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Album cover facts that might be of some surprise to the less wordly

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Reading this article today I discovered two things that surprised me:

1. That isn’t Tom Waits on the cover of Rain Dogs.

– big, big gap in surprise level –

2. Serge Gainsbourg “gave up alcohol for 12 days to make himself beautiful” for the cover of Love On The Beat. Which I think explains Bingo Little.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2022/apr/19/wrappers-delight-the-best-album-cover-shoots-in-pictures

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  4. What bothers me is the microphone lead Grace Jones is holding on the cover of Island Life is plugged into the wall power outlet.

    I hope the power was off. I am very dull.

  5. What was that deal on Manfred Mann’s Earth Band’s The Good Earth LP? (*pauses, opens a new tab to consult wiki, returns*) Those who bought the album on release could gain rights to one square foot of earth near Brecon in Wales, if they sent off a coupon on the inner sleeve. I wonder what came of that? Sod all?

    One square foot is hardly enough to retire to, but if you’d planted a tree on it in 1974, it would probably be big enough for a tree house by now.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Earth_(Manfred_Mann's_Earth_Band_album)

  6. Th actor on the sleeve of How Soon Is Now by the Smiths (Sean Barrett), later played the priest with the ‘really boring voice’ in the legendary Father Ted Christmas special.

      • I just googled “whose voice was great doing the narration on that “Dancing In The Street” music history doco series back in the mid 90s” but unfortunately it just led me back here.

  9. I can reveal that not only is it not Tom Waits on the cover of Rain Dogs, but it’s also not him on the cover of “Dolly Parton Sings My Favorite Songwriter, Porter Wagoner”, Grover Washington’s “Mr. Magic”, and Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Himself”! The more you discover about the elusive artiste’s non-appearance on album covers, the more astonishing it gets – right there in front of us (or not) all the time!

  10. The cover of Echo by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers only features four figures – new boy Steve Ferrone wasn’t part of the official setup – nor was auxiliary player Scott Thurston, but he was there in the shot, standing in for bassist Howie Epstein. Epstein had become increasingly unreliable due to his drug use, failed to turn up on time and, as they were losing light, Thurston stepped in to the out of focus cover photo.

    Epstein was sacked shortly after and was dead in a couple of years. Echo is one of the overlooked greats in Petty’s canon – a largely downbeat affair but it hangs together brilliantly.

  12. The German photographer Klaus Frahm, who took the cover photographs for many ECM albums of the 1980s (e.g. “As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls” by Pat Metheny & Lyle Mays) is the father of top ambient keyboard maestro Nils Frahm.

  13. In the booklet photos for Elliott Smith’s “XO” album, Smith is wearing the same grotty old Hank Williams t-shirt as he’s wearing on the front cover of the “Either/Or” album.

    • That’s nothing – on the back sleeve of the Argentinian pressing of “Matt Monroe At The Movies” he’s wearing the same underpants he wore for the “Matt Monroe and Dickie Henderson – Together At Last!” album sleeve, five years earlier..

  14. Dan Richter, he who took the photographs for the covers of the John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band albums, was one of the apes in “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

  15. This isn’t really a surprising fact, more of an observation, but I’ve always been amazed by the thought that the Sgt pepper cover could so easily have been done in an almost identical way just with a photo collage, and there was no need for the (presumably hugely laborious and expensive) process of printing out full colour life-size copies of all the figures just to arrange them and photograph them all again. Seems insane to me.

    It’s almost like, say, the creators of Wallace and Gromit decided to make them life size to animate them. Just daft and unnecessary.

    • Hate to be a bitter old cynic but … doing it that way takes a lot longer and the artist could make a lot more money out of the job. 25-year-old millionaire pop stars are easily convinced I’d say.

      • That’s almost definitely the explanation!

        I could never have been a Beatle. I mean, apart from the obvious, I’m much too practically minded.

        “Peter, just cut some figures out of magazines and stick them down, it will look exactly the same and will be really effective. I’m not going to pay for you to do all THAT. You’ve lost the plot.”

        Similarly, “Paul, don’t you think we should write a script before hiring this bus and cavorting off round the country without a plan? And how much did it cost to get it painted like that? Do we have to scrub all that off before we hand it back?”

        And,”Chaps, there’s no way we are going to be organised enough to have a concert of entirely new material in an overseas, outdoor venue in two weeks, so let’s just stop pretending and bin that idea right away. In fact, I’ll be surprised if we even make it as far as doing a couple of songs live on, say, the roof of the building! (Ha ha, as if we would do a rooftop concert in January! We’d all catch our death!)”

        Or, “John, other artists need to use this studio. We can’t just commandeer the whole place to hook up all these tape loops for whatever this mad experiment is of yours. Besides, the staff are already on overtime and they need to get back to their families, and it’s costing us a fortune to keep them here tonight. They are all just sitting around doing nothing anyway. Why don’t we just all go home and have a think about another song for Monday to flesh out side four of the album?”

        Or even, “We can’t stay here, let’s go home. The room stinks, there’s no toilet and George is underage anyway – I won’t be surprised if the Germans deport him. Come on, there’s more money playing the dance halls back home, and we can practice synchronised steps like that new band The Shadows I’ve heard about”.

  19. World Party’s Goodbye Jumbo is the only LP cover to feature both 2 Live Crew and Lenin.

    (at least one of these isn’t visible on the CD)

    …and there’s a winky on the front of Second Coming (perhaps giving away the album being a load of old cock)

  22. Every time a thread like this comes up, I contribute my favourite interesting fact. I’ve mentioned it so often now, that most Afterworders will be very familiar with it. But, for any newcomers, here is my favourite album cover-related fact:

    Emily Young, who painted the distinctive “penguin/human being” album covers for the Penguin Café Orchestra, is the same Emily who was being referred to (when she was a child) in “See Emily Play” by Syd’s Pink Floyd. Amazing, eh?

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