, in 1980, Drate co-designed (with the Talking Heads) the Grammy Award–nominated album package for the band’s album Fear of Music. Drate was also a four-time member of the music packaging committee for the Recording Academy’s Grammy Awards. Their works are also part of the collections of the AIGA, the Museum of Modern Art and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame & Museum.
More information on this design team is available via their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/dratesalavetz
George DuBose – Notable album package credits include – The Go-Gos – Beauty & The Beat; The Ramones – Brain Drain, Ramones Mania, Too Tough To Die, Subterranean Jungle, Mondo Bizarro and Loud,Fast Ramones: Their Toughest Hits; The B-52s – The B-52s (debut); Big Daddy Kane – Long Live the Kane; Sly & Robbie – Silent Assassin; Masters of Reality – Flak n Flight; Marianne Faithful – Blazing Away; Melissa Etheridge – Melissa Etheridge; Run-DMC – King of Rock and Together Forever: Greatest Hits; Biz Markie – Goin’ Off; Atlantic Starr – All In The Name Of Love; Kid Creole & The Coconuts – Tropical Gangsters; Pulsallama – Pulsallama; Joey Ramone – …Ya Know?
(b. ___ in Morocco) The son of a U.S. Marine stationed at the time of his birth in Morocco, George also spent some time in the U.S. Navy but, by the time he was discharged in 1972, he knew that he wanted to become a professional photographer and was willing to put in the work to make that dream a reality. He worked for a while in a commercial print-making company in New York City where he learned about film processes, graphic design and the other aspects of pre-press work. He then found a job as an apprentice to a pair of commercial and fashion photographers, “where I made myself so useful that they offered me a full-time job” and where, after hours, he could use their cameras and film to begin to build his own portfolio.
He also met some of artist Andy Warhol’s staff from his trend-setting Interview Magazine and, impressed with his work, they began to send small photo projects his way. One of those jobs found him on-hand to photograph some of the earliest performances of a then-fledgling party band called The B-52s from Athens, GA at the hipster hangout Max’s Kansas City and it was this early work with the band – creating “snipe posters” to post around the neighborhood promoting upcoming shows – that would ultimately lead George to work with Island Records’ art director Tony Wright on the band’s first album covers. Since that time, as both an art director and freelance photographer, George has produced over 300 album covers, collecting 18 gold and platinum albums for groups as diverse as the REM, The Go-Gos, Melissa Etheridge, Kid Creole and the Coconuts, Biz Markie and Big Daddy Kane. His portfolio for the Cold Chillin’ record label includes images taken of many of the stars of hip-hop music’s “golden age”, while the Ramones commissioned him to photograph or design their last nine covers and it is his shot for their only gold record (Ramonesmania) that he treasures most.
His early coverage of the music emerging from the Bronx just as his career was taking shape once again proved to be a case of his being in the right place at the right time. “I first heard hip-hop at the Mudd Club,” he recalls of the notorious TriBeCa venue where the likes of punk and new wave bloomed. “I thought it was a different kind of new wave or part of it, I had no idea of the scene in the Bronx.” An early-80s assignment to photograph Afrika Bambaataa & the Soul Sonic Force was followed by many others in the emerging genre for both record companies and the many editorial publications that were soon to expand their coverage of what became the music industry’s fastest-growing segment.
A summary of DuBose’s professional experience includes staff positions as a photographer for Island Records and Prism/Cold Chillin’ Records, the first photo editor for SPIN magazine (1984-87) and The Image Bankbook division and staff photographer for the original Interview magazine (1987-88). He returned to Island Records in 1988 as their Senior Art Director and photographer while at the same time, as a freelancer, he was asked to lead the packaging efforts for the emerging rap/hip-hop label, Cold Chillin’ Records (distributed by Warner Bros. Records).
After the label folded, he set out on his own and his company, PopEye Designs International, lists Island Trading Company, The New Music Seminar, PolyGram, Warner Bros, Island Records (since 1978), Sony, MCA, Playboy Enterprises, Thirteen/WNET and others among its clients.
After marrying “a beautiful German doctor” in 1997, he moved to Cologne, Germany and continues to provide creative guidance, art direction, computer graphic design, photography, manufacturing assistance for major record companies and up-and coming artists that want to produce their own albums. George’s book titled I Speak Music – Ramones is 104 pages of text and colorful photos (many unpublished) that document the ten- year relationship between the Ramones and their “official” photographer (i.e, George). In recent years he’s revisited his extensive hip-hop work through a book, the ironically-titled The Big Book Of Hip-Hop Photography (it is 8.5 x 8.5 inches) and sells prints of his best known photos (“I want to make my work available to everybody”). In 2018, DuBose published a book of images “from my career in New York as a music photographer” titled My Best Shot and his works are included in several travelling photo exhibitions and the permanent collection of the Universal Hip-Hop Museum in New York City.
Stories about how the various concepts came about and how these remarkable photos were executed can be found at http://www.lulu.com/content/877509 , while you can see what this artist is up to these days by visiting his web site at http://www.george-dubose.com/
Brian Duffy – notable album cover credits include – David Bowie – Alladin Sane, Scary Monsters, Lodger, Sound + Vision and Changesbowie; Loka – Fire Shepherds and Passing Place
(b. June, 1933 in London, England; d. May, 2010) Photographer and designer. Past designer for Harper’s Bazaar magazine; Past photographer for British Vogue; Freelance photographer for publications including The Daily Telegraph, Esquire, French Elle, Glamour, The Observer, Queen, The Sunday Times and Town Magazine; past film and video producer and director. In 1990, Duffy retired from his photo/film careers to pursue a lifelong passion for furniture and became an accredited BAFRA (British Antique Furniture Restoration Association) restorer.
To keep his father’s place in art history and share his images with an appreciative public, in 2009 Duffy’s son Chris started The Duffy Archive, which has participated in a long slate of museum and gallery shows, with Duffy’s photograph of David Bowie that was featured on the cover of Aladdin Sane being used as the principal promotional image for the “David Bowie Is” travelling exhibition. The story of Duffy’s life and career was the focus of a 2010 BBC documentary shown titled The Man Who Shot the 60’s. A more-complete biography about this artist will be posted soon.
More information on this artist is available via his web site at http://www.duffyphotographer.com/biography/
Rod Dyer – Notable album cover designs include – Alice Cooper – Goes To Hell; Carole King – Writer; The Raspberries – Raspberries and Side 3; Roberta Flack – Killing Me Softly; Parliament – Up For The Down Stroke; Kansas – Point of Know Return; The Wailers – Catch A Fire; James Taylor – Walking Man; Linda Ronstadt – Heart Like A Wheel; Stephen Bishop – Careless; Elton John – Too Low For Zero; Frank Zappa – Studio Tan
Born in South Africa in 1937, Dyer began his design career at Kenyon Advertising in Durban before leaving for the U.S. in 1960. For the next 7 years, he worked at a variety of design firms, including the influential Smith/Greenland agency in New York, LA’s Jerome Gould Package Design (famous for its designs for Pepsi), Carson/Roberts Advertising (LA’s largest), the Charles Eames agency (iconic office & furniture designers) and finally at Capitol Records.
In 1967 he launched his own firm – Rod Dyer, Inc. Design & Advertising – in Los Angeles and expanded his music industry portfolio, producing memorable and award-winning designs for a long list of label clients – Capitol Records, MCA Records, Maverick Records. Island Records and many others. Musical acts that have been beneficiaries of Dyer’s talents include Carole King, The Raspberries, The Jackson 5, Bob Marley, Roberta Flack, Linda Ronstadt, Parliament, Peter Frampton, James Taylor, Alice Cooper, Stephen Bishop, Kansas, Elton John, Jefferson Starship and quite a few others. Expanding the range of his/his agency’s design and advertising work into other aspects of the entertainment industry, his client list grew to include film and television brands including Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Gramercy Pictures, Buenva Vista Film & Television, Eastman Kodak and The Disney Channel, to name just a few. He’s created well-known logos for Entertainment Tonight, The Disney Channel and Maverick Records, as well as for consumer brands including Guess Jeans and the Koo Koo Roo chicken restaurant chain.
Through the years, Dyer has received a host of honors for his work, including awards of distinction from the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), the Art Director’s Clubs, the Society of Publication Designers, Graphis Annual, The Hollywood Reporter‘s Key Art Awards the International Annual of Letterhead Design and The One Show’s advertising show. In addition to his “day job”, Mr. Dyer has found time to publish a series of successful collector’s books about popular design (including Coast to Coast: The Best of Travel Decal Art and Fit to Be Tied: Vintage Ties of the Forties and Early Fifties) and to create a line of necktie and pen designs marketed through Acme Studios. Until 2011, he was also owner of the West Hollywood Italian restaurant/celebrity haunt Pane e Vino. Still hard at work, Rod currently resides in Los Angeles.
More information available on this artist’s website at – https://roddyerdesign.com/
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Andy Earl – notable album cover credits include – Bow Wow Wow – The Last of the Mohicans and See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah! City All Over, Go Ape Crazy ; Level 42 – Guaranteed and Forever Now; Pink Floyd – Delicate Sound of Thunder and Pulse; Manic Street Preachers – This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours; The Cranberries – Stars: The Best of The Cranberries 1992 – 2002 and Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?; Bee Gees – Size Isn’t Everything; Duran Duran – Rio: Johnny Cash – American Recordings
(b. 1955, Sussex, U.K.) Born and raised in Sussex, Andy’s father had a dark room in the family’s house and, beginning at the age of seven, Andy helped him with his hobby, but what he really wanted to be, more than anything else, was a race car driver. Earl found a job as a mechanic for the team of Formula Three racer James Hunt (of Rush movie fame) at the age of 16 but, finding himself with little to do during the “off” season, Andy enrolled in the art program at Trent Polytechnic, with a focus on photography. In 1975, he won a scholarship that allowed him to study photography in Baltimore, MD, giving him first-hand exposure to both America and American color photography techniques. Early completed his studies in 1977 and, the next year, he was awarded an exhibition at London’s Photographer’s Gallery (the city’s largest public photo gallery) and, in 1979, represented Britain in the Venice Biennale, one of Europe’s most-prestigious art/cultural exhibitions.
One of the attendees at the London show was music/fashion impresario Malcolm McLaren, then manager of the Sex Pistols and Bow Wow Wow, who was impressed with Earl’s photo work and offered him a commission for the upcoming Bow Wow Wow album cover. The resulting work – an outdoors scene that, in a sly way, recreated artist Edouard Manet’s painting titled Le Dejeuner l’Herbe (or, The Luncheon on the Grass) and featured the band’s lead singer, Annabella Lwin, in the nude. Unfortunately, Ms. Lwin was only 14 years old at the time and the production crew had neglected to get her parent’s permission to be photographed, so Andy & Co.’s photos were confiscated by the local authorities and the cover image was banned by the label, who chose to release it with a more conventional cover. This was until, of course, the record hit #1 on the charts (the result, in part, of McLaren’s leaking the original Earl-produced image to the press) and Annabella’s mother giving the label permission to use the beautiful photo, at which time Andy was paid 2000GBP for his work. The controversy surrounding this work served to kick Andy’s career – to use a racing term – into high gear, with his next project being for Duran Duran and, over the next several years (and after a move from Nottingham down to London in 1983), a whole range of top musical talent, including Boy George, Level 17, Madonna, Prince, Pink Floyd, Spandau Ballet, Ultravox and others.
His success within the music world would continue, with his portfolio expanding to include over 120 record covers and, with his expansion into film and video, over 20 music videos including ones for the Rolling Stones, Simple Minds and Take That. The music video for the “Like A Rolling Stone” single off of the Stones’ 1995 album release Stripped was crafted by director Michel Gondry from over 12,000 of Earl’s photographs, “morphed” together using a 3D technique that he’d developed as his final year school project at Nottingham Trent.
Andy Earl’s photographs have been included in a variety of exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world, including Inspired By: Andy Earl, held in 2005 at the Exhibition Gallery at London’s Golderbrock House; Sound & Vision: A Unique Music, Art & Photo Exhibition, held in February, 2006 at the Abbey Road Studios in London as a fund-raiser for Cancer Research UK; and the Since 1843 Exhibition at Bonington Gallery, Nottingham Trent University, that ran from January to February, 2014. His works have also been used extensively in exhibitions organized by a number of different photo equipment manufacturers including Apple Computer and Canon and Nikon cameras.
A book of Andy’s photos titled Vista: Andy Earl, was published in 2002 by Sanctuary Publishing, Ltd. and, in 2013, a photograph taken by Andy of country legend Johnny Cash was used on a postage stamp issued by the U.S. Postal Service as part of their Music Icons series. Earl has also chosen to share his talent and experience with those looking for careers in the arts and photography, working as a visiting professor and guest lecturer of photography at Norwich University of the Arts and has been a leading professional for many years. Per the school’s site note about Mr. Earl, “Andy Earl is an excellent example of a practitioner who has reached the pinnacle of his profession and is now going to share his experiences with students of photography and of design in Norwich, as well as assist in shaping the future of NUA’s BA Photography course.”
More information about this artist can be found on his website at http://www.andyearl.com/
Nick Egan – Notable album cover credits include – Bow Wow Wow – Last Of The Mohicans/See Jungle! See Jungle!...; Bob Dylan – Biograph; Ric Ocasek – This Side Of Paradise; Iggy Pop – Blah, Blah, Blah and The Complete A&M Recordings; Psychedelic Furs – Midnight To Midnight; INXS – Kick, X and Live Baby Live; Duran Duran – Duran Duran (The Wedding Album), Greatest and The Singles: 1986-95; The Brian Setzer Orchestra – Guitar Slinger
(b. July, 1957 in London, England) After attending college at the Watford College of Art and Design in Hertsfordshire, UK, (where he earned his DGA degree in 1976), Egan was hired to create a t-shirt design for the 1977 single “Sheena is A Punk Rocker” for The Ramones and cover art for the singles “White Man In Hammersmith Palais” and “Tommy Gun” (from Give ‘Em Enough Rope) for The Clash (both released in 1978). His work in the music field continued when Nick created his first album cover for the 1980 studio LP titled Searching For The Young Soul Rebels for the band Dexy’s Midnight Runners.
He then collaborated with former Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, for whom he designed the album cover used for both Bow Wow Wow’s 1981 LP See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah. City All Over! Go Ape Crazy and their 1982 EP Last of The Mohicans. Loosely based on Édouard Manet’s provocative 1863 painting titled Le déjeuner sur l’herbe, Andy Earl’s nude photo of the band’s then 15-year-old lead singer Annabella Lwin also caused quite a stir at the time, particularly after Annabella’s mother contacted Scotland Yard to express her displeasure with the image. As a result, the cover was replaced on the initial UK and US releases. His next project with McLaren – on the cover art for McLaren’s own critically-acclaimed album (which mixed African, Latin American and hip-hop beats) titled Duck Rock – resulted in artwork that impressed the “fine art” establishment as well, with the work included in the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. McLaren’s partnership with punk fashion designer Vivienne Westwood also brought Nick work as he created designs for marketing materials and her fashion shows throughout Europe.
Expanding his influence to the U.S., Egan moved from London to New York, where he took on design projects for musical acts (Bob Dylan, Ric Ocasek, Iggy Pop and others) book publishers (titles include Bob Dylan’s Drawn Blank, John Lennon: Listen To These Pictures by photographer Bob Gruen and, more recently, Punked Up – The Redstar Chronicles by author Marty Thau), corporate logos (Elias Plays and North Amercian Soccer League, as examples) and fashion, designing the “Sketchbook” label for the first collection by designer Marc Jacobs and creating graphics for Superfine Jeans and 2K Creative. Nick then expanded his influence on pop culture by entering the new (at the time) “music video” world, directing now-famous videos for Iggy Pop (“Real Wild Child”), INXS, Oasis, Duran Duran, Sonic Youth and many others (ultimately directing nearly 100 videos). Taking his sterling credentials to the commercial video arena, Egan has also produced notable spots for a wide range of advertisers including Coca Cola, Levi’s, Micron, Nike, Nintendo, Peak Performance, Sony, Titleist and many others.
For more information on this artist, please visit his web site at http://www.nickegan.com
Boyd Elder – notable album cover credits include – Eagles – Eagles: Their Greatest Hits, The Complete Greatest Hits and One of These Nights; Rubicon – America Dreams; Lita Ford – Out For Blood; Blue Mountain Eagle – Blue Mountain Eagle
A more-detailed biography of Boyd Elder, who died at his West Texas home in October, 2018 will be posted soon. A 2018 profile on the Texas Monthly web site published shortly before his death can be found at https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/boyd-elder-west-texas/
More information on the life and accomplishments of this artist can be found in his obituary at https://glasstire.com/2018/10/08/boyd-elder-dies-at-74/
Colin Elgie – Notable album cover work examples – Wishbone Ash – Live Dates and Just Testing; Humble Pie – Thunderbox; Al Stewart – Year of The Cat; Genesis – Trick of The Tail; Justin Hayward – Songwriter
An illustrator with many years of experience, Colin’s work is best-known for its uniquely-decorative graphic stylings. Originally trained in traditional graphic art techniques, he took advantage early-on of new digital tools as they came available and now typically combines both skill sets to sketch out ideas by hand and then execute the finished products on a computer (using Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.).
His talents have created many memorable images that have been used on books, magazines, music packaging and by clients in the fields of advertising, editorial and new media. His extensive list of clients outside the music business includes a host of well-known companies, publishers and household brands, including The Sunday Times, GQ Magazine, Square Mile and Computeractive magazines, the ASDA supermarket chain, Barclays, Discovery Channel and the Leo Burnett and Tangerine agencies.
More information on this artist is available at – http://colinelgie.com/
Paul Elledge – notable album cover credits include – Ministry – Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed & The Way to Suck Eggs, Dark Side of the Spoon, Greatest Fits, Sphinctour and Animositisomina; Anthrax – Sound of White Noise; Chris Connelly – Private Education, Forgiveness & Exile and Box Set; Richard Marx – My Own Best Enemy; Jonny Polonsky – There Is Something Wrong With You and The Power of Sound; Common – Can I Borrow A Dollar?; Uzi – Madhouse
(b. November, 1959 in Joliet, IL) With music – both as a player and a fan, with many hours spent at home studying the images on the covers of hos favorite records – serving as the principal driver behind Paul’s decision to go to art school and study photography, Paul knew early on that he’d need to learn how to apply his passion and develop all of the technical skills required to find employment as a designer in the record business.
After receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree from Southern Illinois University in 1981, Paul has gone on to work on projects for a long list of music and entertainment industry clients including AC/DC, Billy Corgan, Jennifer Hudson, Ministry, Willie Nelson, Trent Reznor, Luciano Pavarotti, Warner Brothers Records and Oprah Winfrey, among many others. He’s published photos in publications such as Audubon, Fast Company, Life, Men’s Health, People, Rolling Stone, Time and Wired and has collaborated on books with famed Chicago chefs Rick Bayless and Charlie Trotter.
Outside the entertainment world, commercial photography gigs have included those for ad agencies and design firms such as BBDO, Leo Burnett, DDB, Ogily & Mather, Pentagram, Publicis and many others, with corporate clients including Amgen, Chase Bank, Coca Cola, GM, Kimberly Clark, McDonald’s, Midas, Motorola, P&G, Reebok and many more.
Paul’s interests outside of image-making include the love of all things Italian (in fact, he has a book of photos taken there called Luna, Bella Luna) and vintage motorcycles. He has been a frequent instructor for the Toscana Photographic Workshop and the Santa Fe Workshop, and a speaker at Chicago Photographic Society and AMP/Kodak Lecture series events.
More information on this artist is available on his web site at http://paulelledge.com/
Carson Ellis – notable album cover credits include – The Decemberists – Her Majesty, The Tain, Picaresque, The Crain Wife, A Practical Handbook, Hazards of Love, The King Is Dead, What A Terrible World What A Beautiful World, Florasongs and I’ll Be Your Girl; Weezer – Make Believe; Laura Viers – July Flame and Warp & Weft; Beat Circus – Boy From Black Mountain and Colin Meloy – Colin Meloy Sings Live!
(b. October, 1975 in Vancouver, BC, Canada) Carson began her career in the arts originally by studying painting at the University of Montana where she also met a creative writing student/musician named Colin Meloy, who hired her to design promo materials for his band Tarkio and from this work launched a successful career as an illustrator of books, games, editorials and promotional materials for a number of clients in the music business, most notably for her now-husband Colin’s indie rock band The Decemberists.
Her work for The Decemberists includes album art, merchandise, websites, promo posters and stage sets, with her work on the covers for What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World and I’ll Be Your Girl both garnering Grammy Award nominations in the packaging categories.
As an author and illustrator, she’s created a number of best-selling picture books including Home and the Caldecott Honor/E.B. White Read Aloud Award-winning Du Iz Tak? Other top-selling book projects/series featuring her illustrations and design include The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart, The Composer Is Dead by Lemony Snicket, The Wildwood Chronicles by Colin Meloy, Dillweed’s Revenge by Florence Parry Heide (for which she was awarded a silver medal by the Society of Illustrators) and Stagecoach Sal by Deborah Hopkinson, while her illustrations have graced articles in The New York Times, The New Yorker and Poetry Magazine.
Carson lives and works in the Portland, OR area, with more information available on her web site at https://www.carsonellis.com/about/
Andrew “Drew” Ellis – notable album package credits include – UFO – Making Contact and The Chrysalis Years (1980 – 1986); The Alan Parsons Project – Stereotomy, Ammonia Avenue and The Complete Albums Collection; Andy Summers – XYZ; Pink Floyd – A Momentary Lapse of Reason and Discovery; Deep Purple – The House of Blue Light; China Crisis – What Price Paradise and The China Crisis Collection; Chris de Burgh – The Getaway; Nik Kershaw – Radio Musicola; David Gilmour – About Face; The Thought – The Thought; Abba – Abba Gold and More Abba Gold, Robert Plant – Shaken N’ Stirred; The Firm – Mean Business; Duran Duran – Liberty; Sideway Look – Sideway Look
(b. 19___ in Ealing, London, U.K.) After a foundation year at Manchester School of Art, Drew enrolled at the London College of Printing, London (now The University of The Arts) and, while conducting an interview with the staff at the Hipgnosis design firm in 1979 for his degree thesis, he was offered a job as a junior designer & photography assistant to Storm Thorgerson, Aubrey Powell and Peter Christopherson (working between lectures and holidays). After graduating with a BA Hons degree in Graphic Design & Photography from the University of the Arts in London in 1981 and then worked as a design assistant/designer for Island and A&M Records until, in 1982, he went on to co-found his own creative agency called Icon. That year, he teamed up with T-shirt designer Katharine Hamnett to produce a range of shirts bearing the slogan “Choose Life”(based on one Buddhism’s central themes) which helped kickstart Hamnett’s career producing politically-oriented clothing designs. He also worked on two Hipgnosis-related books at the time – Thorgerson’s second compendium of Hipgnosis photo imagery called The Goodbye Look and Us and Them: The Authorized Story of Hipgnosis, as well as the second installment in the Album Cover Album book series conceived by artists Storm Thorgerson and Roger Dean (Album Cover Album Two) and Virgin By Design (published by Thames & Hudson).
As Icon’s music industry design business grew to support offices in both London and Los Angeles, Ellis and his team produced memorable imagery for clients such as Paul McCartney, Genesis, Duran Duran and many others, earning a Grammy Award nomination at the 29th Grammy Awards show in 1986 in the “Best Package Design” category for his work on the Alan Parsons Project’s Stereotomy. In 1989, Ellis sold the firm to the Tinsley Robor Group Ltd., which later merged Icon with other group-owned companies to form Sonicon. He stayed on in leadership until 1993, when he left Sonicon and founded Eyetoeye – https://www.eyetoeye.com/ – which was, according to company info, “one of the world’s first new media agencies, advising a broad range of businesses on digital strategy, content creation, website development, branding, and design. Eyetoeye designed and built some of the first websites in the UK including the intranet for the House of Commons, and Arthur Anderen’s global web presence. We also advised many start-ups in the Internet boom years, such as First Tuesday and MoneyWorld, which sold to Interactive Investor.”
Using his resources and expertise as a creative and serial entrepreneur, in 2009 he co-founded the Like Minds Ideas Festival (“a global thought leadership platform”) and has since staged events in Europe, the U.K. and the U.S.A. The group also uses its own digital platform to produce events for clients in all areas of the business world. In 2019, he also co-founded DENA Partners LLC, an intermediary/consultancy for property developers and infrastructure companies looking for financing and, if that wasn’t enough to keep him busy, he launched two more businesses in 2020 – Business Breakfast TV (a weekly online series aimed at entrepreneurs and small to medium businesses) along with the Great British Business Festival.
Andrew has been invited to Buckingham Palace and the U.K. Parliament to advise on matters of business and enterprise and has been featured in articles in The Sunday Times, Financial Times and numerous other business and lifestyle publications.
More information on this artist is available at https://www.linkedin.com/in/drewellis/ as well as at https://wearelikeminds.com/
Robert Ellis – notable album cover credits include – Genesis – Seconds Out; AC/DC – Ballbreaker; Deep Purple – Live in California 1974; Paul Weller – Hit Parade; The Kinks – The Arista Years and State of Confusion; Black Sabbath – Black Mass; Nazareth – Hard ‘n’ Heavy; Def Leppard – On Through The Night and The CD Collection, Vol 1; Paul McCartney & Wings – Wings Over America; Gerry Rafferty – Clowns to the Left, Jokers to the Right: 1970-1982; Scorpions – World Wide Live; Eric Clapton – There’s One in Every Crowd
(b. November, 1945 in Torquay, Devon, UK) With an early education received at the Royal Radar Establishment in Worcestershire– a five year apprenticeship that gave him a strong background in both electronics and mechanical/electrical engineering – you’d think that Robert’s career path would be focused on technology. In fact, his first job, beginning in 1968, was working as a studio engineer for the BBC World Service in London. As a child, though, he’d taken up photography as a hobby, and after a couple of years in the studio, Robert chose to take a year off and travel through Asia doing some serious bird watching and, upon his return, got “the phone call” from the new Editor at Britain’s top-selling weekly music newspaper – NME – and accepted a job for that publication. With the music scene providing a great, dedicated audience, Ellis spent the next several years at NME before moving on to several other notable music pubs – as a staffer and/or a freelancer – including Melody Maker, Sounds, Kerrang! (where he still contributes) and Time magazine, to name just a few.
While working to cover the music business for the next 20+ years, Robert also found himself touring with many established acts and, beginning with his photo used on King Crimson’s Islands album in 1971, becoming a “go to” photographer for musical acts looking for just-the-right image for their latest record releases. In 1982, a keen business sense (and a large library of his own photos and those of other music industry shooters) led him to start up his first photo agency – Repfoto – in 1982 and then launching the online aspect of his business at Repfoto.com in 1989. In 2012, Robert decided to cease licensing his photos to others and began his own publishing company called The Rock Library which has since put out 13 books (as of late 2020, with several of the sold out) featuring exclusive photos of major acts including Genesis, AC/DC, The Who, Queen, Status Quo and Led Zeppelin.
Learn more about this artist and his work via his web site at www.therocklibrary.com
Emek – notable album cover credits include – Erykah Badu – New Amerykah, Pt. 1: 4th World War ; Neil Young – Mirror Ball; Various Artists – It Came From Beneath L.A. and The Five Fingers of Doctor X; Bad Religion – Punk Rock Songs: The Epic Years; ADZ – American Steel; Les Rita Mitsuoko – Variety; Blue Cheer – Rocks Europe; Slightly Stoopid – Closer To The Sun and Top Of The World; Los Lonely Boys – Rockpango; MOE. – No Guts, No Glory; Henry Rollins – A Rollins In The Wry
(b. Emek Golan in 1970 – Israel) The son of two multi-media artists, young Emek was immersed in the arts as a child, watching his father work as a painter, print-maker and sculptor in the studio behind the family home. Growing up, he learned the basics of drawing, painting, screen-printing and cutting various materials and brought those rudiments into the studio arts program at Cal State, Northridge (CA), where he graduated in 1992. That same year, he received his first commission as a poster artist, creating a promotional poster for an MLK Day concert and rally that took place right after the riots that took place in Los Angeles in April, 1992. That poster served to introduce the artist and his talents to both the local and national market, and both collectors and musical acts/venues sought out Emek to create posters (mostly in limited editions) for shows featuring many of the top acts of the day.
In 1995, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (Cleveland, OH) staged an exhibition featuring the work of a number of top poster artists, and Emek was asked to contribute examples of his work for that show. Emek also supplied the cover art for author Spencer Drate’s comprehensive 2003 book on the topic – SWAG: Rock Posters of the 90s – with seven of his designs included in that volume as well. His work has illustrated a number of articles in top newspapers and magazines, from Juxtapoz to the Washington Post. In their December, 2007 article on the top 25 posters of all time, Billboard Magazine included 3 of Emek’s designs – more than any other featured artist.
The list of commercial work featured in his portfolio is an enormous one, with posters, album covers, merchandise, logo work and more for clients including B.B. King, The Beastie Boys, The Black Keys, the Coachella festival, Decembrists, Erykah Badu, The Flaming Lips, Garbage, the Grateful Dead, Jane’s Addiction, The Mars Volta, Nine Inch Nails, Pearl Jam/Eddie Vedder, The Pixies, Prodigy, Rage Against The Machine, Soundgarden, The Verve, Ween, White Stripes, Widespread Panic, Neil Young, Z.Z. Top and many others. Musician Henry Rollins has called Emek “The Thinking Man’s Poster Artist” and, in addition to his commercial work, his fine art imagery has been included in solo and group shows in galleries and museum exhibitions throughout the U.S. and overseas. Examples of this include displays in a number of Hard Rock Cafe locations, the Laguna Art Museum (2008), the Chicago International Poster Biennial and the Flatstock shows during the SXSW Festival in Austin, TX and Bumbershoot Festival, Seattle, WA.
More information on this artist is available on his web site at https://www.emekstudios.com/
John Entwistle – Notable album cover work – The Who – The Who By Numbers
(b. October, 1944; d. June, 2002) Born in the London suburb of Chiswick and, after meeting Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey at school, formed a musical group (“The Detours”) that, after adding drummer Keith Moon, became “The Who”. Always sketching and cartooning while on the road with the band, John was watching his son Christopher draw in a coloring book and it gave him the inspiration to create a “connect-the-dots” portrait of his band-mates which ultimately became the cover for the band’s 1975 release titled The Who By Numbers. As time went on, he continued to draw cartoon portraits of himself, others in the band and other musicians he knew and respected.
Known for his dry sense of humor, the drawings of course were (mostly) done in a whimsical style which elicited such a positive response from those he shared them with that he decided to release them as a series of limited-edition prints. By the time the prints were released (published by Walnut Street Editions) in the 1990s, John’s reputation as a fine artist grew, resulting in virtual sell-outs (not in The Who Sell Out sense) of his editions. Each of the prints – individual sketches of himself, Townshend, Daltry and Moon, plus “Spirit of ’76″, “Generations” and, later, “Guitar Gods – featuring sketches of Hendrix, Clapton, Page and Townshend – were derived from his original pen and ink drawings and included his trademark “Boris The Spider” chopmark. Speaking before his death, Entwistle said: “Art is a relaxation from the music, and then my music becomes a relaxation from the art.”
Entwistle had arrived in Las Vegas, NV on June 24, 2002, ahead of the rest of the members of The Who (who were due to start a US tour that Friday) to open an exhibition of his work at the Grammy’s Art of Music Gallery, located in the Desert Passage mall at the Aladdin Hotel. Entwistle had been scheduled to sign copies of his work the evening prior to the show, but decided to hold off until the next day. He died of a cocaine-induced heart attack that evening… Fans of his work might consider supporting the John Entwistle Foundation – providing music education for underserved children.
Visit their website at http://www.johnentwistle.org/aboutus.html
Doug Erb – Notable album cover credits include – Alice In Chains – Dirt, Jar Of Flies, Alice In Chains, MTV Unplugged and Music Bank; Redd Kross – Third Eye; The Doors – Boot Yer Butt!; The Morells – Thing About It; Movie Soundtracks – A Mighty Wind, American Splendor, Cherish, Men In Black and Price of Glory; The Presidents of the U.S.A. – The Presidents of the U.S.A. II; Tower of Power – Rhythm & Business; Will Smith – Just Cruisin’; Zebrahead – Waste of Mind; Better Than Ezra – Closer; Korn – Take A Look In The Mirror
Doug is a freelance illustrator and designer, specializing in pen and ink-based work, based in Springfield, MO. Working for clients in the areas of music, print publishing and commercial advertising, Doug’s produced designs for albums, books, graphic novels, band merchandise, skateboard decks and other commercial products for clients including Culligan, Fantagraphics Books, MadeMan.com, Rhino Records, Rubber Records (AU), Sony Music, Warner Bros. Records, Yep Roc Records and the X Games, among many others.
In addition to traditional music packaging, Doug has excelled in the world of film soundtracks, with the list of popular movies he’s produced the packaging for including All About The Benjamins, A Mighty Wind, Armageddon, American Splendor, As Good As It Gets, The Cable Guy, Dungeons & Dragons, Frankenstein, Geronimo, Ghosts Of Mississippi, Little Vampire, Men In Black and Pleasantville, among others.
More information on this artist is available at his web site at http://dougerb.com/
Loring Eutemey – Notable album cover work includes – Various Artists – The Super Groups; Buffalo Springfield – Buffalo Springfield Again; Ray Charles – Ray Charles at Newport; Iron Butterfly – In A Gadda Da Vida; Charles Mingus – Oh Yeah; The Rascals – Young Rascals and Groovin’; YES – Time And A Word; Herbie Mann – Mann & A Woman
A graduate of Cooper-Union School of Art in NY City, Eutemey worked as an art director at Columbia Records along with Neil Fujita. His friend, fellow artist Marvin Israel, was working at Atlantic Records and Eutemey soon joined him there. Atlantic had been working with a number of freelance designers prior to Eutemey’s arrival, but once Israel had his friend working alongside him, the pair began to collaborate on a common design language for the label and its growing roster of jazz, R&B and rock music clients. Adding photographer Lee Friedlander to the mix allowed the team to produce elegant, artistic covers that presented the musical acts with a sense of artistic dignity not previously seen on album jackets of the era.
When Israel left the label in 1963, Eutemey took over design responsibilities, staying with the company (even after it was sold to Warner Brothers) until the mid-1970s. Since that time, both as a freelance designer and as part of Seymour Chwast’s Push Pin Graphics collective (which included other well-known artists such as Peter Max, Milton Glaser, Herb Leavitt and others) he’s done many design projects for both clients in many aspects of the music, book publishing and game design arenas. For example, Eutemey was one of the designers for the popular WWII-themed board game St-Lo, published in 1986 by West End Games.
Darren Evans – notable album package credits include – George Harrison – All Things Must Pass (50th Anniversary Edition); David Bowie – Serious Moonlight, The Best of Bowie, Live: Santa Monica ’72 and Ziggy Stardust Live: Hammersmith Odeon 1973; The Stranglers – Long Black Veil; The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s… (50th Anniversary set), The Beatles (“White Album” 50th Anniversary set) and The Singles Collection; Morrissey – Viva Hate; Talk Talk – Natural Order; Ultravox – Brilliant; Elton John – Regimental Sgt. Zippo; OMD – Architecture & Morality: The Singles; Freddie Mercury – Never Boring
(b. June, 1977 in Kent, U.K.) Born in Kent but raised in Bristol, at a young age Darren found himself amazed by the graphics he saw on the TV screen. He also had a love for music and, not satisfied with his family’s limited music collection, he’d spend his pocket money on the latest releases. He applied his talent and passion as a teen to making his own mix tapes and CDs for friends, designing custom covers for those productions and then, benefitting from his school’s new Apple Macintosh computers, he’d go on to complete coursework in Graphic Design, followed by A-Levels in Art and Photography, which enabled him to study Graphic Design in college at the Weston College of Arts and then at Falmouth University, where he majored in Graphic Communication/Graphic Design in the late 1990s.
After university, Darren was hired on by the UK design office of the consumer electronics company Saitek. According to Darren, “I never really thought to mix my love of design with music – I thought that part of the industry was quite ‘elite’. I moved to London in June 2001 and had a chance meeting with the Art Director at EMI Records, after which I was taken on as a freelance designer working for the in-house design department. I loved working at EMI, the people, the work and the atmosphere. It was a wonderful place to ‘grow up’ as a designer”.
For the next 15 years, Darren worked as a designer then Art Director for EMI Music, moving on to the Universal Music Group in May of 2013 where he remained until early 2016, when he launched his own independent design shop, Studio Evans Limited. Over the years, packaging, Point-of-Sale and entertainment marketing projects he’s worked on have won several industry awards, including a Grammy Award in 2022 (along with co-art-directors Dhani and Olivia Harrison) in the “Best Boxed or Special Limited-Edition Package” category for the impressive 50th anniversary packages they created for George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass.
More information on this artist can be found online at https://www.linkedin.com/in/darren-evans-b8251554/?originalSubdomain=uk or https://www.discogs.com/artist/1856469-Darren-Evans-2
Richard Evans – Notable album cover credits include – The Who – Who’s Next, Live At The Fillmore East 1968 and The Kids Are Alright; The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds; Agnetha Faltskog – Eyes of A Woman; Public Image Ltd. – Happy?; Robert Plant – Now & Zen, Subterranea and Band of Joy; World Party – Best in Show; Van Morrison – Magic Time; The Kinks – Think Visual
Born in 1945 (“on the same day as Eric Clapton – but that’s where the similarity ends!”), he studied fashion design at Nottingham School of Art in the 1960s, followed by a post grad course in graphic design at Leicester. He first established design credentials as a shoe designer in the early 70s, putting multi-colored platforms under the feet of Elton John, Roxy Music and The Osmonds. It was at this time that he met Aubrey Powell and Storm Thorgerson and later worked at Hipgnosis with them as their graphic designer for several years, eventually setting up his own design studio. He has worked with The Who since 1976, designing anything and everything for them from album covers to tour merchandise. He has produced work for a variety of artists including The Doors, Robert Plant, Public Image Limited, Pete Townshend, Bill Wyman and World Party.
Richard is also the author of an authoritative look at the world of album cover art titled The Art of the Album Cover.
More information on this artist is available at his web site – http://www.rdevans.com/
Stan Evenson – notable album cover credits include – Peter Frampton – Frampton Comes Alive!; Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – Damn The Torpedoes; .38 Special – .38 Special; Sea Level – Cats On The Coast and Long Walk On A Short Pier; Steve Miller – Born 2B Blue; Ozark Mountain Daredevils – The Car Over The Lake Album; Joe Cocker – Joe Cocker Live; Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes – Reaching For The World; Timberline – The Great Timber Rush; Jim Hall – Commitment; Brubeck & Desmond – 1975: The Duets; Scott Wesley Brown – Kingdom of Love
(b. August, 1951) In preparation for what is now a nearly 40-year career in commercial design, Stan Evenson earned a BFA in Advertising Design in 1974 from Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles (now Pasadena), CA and quickly landed his first job with his mentor and former professor (“and all-time favorite boss”), A&M Records creative director Roland Young. He remained at the label until 1976 when he made the decision, at the age of 24, to start his own design firm in LA called Evenson Design Group. He kept A&M as a client for another four years and went on to add many other music labels, including ABC Records, Blue Note, Capitol, Columbia, Elektra/Asylum, MCA, Motown, Polygram, Sony, Warner Brothers, Universal Music Group and more.
Over the years, he expanded his portfolio to include happy clients in many other business areas including automotive, education, electronics, food & beverage, health care, retail, toy manufacturing and others, but his heart remained true to the album cover design world where he got his start (“getting to design on the exciting 12″ x 12″ format, with creative gatefolds, liner notes, cool printing effects and die cuts, all when the music industry was the most-lucrative and invested heavily in their recording artists’ careers”). Musical acts that sport Evenson’s designs (including covers, posters, marketing materials, etc.) include Scott Wesley Brown, Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Peter Frampton, Amy Grant, Dave Mason, Steve Miller, Quincy Jones, Tom Petty, REO Speedwagon, Carly Simon, Cat Stevens and Tina Turner, to name just a few. In 1984, Evenson was awarded a GMA Dove “Recorded Music Packaging of the Year” award for his work on the cover of Scott Wesley Brown’s Kingdom of Love. His work has been so influential that several of his projects are included in the Permanent Collection of the Library of Congress.
In 2008, Stan’s wife Tricia, herself a noted designer, returned to EDG to forge a more dynamic partnership with her husband, and stepped into the role of President and Creative Director of Evenson Design Group. In 2014, the pair moved from Southern California to the Great Pacific Northwest (Lake Oswego, Oregon about 20 minutes outside of Portland) where they continue to produce designs and materials for select clients and have both begun work as fine artists, as well.
As part of Stan’s commitment to sustainability in all aspects of his business, in 2011 Stan and Tricia were selected to be the co-chairs of the AIGA (Re)designAwards, an international design competition acknowledging the best design thinking for sustainability and social responsibility. Stan also served as the President of AIGA LA and was a member of the AIGA Advisory Board for several years. Over the years, Stan has won numerous awards from the Advertising Club of Los Angeles, the American Advertising Federation, the AIGA, Communication Arts, Graphis, Graphic Design USA, the Type Director’s Club and several other internationally-recognized design organizations.
More information on this artist is available on his web site at http://evensondesign.com/
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Shepard Fairey – notable album cover credits include – Various Artists – Plea For Peace/Take Action 2001, 2010 Grammy Nominees and Woody Guthrie at 100! Live From Kennedy Center; Brother’s Keeper – Fantasy Killer; Anthrax – The Greater of Two Evils; Smashing Pumpkins – Zeitgeist; Tom Petty – The Live Anthology; The Black Eyed Peas – Monkey Business; Stone Temple Pilots – Stone Temple Pilots; Less Than Jake – Anthem; The Specials – Guilty ‘Til Proved Innocent!; Led Zeppelin – Mothership and Celebration Day; Billy Idol – The Very Best of Billy Idol: Idolize Yourself; Bad Brains – Into The Future; 311 – Don’t Tread On Me
(b. 1970 in Charleston, SC, USA) The son of a doctor and a realtor, Shepard demonstrated his artistic talents early on, developing his own designs for display on his skateboards and t-shirts. To further his skills, he went on to enroll in a program at the Idyllwild Arts Academy (Palm Springs, CA) and, after graduating, furthered his education at the famed Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, RI), graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts in 1992. While in school at RISD, Shepard worked at a local skateboard shop where he was able to experiment with his own custom designs while diving deep into the punk/street/graffiti art scenes that interested him so much. When asked to demonstrate the art of stenciling, Fairey borrowed an image of wrestler Andre The Giant to create a sticker featuring an adaptation of that image coupled with the phrase “Andre The Giant Has A Posse” and the resulting image (and further versions of it) starting what would today be called a “viral sensation”. The Andre image would soon evolve into the “Obey Giant” campaign and, after graduation Fairey launched his own silkscreen printing business in Providence which he called Alternate Graphics.
In 1995, a fellow RISD student named Helen Stickler filmed a documentary about the artist and his work (titled Andre The Giant Has A Posse) that premiered at the NY Underground Film Festival and has since been shown in more than 70 exhibitions. Looking to expand further into “guerilla” art and marketing (he’s said in interviews that he never wanted to be a commercial illustrator – rather, he wanted to focus his efforts on great graphic design), Shepard teamed with two others to launch a design studio dubbed BLK/MRKT Inc. and, for the next six years, developed memorable campaigns for clients including Hasbro, Netscape, Pepsi and others. In 2003, he and his wife Amanda launched their own agency called Studio Number One, taking on assignments for a number of well-known clients in the music and film industries.
In subsequent years, Fairey would often team up with other musicians and/or artists to create unique multi-media and multi-platform campaigns, such as the anti-war “Be The Revolution” street art/music series completed in 2004, 2005’s “Shock and Awe” campaign, and others. He also teamed up with graffiti artist Roger Gastman to launch Swindle Magazine and expanded his work in the music/film worlds with packages for the Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line and CD/LP covers for a variety of musical acts. In 2006, Shepard joined the team at a new agency based in New York called Project 2050, leading the creative efforts behind a number of assignments for clients including Boost Mobile, Genesis Publications, Nation Books and Virgin MegaStores, but it was in 2008 that the awareness of Fairey’s talents reached a whole new degree of recognition when his “HOPE” portrait of presidential candidate Barack Obama – used on posters, flyers and a whole range of related merchandise – became THE most-iconic image of that year’s presidential campaign, helping inspire a never-before-seen level of participation and excitement in young voters nationwide (note – the original image is on display in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.). Through donations of his time and artwork, Fairey has continued to support a wide range of charitable organizations, including the ACLU, Adopt-A-Pet.com, Feeding America, Hope For Darfur, Hurricane Katrina Relief Fund, MoveOn.org, the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation and many others.
Fairey’s work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the world. In 2009, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, MA honored him with a record-setting career retrospective exhibition titled “Supply & Demand” which later travelled to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA and the Center for Contemporary Arts in Cincinnati (with the popular 450-page exhibition catalog – complete with fold-up poster – still in print). After launching his ObeyGiant-branded clothing line, print magazine and fine art print/poster line, Fairey’s work has been recognized with a variety of awards including the Brit Insurance Design of the Year Award he received in 2009 for his “Hope” poster and, in 2010, the coveted “Free Culture Award” from the AS220 arts organization. He lives the in Los Angeles area with his wife and daughters and continues to DJ under the name DJ Diabetic and Emcee Insulin (a nod to his ongoing bout with diabetes).
More on this artist is available on his web site at http://www.obeygiant.com/
Nick Fasciano – notable album package credits include – Chicago – Chicago Transit Authority, Chicago, Chicago at Carnegie Hall (Vols. 1 & 2), Chicago V, Chicago VI, Chicago VII, Chicago VIII, Chicago X; Fleetwood Mac – Fleetwood Mac in Chicago; Loggins & Messina – Native Sons; The O’Jays – Collector’s Items; The Isley Brothers – Forever Gold; The Band – Anthology; The Outlaws – Bring It Back Alive; Raydio – Raydio; Rick Derringer – Derringer
(b. 1940 in New York City, NY) Nick grew up in Bayside, Queens, and studied design at New York’s Cooper Union. In 1965 he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to further study design in Frankfurt.
According to Nick’s site bio – “For over fifty years as a freelance designer, Nick has designed everything from album covers to memorial sculptures. Many of his designs are treasured household items and his work is recognized around the world. Nick designs and produces in every medium imaginable from fiber optics to wood to stained glass, and he brings honesty and authenticity to each project.”
In addition to his impressive album cover portfolio, Nick is also responsible for a number of well-known logos and lettering projects, such as those for Bally’s, Ode Records, Pinehurst and, of course, the rock band Chicago.
A more complete bio will be published as soon as possible but, in the meantime, you can learn more about this Long Island, NY-based artist and his work on his web site at https://www.fasciano.com/
Deborah Feingold – notable album cover credits include – Paul Simon – The Paul Simon Anthology; The Smithereens – The Best of The Smithereens; John Cale – Words For The Dying; Dire Straits – Brothers In Arms; Alan Merrill – Never Pet A Burning Dog; Phoebe Snow – I Can’t Complain; Isley Jasper Isley – Caravan of Love: The Best of Isley Jasper Isley; John Gorka – Out Of The Valley; Johnny Copeland – Boom Boom; Jeff Beck – Flash; Robert Cray Band – Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark; Diane Reeves – I Remember; Boz Scaggs – Memphis
(b. 1952 in Cranston, Rhode Island, USA) A self-taught photographer who, while living in Cambridge, MA after graduation, joined a photo co-op there and, after meeting a local jazz musician who lived in her building, began shooting the musicians/acts playing in the local music scene. After meeting another musician a couple of years later (and then moving with him to NYC), she began working the club scene there and taking photo assignments from the news and entertainment publications there. She became the staff photographer for Musician magazine and then expanded her work as a photo contributor and portrait photographer for many other top publications including Newsweek, The New York Times, Rolling Stone magazine, Time and The Village Voice.
As time went on, Deborah worked as freelance photographer for many advertising, book and music anthology projects and, as her confidence grew – as well as her ability to make her subjects comfortable and confident that she’d show them at their best – her list of subjects grew to include such luminaries as Madonna, Leonard Cohen, Billy Idol, Paul Simon, Bill Gates, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, B.B. King, Joey Ramone, David Byrne, Aerosmith and many, many others.
More recently, Deborah began teaching at the International Center of Photography and has expanded her portfolio to include more fine art/impressionist photography, which she displays at galleries both inside and outside the U.S.
More information on this artist is available via her web site at http://www.deborahfeingold.com/
Barry Feinstein – Notable album cover credits include – Janis Joplin – Pearl; George Harrison – All Things Must Pass; Bob Dylan – The Times They Are A-Changin’ and Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Vol. 2; Donovan – Sunshine Superman; The Rolling Stones – Beggar’s Banquet; Eric Clapton – Icon; The Byrds – Mr. Tambourine Man; Peter, Paul & Mary – Moving and In The Wind: Ike & Tina Turner – Outta Season
(b. February, 1931 – d. October, 2011) The only child of David and Rose Feinstein of Philadelphia, Barry took an early liking to photography, beginning in his teens and, although without a formal education in photography, he showed enough promise that he was hired as a photographer’s assistant by Life Magazine in 1955. His first assignment was to help cover the 1955 Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, NJ (Lee Meriwether won that year) and, after some prompting, Barry moved to the West Coast with the hopes of becoming a Hollywood photographer. His first job there was as a studio photographer for Columbia Pictures, where during the day he shot pictures of movie stars and, at night, he brought his camera to the streets of Hollywood, taking both pictures of celebrities out on the town (and, on occasion, out of their element) and of other scenes and characters that impressed him. Never one to look for a “typical” glamour shot, Barry sought to find and photograph interesting personalities doing interesting things, like the time he took a photo of actor Marlon Brando participating in a civil rights march and confronting an angry crowd of counter-demonstrators.
His portfolio included images of Marlene Dietrich, Charlton Heston, Judy Garland, Steve McQueen, Jayne Mansfield and Marilyn Monroe, with his work featured in the popular magazines of the day, including Esquire, Look, Newsweek and Time. In the early 1960s, Feinstein’s friend Albert Grossman (who’d introduced Barry to the woman who’d become his second wife, Mary Travers, member of Peter, Paul & Mary, during an early photo shoot) asked him to come to his office to meet a new folk singer he was managing – Bob Dylan. Dylan was familiar with Feinstein’s celebrity photographs and wanted him to shoot the cover image for his new album titled The Times They Are A-Changin’, so the two of them headed over to a friend’s penthouse apartment in New York City where they took they photo on the outdoor patio there. This launched Feinstein’s career as a music industry photographer, which made him happy as he felt that musicians were more-c-operative subjects than movie stars.
From that point forward, Feinstein became the go-to photographer for Dylan, traveling with the singer to his various tour stops to photograph the shows, with some of his best-known images coming from Dylan’s famed European Tour in 1966, undertaken in support of his notorious switch-over from acoustic folk artist to electric rock. At one point, in 1963, Grossman asked Feinstein to do him a favor and pick up a Rolls Royce he had out West and drive it back for him to New York and Dylan volunteered to accompany him for the cross-country adventure, cementing a relationship that would last for years. In the late 1960s, Barry extended his talents into film and was on hand to help document the Monterey Pop festival and to direct the cult documentary film about the “hippie era” titled You Are What You Eat, featuring a soundtrack that included music by Peter Yarrow, Paul Butterfield, The Electric Flag and others.
In 1970, Feinstein (now partnered with designer Tom Wilkes in a design firm called Camouflage) took two well-known album cover photos of two rock icons at key points in their careers. The first was a photo of singer Janis Joplin taken the day before she died, which was used on the cover of her farewell album titled Pearl, and the second of George Harrison, taken for the cover of his first post-Beatles record All Things Must Pass. In 1974, he went out with Bob Dylan and The Band on their U.S. tour, after which he decided to bow out slowly from the rigors of the music business.
A 1993 auto accident near his home in Woodstock, NY caused him to give up photography altogether. Instead, he began work on documenting his archives for later use. In 1999, some of his early photos of Dylan were included in the book Early Dylan, Photographs and Introduction by Barry Feinstein, Daniel Kramer and Jim Marshall and, in 2008, he published two books: Hollywood Foto-Rhetoric: The Lost Manuscript, containing 23 of his early Hollywood works together with poems written by Bob Dylan in 1964 and Real Moments: Bob Dylan featuring photos from Dylan’s European tour of 1966 and US tour of 1974. The photographs from these sessions and concerts, many previously unseen, had been packed away in an attic. Feinstein’s photographs have been included in photo exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2009 and as part of the Who Shot Rock & Roll travelling museum show that launched that same year. Feinstein died on October 20, 2011, at the age of 80 in Woodstock, New York.
To learn more about this artist, please visit his web site at https://www.instagram.com/barryfeinsteinphotography/?
Piper Ferguson – notable album package credits include – Kenny Rogers – You Can’t Make Old Friends; Scarling – So Long, Scarecreow and Staring Into The Sun; The Bellrays – Have A Little Faith; Cafe Le Bon – Mug Museum; Miranda Lee Richards – Existential Beast; K T Tunstall – Wax; Robben Ford – Into The Sun; Various Artists – iTunes Sessions (2012 & 2013); Jonny Lang – Fight For My Soul; Pigeon John – Dragon Slayer; Merle Haggard – Hag: The Best of Merle Haggard and If I Could Only Fly: Old 97s – The Grand Theatre, Vol. 1; The Blah Blah Blahs – The Blah Blah Blahs;
(b. ___ in Petaluma, CA) Piper was raised in Petaluma, California and, after studying Film and Spanish at San Francisco State University, she went on to study and work in Salamanca, Spain, relocating to Madrid after graduation to teach English and travel. Piper then moved to Los Angeles, where she started art directing music videos, commercials and features, and when her friend Shalyce Benfell moved down to Los Angeles, the pair started a Brit Pop/Mod club called Café Bleu reminiscent of the spots they missed up in the Bay Areain SF. Their club became a showcase for bands like The Dandy Warhols, BRMC and Maroon5 and Piper built on these relationships to expand her multi-media portfolio, teaching herself photography and, according to her site bio, “discovered a new passion”.
Since then, Piper has continued to bring her talents to commissions from top-tier musical acts (inc. Beck, Coldplay, Modest Mouse, Kenny Rogers and many others) and other commercial clients (Adobe, Apple/iTunes, Blue Microphones, Coca Cola, Levi’s, O’Neill Surf Co. and others) and publishers/media clients such as Filter, Flood, Mojo and Q magazines, Clear Channel, Jazz at Lincoln Center, NBC/Universal and more. She’s lead the film and photo efforts at the famed Coachella Music Festival every year since 1999 and, in 2007, her career was highlighted in a special feature in Juxtapoz Magazine titled “Music’s Eye Spy”. More recently, the music video she directed for the U.K.-based experimental rock band Amusement Parks on Fire was notable as being the first ever shot with a 360-degree camera.
To find out more about this artist, please visit her web site at http://www.piperferguson.com/
Karl Ferris – Notable album cover work examples include – Jimi Hendrix Experience – Are You Experienced?, Axis: Bold As Love and Electric Ladyland; Donovan – A Gift From A Flower To A Garden; The Hollies – Evolution
(b. 1948 in Sussex, UK) Karl Ferris is known by many as “the Innovator of Psychedelic Photography”. A photographer to the “British Rock Elite” – Eric Clapton, Cream, Donovan, The Hollies and Jimi Hendrix – Ferris worked as their personal photographer to help create their public “images”. He was given an insider access to the “Experience” that defined the 60’s and the world. The Beatles had just released Rubber Soul and Karl had the chance to meet up with their official photographer, Robert Freeman, who encouraged Ferris to experiment with different styles of images – which he promptly did – in his unique psychedelic style.
From this start, Ferris received many commissions. He also began working on “Psychedelic Happening” shows, combining projections of colored liquid and photographs over freeform dancers. The likes of Paul McCartney, Graham Nash, Eric Clapton, T Rex, Pink Floyd and John Lennon dropped by and began participating, by playing music, with these shows. Ferris was also invited to do a stage light show for Pink Floyd, which is believed to be the first one ever done in England in 1966. Ferris met with Jimi Hendrix in 1967 through Chas Chandler, who “discovered” Hendrix. Karl received the compliment of a lifetime when Hendrix remarked to him, on seeing his portfolio, “You‘re doing with photography what I’m doing with music – going far out beyond the limits”.
In 2009, Ferris published a book titled The Karl Ferris Psychedelic Experience which featured a collection of his psychedelic photos of Hendrix, Donovan and Cream and selections of his work with The Fool design collective as well as other celebrity and fashion photographs (including a DVD-based slide show screensaver). His works are carried by well-known galleries throughout the world. Karl now lives (quite nicely) on the island of Ibizia off the coast of Spain.
View more of this artist’s works on the Hypergallery website – https://hypergallery.com/en-us/collections/the-karl-ferris-psychedelic-experience
Dave Field – notable album cover credits include – Uriah Heep – Return To Fantasy; Nazareth – Loud ‘N’ Proud and Razamanaz; Manfred Mann – Nightingales & Bombers; Curtis Knight – Zeus: The Second Coming; Rod Stewart – Reason To Believe; Black Sabbath – Paranoid and Live At Last; The Sensational Alex Harvey Band – Live; Jeremy Taylor – Come To Blackpool; Eddie ‘Guitar’ Burns – Bottle Up & Go; Little Richard – Now; Status Quo – Quo; Thin Lizzy – Nightlife; AC/DC – High Voltage (European version); The Drifters – Love Games; Riff Raff – Riff Raff; Chuck Berry – Chuck Berry’s Greatest Hits; Brian Jones – Joujouka
(b. 1948, U.K.) Deciding in 1966 at the age of 18 (and after completing a two year course in Graphic Design and Illustration at the Mansfield College of Art) to embark on a “big city” career in design in London, Dave took a job in a related field – selling advertising for a trade paper – which taught him essential selling and client-relation skills, but didn’t give him any experience as a designer. As luck would have it, he found employment the following year as an assistant to the Marketing/Art Directors at a Fleet Street design studio named Art In Marketing and taking on additional responsibilities as an Account Executive. Part of any good AE’s skill set is having the ability to understand a job’s requirements and then making sure that the finished product meets the client’s needs, so it was here that Dave’s design abilities made him more valuable.
For clients including both ad agencies (Charles Barker; Connell, May & Stevenson, DDB, JWT and others) and corporations including British Motor Co., Castrol and Unilever, Field was a hands-on project manager and designer, gaining even more experience, which he’d bring the following year to new jobs, first at the studios of Max Rayner Artwork – a leading illustration company – and then at Birds Eye Foods, where he created illustrations for the company’s various food products. Finding this work less-than-satisfying, Dave left in late 1969 and set out to build a career as a freelancer.
His portfolio was impressive enough that he quickly was selected for a number of commissions, doing enough work for both Rod Stewart and the Rolling Stones that he opened his own studio on London’s hub of trendy fashion, Carnaby Street and, over the next 10 years, creating packages and designs for ancillary products for musical acts including: AC/DC, Chuck Berry, Black Sabbath, Eddy Grant, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, The Hollies, Brian Jones, Manfred Mann, Nazareth, Roy Wood and Uriah Heep. Other music industry clients (band and company logos, style guides, merchandising, etc.) included Akashic Records, B&C Records, Creole Records & GM Records.
Dave also successfully expanded his client base outside the music industry, serving as U.K.-based “Swinging Sixties” fashion designer Ossie Clark’s graphic designer in the mid 1970’s, producing music venue and festival posters for Marquee/Marthin and Derek Block (promoters of clubs including The Hammersmith Palais, The Marquee and The Rainbow as well as the Glastonbury and Isle of Wight fests) and illustrations for Ink, Music & Video and Zigzag magazines. During this period, Field brought his design skills into the 3-D world, drawing up plans for products to be created in resin, such as figurines, frames, soap dishes (even “naughty gnomes”!) for one client and ceramic murals and fountain displays for others, winning a Gold Award at the 1988 Glasgow Garden Festival. Also in the publishing world, Field created memorable art posters under his own label and designs for two lines of greeting cards for Paper D’Art and Carte Blanche, remaining freelance until 1999 when another greeting card publisher, Excelsior Graphics, brought him on as Art Director. His skills in both computer-based and traditional designing continued to expand and, even when Excelsior was purchased by the Card Factory in 2006, Dave stayed on in his role until 2012, when he chose to return to the world of freelance design.
Eager to share his history in record cover design, Dave once produced a lecture tour and exhibition titled “Graphic/Album Sleeves in the Music Industry”, bringing this show to schools including the Polytechnics in Central and West London and the Universities in Sheffield and Southampton, among others.
More information on this artist is available via his web site at http://www.davefieldart.co.uk/
Howard Finster – Notable album cover art examples – R.E.M. – Reckoning (I.R.S. Records, 1984); The Talking Heads – Little Creatures (Sire Records, 1985).
The Reverend Howard Finster (b.1916 – d.2001) was one of the country’s most talked-about folk/outsider artists. In 1965, he said that he heard a voice from the Lord which told him to transform two acres of land in Summerville, GA into a “Paradise Garden.” Using junk, broken dolls, tools and clocks, he embedded these materials in concrete walls which surround both a 30-foot tower built of bicycle parts and his own church called “The World’s Folk Art Church.” “Paradise Garden” was an ongoing project that expressed his religious convictions and creativity and he explained that he assembled the pieces for a purpose -”to mend a broken world.” In 1976, he had a vision of a tall man at his gate (the Lord) who directed him to begin painting “sermon art” because, “preaching don’t do much good – no one listens – but a picture gets on a brain cell.” The voice commanded him to paint this sacred art and to create individual paintings and portraits of personal heroes, religious and patriotic images and to pass on his spiritual messages to the world. Finster’s paintings have evangelical themes and inspirational images which come from his own interpretations of the Bible. Angels and saints as well as earthly characters are often portrayed, and all of his paintings contain witty, printed quotations known as “Finsterisms.”
Several of his paintings show how he was influenced by the imagery on postcards, popular magazines, cultural icons like Elvis Presley, historical figures and, of course, figures from the Bible. Some of his creations have joined the contemporary art and music world through his paintings for the album covers of the rock groups REM and The Talking Heads. Other artists to use Finster art on their record covers include Memory Dean, Pierce Pettis, and Adam Again. Finster made art out of nail heads, gourds, bottles, mirrors, plastic, snow shovels and even an old Cadillac. However, the majority of his works were usually made out of plywood or heavy canvas, with the works ranging in size from a few square inches to 8-9 feet in height. His art was original, innovative and expressive.
In 1994, a portion of his Paradise Garden was installed as part of the permanent collection of Atlanta’s High Museum. He believed he came from another world and is often referred to as “This Stranger From Another World.” Finster believed the more he painted, the more people he would save, and went on to create over 46,000 works of art. The works are presented in many forms, sometimes called “paintings in tongue,” visions of other worlds where people live in harmony. Finster had his visions for the future. “A day when one computer will run the earth and the final day when giant tidal waves will cover the world. And then the time will come for G-D to create men again- men like the Reverend Howard Finster.”
More information on this artist is available at his website – http://www.finster.com/
Robert Fisher – notable album cover credits include – Beck – Where Its At, Odelay, Mutations and Mellow Gold; Nirvana – Nevermind, MTV: Unplugged In New York and In Utero; Rev Theory – Justice; Banyan – Anytime At All; Slaughter – Stick It To Ya; Urge Overkill – Saturation and Exit The Dragon; Smash Mouth – Smash Mouth and All Star Smash Hits; Jason Mraz – Waiting For My Rocket To Come; Helmet – Monochrome; Izzy Stradlin – 117 Degrees; Billy Idol – Greatest Hits; No Doubt – Return Of Saturn; One Republic – Feel Again; Stone Temple Pilots – Thank You
Past Art Director, Geffen Records; Principal/Creative Director at Flying Fish Studio, a full-service design firm for clients in the entertainment and retail products industries. Has produced and art-directed print, packaging, promotional materials and merchandising designs for a long list of clients including (per his studio’s web site) the Academy of Country Music, Atlantic Records, Capitol Records, Chrysalis Records, Columbia Tri-Star Home Entertainment, DGC Records. Discovery Channel, Disney Consumer Products, Disney Interactive, DreamWorks, E! Entertainment, Electronic Arts, Elektra Records, EMI, Fox Searchlight, Fuel TV, Geffen Records, The Hollywood Bowl, Interscope Records, Red Bull, Scripps Network/HGTV, Sony Computer Entertainment America, NBC/Universal Home Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Bros. Records and many others. A more-complete biography about this artist will be posted soon.
More information on this artist is available via his LinkedIn page at https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-fisher-58201215/
Jim Fitzpatrick – notable album package credits include – Thin Lizzy – Vagabonds of the Western World, Nightlife, Jailbreak, Chinatown, Killers on the Loose and Black Rose; John Sykes – Sykes; Manila Road – Mark of the Beast; Darkthrone – The Underground Resistance; Tom Newman – Faerie Symphony & Other Stories; Sinead O’Connor – Sean-Nos Nua and Faith & Courage; Ash – Free All Angels and Meltdown; Alan Stivell – Before Landing
(b. December, 1944 in Dublin, Ireland) The son of a photo-journalist (and grandson of a well-known political cartoonist), Jim was a student at a Franciscan college in Gormanston when, in 1963, while he worked a summer job at a local hotel, the Argentinian/Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara came in to the hotel for some refreshment while his plane refueled during a return trip from Moscow to Cuba and spoke with Jim about Che’s Irish ancestry (his grandmother being Irish, his father had the surname “Lynch” and several other family members originated in other areas of the country).
A few years later (not long before Che was executed soon after being captured following a battle in Bolivia), while working on some graphics for a story about the Vietnam War for the Irish magazine Scene, Jim wanted to honor the man and, so impressed had he been with his visit with the ill-fated revolutionary years before that he took a 1960 Alberto Korda photo of him and based a graphic image – one a bit more “psychedelic” – on it. Wanting to further honor the man after his death, he devised a new version which he then worked to distribute and, wanting revolutionary groups everywhere to be able to use the image to promote their own activities, Jim made it freely available, and it went on to become one of the most-reproduced images in history.
As an artist specializing in Celtic imagery, lettering and logos going forward (and handling a steady stream of work for a long list of advertising clients), he was tapped by local musical icons Thin Lizzy to work with them on the cover art for their 1973 debut Vagabonds of the Western World, plus others including Nightlife, Jailbreak, Chinatown and Black Rose and, 50 years later, in 2023, Jim was asked to help with the launch of “Thin Lizzy Irish Whiskey”, done in collaboration with West Cork Distillers, and which sports a variant of the Black Rose image on its label.
More information on this artist is available on his web site at https://jimfitzpatrick.com/
Chris Floyd – notable album package credits include – The Verve – Urban Hymns; Leona Naess – Comatised and Leona Naess; The Derek Trucks Band – Soul Serenade; Roland Gift – Roland Gift; Jack Savoretti – Singing To Strangers; Superstar – Superstar; Jepp – Jepp; Gene – Rising For Sunset, Libertine and Yours For The Taking; Pet Shop Boys – Pop Art;
(b. 1968 in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, U.K.) Beginning his foray into photography as a young teen, Chris proved his knowledge of the fundamentals via his completion of a BTEC (a specialized British trade curriculum) photography course in the late 1980s, moving south to London in 1990 to look for work as a pro shooter. At that time in the world of music publications, there were a growing number of media outlets that competed for content and music fan Chris was happy to oblige. In 1994, he’d learned about the upstart lifestyle publication (co-founded by another photographer, Rankin) that was looking for new contributors and he leapt on the opportunity to introduce himself, landing a gig taking pix of Beck and thus beginning his association with the bands that were leading the “BritPop” charge at the time.
Since then, his photos of celebrities – particularly those in the entertainment world – have appeared in media outlets all over the world, with publications such as Esquire, GQ, Harpers Bazaar, Men’s Health, The New Yorker, The New York Times and The Sunday Times Magazine (UK), among others, benefitting from his eye and talent. He later brought that same eye to new work in the video arena, expanded his list of clients outside the music business as well, building a notable portfolio of work for clients including Anthropologie, Apple, Avis, BMW, British Airways, Debenhams, The National Health Service, The National Lottery, Nissan, Sony, Philips, UBS, Virgin Radio and many others. In April, 2021 he received a commission to photograph The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge at Kensington Palace in London in honor of their tenth wedding anniversary.
In addition to being included in a number of books and museum/gallery shows, Floyd’s work has been selected multiple times (beginning in 2008) for the National Portrait Gallery’s Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize.
More information on this artist is available on his web site at https://www.chrisfloyd.com/info/
Meghan Foley – notable album cover credits include – Weird Al Yankovic – Squeeze Box and Mandatory Fun; Michael Jackson – Scream; Ray Lamontagne – Part of the Light; Kelly Clarkson – Piece by Piece; Walk The Moon – Walk The Moon; Cyndi Lauper – Bring Ya To The Brink; Motion City Soundtrack – My Dinosaur Life; Gossip – Music For Men; Elle King – Shake The Spirit; Ozzy Osbourne – See You On The Other Side; Alicia Keys – Here
(b. 1978, Bronx, NY) After graduating from the School Of Visual Arts in New York City (Class of 2000) with a BFA in Graphic Design, Meghan began her design career as a Senior Graphic Designer with Cezanne Studio, a boutique media design studio in New York where she handled print/web design projects for clients including Avon, Harper Collins, S.L. Kaye Candy, Scholastic Press and author Maurice Sendak. However, according to Meghan, “making album artwork was always my dream job” and so, in 2003, she joined Sony Music as a Graphic Designer, where she worked her way up thru the ranks, first as an Art Director in 2006, then Senior Art Director in 2009 and finally, in 2014, she was promoted to Associate Design Director.
As if one job wasn’t enough, in 2007 Meghan was asked by the folks at Sony to also apply her broad skill set to projects for another studio inside the company – called the Arcade Creative Group – that was put together to be able to provide ad agency services to outside clients, including American Express, Coca-Cola, International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF), Jockey and NJOY (among others). As the Associate Creative Director of this music and culture-based creative group, during her 10-year stint Meghan worked on the development and execution of print, digital and TV campaigns – even a “multi-sensory experience, uniting visual artists, musicians and master perfumers in an unprecedented group art installation” for IFF called “The Chemistry of Sensuality”.
Continuing on to pursue her passion for the arts, music entertainment and design, in 2019 she launched her own design studio – Meghan Foley/Studio – where she remains busy with clients on a wide range of projects.
Meghan’s work has been featured in numerous industry publications, artwork compilations and photography gallery shows. At the 61st annual Grammy Awards ceremony in early2019, Meghan was a winner of the Grammy Award in the “Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package” category for the amazing, accordion-styled package she created for Squeeze Box: The Complete Works Of “Weird Al” Yankovic. The same package also won an award in the “They Said It Couldn’t Be Done” category at the 2018 Making Vinyl Packaging Awards, another top industry honor.
More information on this artist is available on her web site at http://www.meghanfoley.com/
The Fool Design Collective – Notable album cover artwork includes – Incredible String Band – The 5000 Spirits or The Layers of the Onion; The Hollies – Evolution; The Move – Move; The Fool – The Fool
Simon Posthuma was born in Zaandam, Holland in 1939 and began his journey into the arts in 1954 at the Academy of Applied Art in Amsterdam, transferring to the National Academy of Fine Art in 1958. He held his first exhibition in 1958 and, in 1963, founded an organization called the Universal Movement of Artists, staging shows in Casablanca and Rabat (Morocco) and Marbella, Spain. Posthuma organized a number of influential “happenings” in the early-mid 1960s, meeting fellow artist Marijke Koger in 1965 and joining forces with her to embark on a wide range of multi-discipline projects, including fine art, fashion design, set decoration and various performance art efforts, with a focus on colorful, psychedelic designs.
Marijke Koger was born in 1943 in Amsterdam and started down her path to design fame as a youngster, painting and making her own clothes and, after dropping out of school at the age of 15, she went to work as a graphic artist at advertising agencies in Amsterdam. When she was 18, she teamed with a friend from school named Yosha Leeger and, together they opened a boutique in Amsterdam called “The Trend”. It was at that time that they met Simon Posthuma and their journey together began.
Moving to London after returning from an extended tour through Europe and Northern Africa (during which they continued to develop designs for art and fashion and met with photographer Karl Ferris, who’d introduce them to key players in the London music and arts scene) in late 1966, they continued on their ‘mission’ which, according to Posthuma’s biography on his web site, “was introducing bright colours in a grey world of pinstriped suits and homburgs under a dreary sky.” Further connections were made via Simon Hayes of Mayfair Publicity to movers and shakers in the local entertainment industry in 1967 and commissions came for designs for stage outfits for Cream, Procol Harum and The Hollies and for program artwork for The Saville Theatre.
The Beatles had seen the pair’s designs and hired them design clothing for them and for the Apple Boutique/Cultural Centre, where they also developed treatments for displays and murals to decorate the building’s exterior. Their creative relationship is also credited for inspirations for the song “The Fool on the Hill” and the George Harrison-scored film Wonderwall.
1967 is also the year in which Simon and Marijke teamed up again with fellow Dutch artist Josje (“Yosha”) Leeger and English designer Barry Finch to form a collective – working alongside photographer Ferris – called “The Fool”, with the name based on a key card – the zero – in Koger’s tarot card deck. Their work for music industry clients continued and they produced mind-blowing designs for bands including The Incredible String Band, The Hollies and The Move. It was during this period that they were also asked to produce more designs for The Beatles, including a set for a TV performance of “All You Need is Love” and an unused cover design for their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album.
Their work continued in the late 1960s with designs for their own album (produced by Graham Nash) in 1968 and for the psychedelic paint scheme for the LA production of the musical HAIR at the Aquarius Theater. While the collective split in 1970, both Simon and Marijke have remained in demand, being asked to create murals and programs/posters for productions of HAIR in San Francisco and Chicago while continuing to display their art in gallery shows world-wide. They released three albums of their music and, in 2005, the Tate/Liverpool’s exhibition titled Summer of Love – Art of the Psychedelic Era featured an entire section devoted to the art of The Fool.
In 2008, Simon released his autobiography, titled A Fool Such as I – The Adventures of Simon Posthuma. Koger’s more-recent projects have included illustrations of J.J. Hurtak’s The Book of Knowledge: The Keys of Enoch, sets for “Karaoke Fest ’95″ at the Hollywood Palladium, and a permanent exhibit at the Autry/Southwest Museum in Los Angeles.
More information on these artists is available at the following sites:
The Fool – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fool_(design_collective)
Simon Posthuma – http://www.simonposthuma.com/
Marijke Koger-Dunham – http://www.maryke.com/
James Fortune – notable album package credits include – Iggy Pop – California Bleeding; Led Zeppelin – How The West Was Won, Mothership and Houses of the Holy (2014); Ray Manzarek – The Whole Thing Started With Rock & Roll (Now It’s Out of Control); Iron Butterfly – Sun & Steel; Buffalo Springfield – Box Set; The Doors – Perception and Strange Days (2007);
(b. June, 1947 in London, U.K.) – Although born in the U.K., James and his parents moved to the US when he was five years old. Growing up in Southern California, he’d go on to attend Pierce College (Woodland Hills, CA) where he took on the role of photographer for his college newspaper. On assignment, he’d photographed Jim Morrison and The Doors in the studio recording their second LP (Strange Days), where he met the band’s manager Danny Sugarman, who’d go on to ask James to shoot the cover photo for The Doors’ keyboardist Ray Manzarek solo project and, later on, performances of another of Sugarman’s clients, Iggy Pop and The Stooges.
In 1967, before embarking on a career as a freelance photographer, James joined the US Navy and served in that service’s Fleet Combat Camera Group, capturing scenes of life on several warships during the Vietnam War until his discharge in 1970. Returning to life as a full-time photographer, James would then spend the next decade shooting portraits and concert shots of all the biggest acts in the music world, including Cher, Bee Gees, Eric Clapton, Elton John, KISS, Led Zeppelin, Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, The Who and many others. His portfolio includes thousands of images from the 1960s – 1970s.
James moved with his family to Richmond, Virginia in 1980, where he’s kept himself busy on photo assignments of all types. Although he “retired” in 2010, he’s continued to manage his archives and help curate gallery showings of his work. Over the past 50 years, many of Fortune’s photographs have appeared in dozens of books, films, magazine and other media around the world, with examples including Smithsonian Rock and Roll published by Smithsonian Books in 2017 (with the front and back covers featuring concert photographs of Led Zeppelin taken in 1973, along with shots included on seven pages inside) and 2018’s Led Zeppelin by Led Zeppelin (Reel Art Press), while a statue of John Bonham that stands in Mercian Square in Redditch, UK (unveiled in 2018) used one of James’ photos as the basis of its design.
122 of his photos were chosen to illustrate the DVD Popular Culture in Britain and America, Vol. 2 put out in 2013 by Adam Matthew Publishing (London, UK), while his work has also been on display in gallery shows such as the 2005 show at the Alla Rogers Gallery in Washington, DC, titled “Rock & Roll Icons of the ’60S And ’70S: James Fortune Photographs” and the 2015 show staged by the Sotheby’s outpost in London titled “Rock Style”. In 2016, The Smithsonian Anacostia Museum in Washington DC. chose to include several of Fortune’s photographs In their “Washington DC, 1965–1975” exhibition and, in May, 2022, the C. Parker Gallery in Greenwich, CT launched a crowd-pleasing career retrospective show called “The Rock Photography of James Fortune”. Also, notably, there are over 150 of his shots in the permanent collection of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, OH.
To learn more about this artist, please visit his site at http://jamesfortunephotography.com/
Simon Fowler – notable album cover credits include – Howard Jones – Human’s Lib and Dream Into Action; Paul Young – No Parlez and The Secret of Association; Katie Melua – Nine Million Bicycles and Call Off The Search; Sarah Brightman – Diva, Symphony, I Will Be With You: The Singles Collection and La Luna; Enya – Christmas Secrets, And Winter Came, Amarantine and A Day Without Rain ; Human League – All The Best; Simply Red – The Essentials and Picture Book; Eddy Grant – Killer on the Rampage; Dina Carroll – So Close; UB40 – All The Best ; Gene Loves Jezebel – Discover; Simple Minds – Real Life; Harry Nilsson – Flash Harry; Queen – Hot Space, The Miracle and Queen 40 Limited Edition Collector’s Box Set, Vol. 2; Pretenders – Loose Screw and Greatest Hits: Meat Loaf – Blind Before I Stop; Stray Cats – The Best of Stray Cats; Wax UK – Magnetic Heaven
(b. 1954, Hastings, East Sussex, U.K.) In order to get a good start in the Arts, Simon first readied himself at the High Wycombe College of Art & Technology, via their Art Foundation courses, following up with photography studies at the Amersham College of Art & Technology. Completing his studies, Fowler launched his career as a photographer in 1974 after signing on with the LFI (London Features International) agency to work with his mentor, Michael Putland (who’d go on to found the Retna photo agency in NYC and, later, a second office in London). A year later, Simon set out to create his own independent portrait studio only to return to LFI in 1976, working there until 1979 when he joined forces with another LFI photographer, Paul Cox, to create their own studio, calling themselves SLAG (Studio,Location and Gigs,), a very Punk-ish name but one that kept with the mood of the day then in the U.K..
While the duo were able to continue on in a limited relationship with LFI (who would syndicate their work), in 1981 Simon and Paul finally found a place of their own on Chester Square in London’s upscale Belgravia neighborhood, and it was there that they were able to expand their relationships with a host of upcoming recording acts and their record labels, shooting portraits of musical acts including Boy George & Culture Club, Human League, Pretenders and Softcell.
After working hard to convince the labels that they were the best-equipped to help build the visual aspects of their clients, the pair moved again in 1982 to a larger space on Farm Lane in Fulham and, from that point until the two parted ways in 1986, their portfolio grew to include acts such as The Cure, Howard Jones, Level 42, Madness, Tracey Ullman, Paul Young and, via their relationship with impresario Peter Waterman’s company, stars including Rick Astley and Kylie Minogue. Later that year, Simon moved in to a space shared by the busy Stylorouge design house, sharing a number of record cover assignments over the next 10 years with the talented team there in Paddington.
Not limiting his photo work to record cover commissions, Fowler was also in demand as a shooter at concert events, publicity photo sessions and print publication work. As the principal photographer for popular UK music tabloid Smash Hits, Simon’s photos of the stars from every aspect of the international pop music scene in the 1980s – from teen pop to Punk, New Wave, Prog, Metal and what’s now considered “classic rock” – were some of the most-seen by fans throughout the U.K. and Europe. His collection of tour photographs includes shows by The Bee Gees, Blue Oyster Cult, David Bowie, Depeche Mode, The Jacksons, Meat Loaf, Bruce Springsteen and many others, while the list of covers and editorial images for the magazine is amazingly wide and deep – AC/DC, Boomtown Rats, Duran Duran, Human League, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Led Zeppelin, Motorhead, Ozzy Osbourne, The Police, Psychedelic Furs, Simple Minds, Simply Red, Spandau Ballet, Rod Stewart, UB40, Paul Weller, Whitesnake, Frank Zappa and many, many more.
One of Fowler’s best-known and longest-lasting relationships was with Freddie Mercury and his bandmates in Queen. His first job with the talented and notoriously press-shy quartet was in 1981 during the band’s publicity sessions in Munich in advance of the release of their Hot Space record. Being warned in advance that he’d most likely only have a very brief time with the band, Simon quickly built a good rapport with the band and they so enjoyed working with him over the next few hours (!) that he became one of the few photographers they’d work with from that point forward, up until Mercury’s untimely death in late 1991. One high point was his participation in the making of the famous “Coronation Street” video spoof (with the entire band in drag) released with the hit single “I Want To Break Free”. Other long-standing relationships with artists including Sarah Brightman, Enya and Kate Melua have produced strings of well-regarded album covers, and Fowler has extended his reach to artists in other music genres such as jazz, classical, world music and more.
Simon now lives in Surrey with his wife Karen and three children, all of whom have pursued careers in the arts.
More information on this artist is available via his web site – http://www.simonfowlerphotography.com/
Robert Frank – notable album cover credits include – Rolling Stones – Exile On Main Street; Kraftwerk – Radio Aktivitat; Philip Glass – Hydrogen Jukebox; Jerry Garcia – Shady Grove; John Hiatt – Greatest Hits: The A&M Years ’87 – ’94 and Chronicles; New Order – Item; The New Lost City Ramblers – 50 Years: Where Do You Come From, Where Do You Go?; Tracy Nelson – Tracy Nelson Country
(b. November 1924 in Zurich, Switzerland; d. September, 2019 in Inverness, Nova Scotia, Canada) Born in November, 1924 in Zurich, Switzerland to Jewish parents whose Swiss citizenship kept the family relatively safe while the War raged on around them, Robert Frank saw how Nazism oppressed individual expression and, rather than focus his attentions on business, decided to dedicate himself to expressing himself through photography and studied the subject with several photographers and designers. He took his talents to the United States in 1947, working first as a photographer for Harper’s Bazaar magazine, leaving a short while later to tour the world and returning in 1950 when he met famed photographer Edward Steichen and was asked to participate in his group show at NYC’s Museum of Modern Art.
That same year, he met and married his wife Mary (a fellow artist) but, after a few years of life in the U.S., Frank was bothered by society’s pace, intense focus on capitalism and, to Frank, a lingering loneliness he felt there. Looking for an escape, he embarked – with his wife and two young sons – on a tour of the world, returning to NYC in 1953. He took on freelance work for a number of fashion and news magazines and, along with several other photographers (such as Diane Arbus, Walker Evans and others) became part of what was called at the time “The New York School of Photographers”.
In 1955, supported by a Guggenheim fellowship, he began a journey across the United States, looking to photograph people and places from all walks of life and in all parts of the country. From the nearly 30,000 photographs he took over the next two years, he selected 83, which became the basis for a book he titled “The Americans”. After completing this work, Frank decided to put his still camera away and focus his talents on film-making, with one of his best-known works from this time being his 1959 film titled Pull My Daisy and featuring many of the best-known “Beat” artists, writers and poets of the generation.
After Frank and Mary’s marriage ended, he then married sculptor June Leaf and, in 1971, the couple moved to a community on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. Family tragedies struck hard when his daughter Andrea was killed in a plane crash in Guatemala in 1974 and his son Pablo was later hospitalized for a mental disorder and later (in 1994) took his own life, moving the artist to create the Andrea Frank Foundation, an organization that supports artists with grants.
His introduction to music industry clients came in 1972 when he was hired to document the Rolling Stones while they were on tour. So accurate was the portrayal of the band (and its excesses and, notably, the loneliness of their lives on the road) that the band and its management demanded that the resulting film – Cocksucker Blues – not be shown in theaters in the U.S.. The band and Frank reached a settlement that allowed for the movie to be shown only 5X per year (with Frank required to attend the showings) and the photographer was then asked to supply the photographs that were used on the group’s famed Exile On Main Street record cover. He continued throughout his life s to work on a wide variety of projects (spending time both in Canada and back at his loft in NYC) and had directed several music videos.
There have been a number of showings of Frank’s art over the years, including a 1994 retrospective at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, a 2004 show at London’s Tate Modern Museum, shows in 2008-9 in Germany, a 2012 show at Moscow’s Multimedia Art Museum along with a 2014 exhibition at Stanford University. In 2009, The National Gallery of Art organized a large exhibition that went on to tour both the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The same gallery has also assembled what they call “the largest repository of materials related to renowned photographer and film-maker Robert Frank”, ready in its entirety in time for Frank’s 90th birthday in November, 2014.
Upon hearing of his death on September 9, 2019 at the age of 94, the Rolling Stones issued the following statement – “We’re very sad to hear the news that the visionary photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank has died. Robert collaborated with us on a number of projects including the cover design of Exile on Main Street and [he] directed the Cocksucker Blues documentary. He was an incredible artist whose unique style broke the mould. Our thoughts are with his family and friends at this time.”
Learn more about this artist at http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/features/robert-frank.html
On a related note, I’d like to invite you to read my May, 2010 interview in Goldmine Magazine with designer John Van Hamersveld, who worked with Frank on making of Exile cover – https://www.goldminemag.com/articles/the-rolling-stones-exile-on-main-street-and-the-artwork-by-john-van-hamersveld
Frank Frazetta – notable album cover credits include – Nazareth – Expect No Mercy and No Mean City; Yngwie Malmstein’s Rising Force – War To End All Wars; Wolfmother – Wolfmother and Dimensions; Jerry Fielding – The Gauntlet (Music From The Motion Picture); Deep Sleep Operator – While The Earth Sleeps; Dust – Hard Attack; Molly Hatchet – Molly Hatchet, Flirtin’ With Disaster and Beatin’ The Odds; Herman’s Hermits – Both Sides of Herman’s Hermits (credited as “Frizzeta”)
(b. “Frank Frazzetta”, February, 1928 in Brooklyn, NY, USA; d. May, 2010 in Fort Myers, FL) Encouraged to draw as a child by his grandmother, Frank Frazetta’s talents were recognized by his teachers in school and he was soon enrolled in art school, moving on to the Brooklyn Academy of Fine Arts at the age of eight to study with artist Michel Falanga. When the school was forced to close after Falanga died suddenly when Frank was 16, he began his professional career working in the studio of DC comic book artist Bernard Baily (The Spectre), later inking his first comic with John Giunta called Snowman, published in 1944. His abilities were immediately called upon to work on commissions for a variety of comic book publishers, in a wide range of subjects, from historical novels to Westerns and fantasy stories.
During the 1950s, Frazetta did work for several comic book companies, working alongside friends/fellow artists Roy Krenkel and Al Williamson and. after working on Buck Rogers comics for Famous Funnies, he began to work on Al Capp’s popular Lil Abner strip. After marrying his wife Eleanor in 1956, he continued his busy work schedule and, in the early 1960s, he added credits for his work on Dan Barry’s Flash Gordon daily while, working in oils, watercolors and pen and ink, he began to produce satirical portraits for Mad Magazine. Frank was then hired to create posters for movies (What’s New Pussycat?, Papa’s Delicate Condition and others) and, in the mid-1960s, covers for fantasy/adventure books, with the best-known of those being for Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp’s Conan series (beginning in 1966 with Conan The Adventurer) and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan and John Carter of Mars series. His work was also featured in horror and war books (Werewolf, Count Dracula, Spider Man and others) and magazines such as Blazing Combat, Creepy and Vampirella. His resume and reputation soon opened doors for him in the production of animated features and commercials, with 1983’s Fire And Ice – done in collaboration with cartoonist Ralph Bakshi – showcasing his talents via the use of rotoscope as well as traditional animation styles.
During his long career, Frazetta’s works were featured and/or included in hundreds of books and proved to be quite popular with both collectors and fans in every aspect of the publishing world (for example, in 1977, a collection of his drawings titled The Fantastic Art of Frank Frazetta sold more than 300,000 copies . Other popular career retrospective tomes include The Frazetta Sketchbook (with J. David Spurlock, 2013, Vanguard Productions) and author James A. Bond’s 2008 book Frazetta, The Definitive Reference PB (also by Vanguard). While much of his work was done as work for hire, Frazetta did keep the original Conan paintings and, in 2000, his wife Ellie (who died in 2009) put a number of the works he’d kept on display in a museum they built on their property in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. In 2009, Kirk Hammett, the lead guitarist for Metallica, bought Mr. Frazetta’s cover artwork for the paperback reissue of Conan the Conqueror for $1 million (how very Rock & Roll!).
His science fiction and fantasy illustrations won him a Hugo Award in 1966, the Spectrum Grand Master of Fantastic Art Award in 1995 and Chesley Awards from the Association of Science Fiction & Fantasy in 1988, 1995 and 1997. For his trend-setting work in the comic book industry, Frazetta was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1995 and received a Lifetime Achievement award in 1999 from the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame.
More information on this artist is available at his web site – http://frankfrazetta.net/Bio.html
Robert Freeman – Notable examples of album cover work – The Beatles – With The Beatles, Hard Day’s Night, Beatles For Sale, Help!, Rubber Soul; The Residents – Meet The Residents
(b. 1936; d. November, 2019) Robert Freeman was a photographer and designer, most famous for his five album cover photos for The Beatles, his design work on the end credit sequences of their first two films (Hard Day’s Night and Help!) and those films’ promotional and advertising materials. Having graduated from Cambridge in 1959, he first gained fame as a photo journalist on the staff of Britain’s The Sunday Times newspaper. While he’d worked for a couple of years shooting story assignments, in the summer of 1963 he was given the opportunity to photograph jazz great John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Cannonball Adderly and others performing at a festival in London. He later contacted the press agent for The Beatles and was then introduced to the band’s manager Brian Epstein, who requested that Freeman put together a portfolio for his review. Robert included his beautiful B&W photographs taken at the jazz fest and immediately impressed Epstein and the band with the quality of his work. A week later, while the band was on the road, they met up with Robert and the relationship was established.
Freeman was given unprecedented access to the Beatles’ during the years 1963 to 1966 and shot many of the best-known photo images of them. He shot and art directed the album cover imagery for the band’s ’63 -’66 Parlophone (UK) and Capitol Records (US) releases. He also received the commission to shoot the first-ever Pirelli Calendar (shot in Majorca, Spain 1963 for the year 1964), which, over the years, has been considered one of the highest honors in commercial/fashion photography, featuring the work of famed fine art photographers including Brian Duffy, Bert Stern, Herb Ritts, Richard Avedon and Karl Lagerfeld and including portraits of the world’s best-known fashion models.
In 2015, former Beatle Paul McCartney posted a notice on his web site asking the public to help him preserve Freeman’s archive after the photographer suffered a stroke which left him unable to work. In an effort to offset the costs of his medical care and the maintenance of his photo archives, they began selling prints of a number of his photos, which can be viewed at http://www.freemanarchive.com/
After Freeman’s death in November, 2019, former Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr both posted tributes online, with Paul saying that Freeman was “imaginative and a true original thinker” and “was one of our favorite photographers during the Beatles years who came up with some of our most iconic album covers.” Mr. Starr tweeted “God bless Robert Freeman peace and love to all his family.”
More information available at – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Freeman_(photographer)
Larry Freemantle – notable album package credits include – Collective Soul – Disciplined Breakdown; Loudness – Soldier of Fortune; Led Zeppelin – Box Set and Led Zeppelin Remasters; Lynyrd Skynyrd – The Last Rebel; Bo Diddley – A Man Amongst Men; YES – Yesyears; Das EFX – Straight Up Sewaside and Dead Serious; Kid Rock – Cocky; Yngwie Malmsteen – Fire & Ice; Dream Theater – Images & Words and Awake; Testament – The Ritual; Pantera – Vulgar Display of Power; Storyville – A Piece of Your Soul; Edwin McCain – Misguided Roses; Mr. Big – Hey Man and Actual Size; Sugar Ray – Floored and 14:59; Trans-Siberian Orchestra – Beethoven’s Last Night; Uncle Kracker – Double Wide; P.O.D. – Satellite; The Atomic Fireballs – Torch This Place; James Carter – Conversin’ With The Elders
(b. August, 1962 in Queens, NY, USA) After completing his studies and earning a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Graphic Design in 1984 at the prestigious Cooper Union school in New York City, Larry felt that the best way to apply his knowledge and talent to his love for music and art (influenced by the works of artists like Roger Dean, the duo of Mouse & Kelley and the U.K.’s Hipgnosis design studio) was to look for work as an album cover designer.
Ultimately landing in the art department at Atlantic Records in January, 1988, Larry plied his craft their for the next 13 years, rising up through the ranks to ultimately work as Senior Art Director at the label. In 2002, Larry left the label to take on the role of Senior Art Director at the NYC-based multi-media agency MK Creative, where he remained until August 2015, moving on to take on the role of Spike TV’s Art Director. Late in 2017, Larry hung out his own shingle – Larry Freemantle Design, LLC – and began taking on assignments for high-profile clients including NBC/Universal and the Paramount Network and delivering a slate of great designs including logos and other graphics for Showtime, ABC, the Neuberger Museum, Chef Nation, Kid Rock, the American Music Center and many others.
He lives in New Jersey and is the proud father of two sons. If you’d like to learn more about this artist, please visit his personal web site at http://www.larryfreemantle.com/
Glen E. Friedman – Notable album cover credits include – Beastie Boys – Check Your Head; Doug E. Fresh & The Get Fresh Crew – The World’s Greatest Entertainer; Suicidal Tendencies – Suicidal Tendencies; The Adolescents – The Adolescents: Ice T – OG (Original Gangster) and Rhyme Pays; Public Enemy – It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back; Circle Jerks – Golden Shower Of Hits
(b. March, 1962 in North Carolina) After his family returned to New Jersey from North Carolina following his father’s time in the Army and his parents’ subsequent divorce, young Glenn spent much of his youth shuttling between his father’s place in the Northeast and his new home in California, where his mother moved him and his younger brother post-divorce. Even as a youngster, Glenn asserted himself as an independent spirit, supporting the anti-War movement and presidential candidate George McGovern as a 10-year-old and proving himself as a loyal and generous comrade to his friends.
His temper was soon tested when his mother remarried and moved the family to the affluent Brentwood area in Los Angeles, where Glenn’s new circle of acquaintances his own age tended to be rather spoiled and so he found himself befriending older kids and skating with them in local schoolyards and in the industrial areas of the city. Although an accomplished skater himself, he found that he better-enjoyed taking pictures of his friends in action with his pocket Instamatic camera, capturing them as they attempted to bring a higher degree of talent and showmanship to the burgeoning new sport. This led him to enroll in a photography class (still using his pocket camera) and, using his newly-honed skills as a photographer, he began to build a portfolio of his images, sending some of them to skateboard manufacturers with the hopes that they’d end up using them in their advertisements.
In late 1976, after photographing his friends as they skated inside an empty local swimming pool, he shared his pictures with a photojournalist freelancing for SkateBoarder magazine who then introduced young Glenn with the publication’s editor, who immediately saw Friedman’s talents and hired the eighth-grader to join the magazine’s staff. The inclusion of his photos in the influential magazine helped establish Glenn’s credibility as someone “with his finger on the pulse of youth culture”, so it only made sense that, a few years later, when punk music acts such as Bad Brains, Black Flag, Minor Threat and others began to play in the area, Friedman would extend the scope of his photojournalism to include this exciting (and “dangerous”) new musical scene.
He’d shoot his first album cover image in 1981 for The Adolescents and, in 1982, he gathered his imagery and self-published a “zine” called My Rules, which quickly sold out of its 10K-copy production run. With new confidence and an established “street cred” behind him, Glenn then moved into music production, music videos and label promotion and marketing. And while the pressures and struggles of the music business ultimately forced him to get out of the production aspects of his career, his enthusiasm for his areas of interest remained unchecked and so he began to search for new opportunities. Meeting up with the Beastie Boys on their first trip to LA, he produced an photo album of their visit that impressed music impresarios Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons, who commissioned Glenn to photograph all of the artists on their Def Jam label during the years 1985-86. He also re-enrolled in school, taking courses at UCLA and then, in 1987, moved back to the New York area, adding acts such as Ice-T, Public Enemy and Run-DMC to his archives.
Friedman continued to chronicle the rise of rap, hip-hop and alternative music throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, his portfolio expanding to include memorable images of artists with anti-establishment leanings including Bad Brains, Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, Fugazi, KRS-One, The Misfits and Public Enemy. Books featuring Glenn’s work include his 1994 publication, FUCK YOU HEROES (Burning Flags Press), which focused on his work from 1976-1991, which he followed up in 1996 with a second book titled FUCK YOU TOO: The Extras & More Scrap Book (which he updated again in 2004). 1998 saw the publishing of The Idealist: In My Eyes – Twenty Years (which, according to the artist’s site, “he considers the artistic summation of his photography, a perspective on his own artistic aesthetic that at times diverges greatly from his other known work but gives the viewer an insight into his personal vision”) and the book DogTown – The Legend Of The Z-Boys, which was co-authored with C.R. Stecyk III, was published in 2000. Other books in his portfolio include 2005’s RECOGNIZE, 2006’s JAY BOY (co-authored with skateboarder Jay Adams) and a 2007 book on the influential band Fugazi titled Keep Your Eyes Open: The Fugazi Photographs of Glenn E. Friedman.
His film credits as a producer and creative consultant include the 2002 documentary DogTown and Z-Boys, which won the audience choice award for “Best Documentary” at the Sundance Film Festival as well as awards at several other festivals. Always the provocateur, Friedman also organized the “Liberty Street Protest” event around the former World Trade Center site, set to coincide with the Republican National Convention in NYC that year. His work has been featured in exhibitions around the world, with one – FUCK YOU ALL – travelling from its first show in 1997 at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London to Sydney, Tokyo, Florence, Rome, Milan, Sicily, Berlin, Stockholm, Chicago, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Antwerp, Krakow, Dublin and San Francisco. In 2009, the Subliminal Projects gallery in LA staged a career retrospective exhibition and, since 2010, examples of Glenn’s prints were added to the collections of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, the Berkeley Art Museum, the Experience Music Project in Seattle, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY) and the Pacific Film Archive. In May, 2012 Friedman was inducted as an “Icon” into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame in Simi Valley, CA.
To learn more about this artist, please visit his web site at –http://burningflags.com/
Jesse Frohman – notable album package credits include – LL Cool J – Mama Said Knock You Out, All World: Greatest Hits and All World 2; Kurt Cobain – Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings; Tim Dog – Penicillin On Wax; Ice-T – Home Invasion; Nirvana – In Utero; Plain White T’s – Big Bad World
(b. ____, in ____) After graduating from the University of Michigan with a degree in economics, Jesse returned to New York to pursue his passion as a photographer. After photographer Irving Penn saw Frohman’s portfolio of work – achieved without formal training – he offered Jesse a gig assisting him as his studio manager which, over the next four years, provided the young shooter with incomparable lessons in photo techniques, processes and art theory, allowing him to begin his own career with the knowledge, experience, and confidence in his own abilities to be able to dive in and begin making memorable imagery for his own clients.
He began that career doing editorial assignments for publications such as The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair and Vogue and, by the early 1990s, he’d built an impressive portfolio of music/entertainment industry portraits, including those of James Brown, Nick Cave, Chris Cornell, Joan Jett, Spike Lee, Run DMC and, in 1993, was given an assignment to photograph Nirvana guitarist/singer Kurt Cobain. That session would produce a legendary set of images of the troubled musician that would be some of the last formal shots taken before Cobain took his life the next year (Jesse’s book of these photos – Kurt Cobain: The Last Session – was published to much acclaim in 2016 and over 100 of the images – some never-before seen – served as the basis of Frohman’s first foray into the emerging NFT auction market in May, 2021).
Frohman has also built up a long list of commercial/advertising clients, such as Chanel, Clinique, Dornbracht, Estee Lauder, Tom Ford/Black Orchid, Gillette, Michael Kors, Mont Blanc, Revlon and many others and his work can be found in the permanent collections at New York’s MoMA and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. and in shows in museums and galleries around the world.
More information on this artist can be found on his web site at – https://www.jessefrohman.com/about
Hideki Fujii – notable album cover credits include – Steely Dan – Aja; Skyhooks – Hot For The Orient; Isao Tomita – Grand Canyon
(b. 1934, Tokyo, Japan; d. 2010) With his interest in a career in photography ignited (pardon the pun) when a photo he’d taken of a local movie theater fire was printed in his local town newspaper, Fujii took the first steps towards that goal by both enrolling in photography classes at Nihon University in Tokyo and working as an apprentice and assistant to revered Japanese photographer Shotaro Akiyama. After graduating in 1957, Fujii began his professional career as a fashion photographer for Fukoso magazine, moving on in 1960 to spend the next three years shooting for advertising campaigns for clients including Asahi, Nikon and Toyota while working for the Nihon Design Center.
He decided to strike out on his own in 1963, establishing his Studio F business and working on commissions for a wide variety of clients. As a fine art photographer specializing in artistically-presented – and sometimes, hand-body painted – female nudes, Fujii developed his own unique style of photo printing (which he named “Fujii-graphy”), producing prints on traditional Japanese washi paper and then adding additional design elements via paint brush.
Fujii’s works have appeared in several photo books, one of the best-known being Madame-D Syuga (published in 1993), featuring nudes of Dewi Sukarno, the former Japanese wife of the Indonesian president. Since 1970, there have been over 60 exhibitions of his work in museums and galleries world-wide. His work as a lecturer and teacher included roles as both the Principal of the Nihon Shashin Geijutsu Senmon Gakko (Nippon Photography Institute) in Tokyo, an advisor for the Japan Flower Arrangement Association and as the former President of the Japan Advertising Photographers Association.
More information on this artist is available on this Japanese photography web site (some parts are in English) – http://www.fgraphy.com/
Colin Fulcher – See “Barney Bubbles”
Jill Furmanovsky – notable album cover credits include – Sinead O’Connor – So Far…The Best of Sinead O’Connor; Squeeze – Big Squeeze: The Very Best of Squeeze; Oasis – Brothers from Childhood to Oasis; The Silencers – Blues for Buddha; Julien Cope – 20 Mothers; Climax Blues Band – Gold Plated
(b. 1953 in So. Rhodesia) After emigrating to London, England with her family when she was 11 years old, Jill demonstrated an early love of the rock music scene there by becoming a member of the local Beatles fan club and joining her friends regularly to stand outside the band’s Abbey Road studios – Instamatic cameras in-hand – hoping to snag a shot of the band as they entered/left the studio (she recalls that her first such shot was of Paul McCartney). Following basic courses taken at the Harrow School of Art, Jill studied design from 1972 – 74 at the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in the King’s Cross neighborhood.
After taking a short course in photography early on in her studies, she was asked to become the (unpaid) house photographer at the famed Rainbow Theatre (a venue famous as being the first place where Hendrix set his guitar on fire!) where she was on hand to document performances by many of the era’s best-known acts, including Pink Floyd, Genesis, YES, The Sweet, Eric Clapton and many others. Over the next 30+ years, Furmanovsky’s client list grew to include Blondie, The Clash, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Bob Markey, Oasis, Mike Oldfield, The Police, The Pretenders, The Ramones, The Sex Pistols and others.
In addition to photo assignments, she has also done video projects for Oasis and The Pretenders. In 1998, working from her personal archive, Jill launched the rockarchive.com web site and released a portfolio of fine art prints for sale titled “30/30/30” as it included 30 B&W images from her 30-year archive. Inspired by the success of her own project and looking to help other rock photographers expand their businesses – while maintaining control of their intellectual property – in the digital domain, Furmanovsky expanded RockArchive’s portfolio to include works from many other art directors and photographers. The collection now includes more than 750 images from over 60 creatives – both well-established and up-and-coming – including Peter Cunningham, Ian Dickson, David Ellis, Bob Gruen, Dimitri Hakke, Gered Mankowitz, Mick Rock, Storm Thorgerson, Philip Townshend and others.
Over the years, Jill has won many awards for her work, including The Jane Bown/Observer Portrait Award in 1992 and a special award by Record of The Day Magazine in 2012. Her book, The Moment – 25 Years of Rock Photography was published in 1995, followed in 1997 by publication of Was There Then – A Photographic Journey with Oasis which accompanied a U.K. exhibition of the same name. Her work was also included in the Who Shot Rock & Roll travelling museum exhibition. Since the late 2000s, Jill has filmed and recorded her conversations with some of the photographers represented in the Rockarchive roster, looking to get them to retell the stories behind some of their best-known images and to gain further insight into their inspirations and work processes. A sample of this work is a 2007 interview with Don Hunstein about “the making of” the cover image for Bob Dylan’s Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan – http://youtu.be/UB9cmzUDNHU
To learn more about this artist, please visit her web site profile at http://www.rockarchive.com/jill-furmanovsky-photographer.html
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