2. Person 1 – Hugh Syme
Background:
• Born in 1953, in Canada, is most well-known as a graphic artist for
rock and metal album artwork.
• He is best known for creating artwork for Rush, a Canadian prog-
rock band, since their second of two 1975 albums Caress Of Steel
until their quiet retirement in 2016. He has since continued work on
additional artwork for the 40th anniversary remasters for A Farewell
To Kings, Hemispheres, and Permanent Waves, released between
2017 and 2020. His most iconic pieces for Rush include Permanent
Waves (1980), Moving Pictures (1981), and Grace Under Pressure
(1984).
• Aside from artwork, he has also appeared on Rush albums as a
musician, playing a mixture of synthesizers, pianos, and keyboards
for songs such as 2112, Tears (both from 2112), Different Strings
(Permanent Waves) and Witch Hunt (Moving Pictures).
• He has also created album artwork for bands such as Iron Maiden,
Def Leppard, Megadeth, Aerosmith, and Dream Theater.
3. A Conversation with Hugh Syme
• In an interview with John Patuto, Hugh goes into detail about his
career association with Rush:
• “It was really on the strength of my being in a band on the same label as
Rush. We were all managed by the same guy… He called me into his office
to ask if I would like to do a Rush album cover. And I remember thinking,
well, they're not Supertramp or Genesis, but yeah we'll give them a shot…”
– On being approached to do Rush’s Caress Of Steel (1975) cover.
• “These were creative guys. These were guys that did, to Neil [Peart]'s
credo, deviate from the norm. They even surprised me, and the fact that
we could enjoy humor so early… the freedoms they afforded me were just
ridiculous and much appreciated by me, because they wanted that same
freedom from the record labels…” – On his creative freedom.
• When asked about his approach to the new album covers for the 40th
Anniversary editions of 2112 and A Farewell To Kings:
• “I think having even the box set covers entirely unrelated to the original...
look at A Farewell To Kings; it's quite different than the original piece… It
was my intention that they'd be brand new… I felt the need to embrace this
opportunity and to do something new and to celebrate the 'then' with the
'now'. Also, if you're not careful, and you make things too homogenous, it
starts to feel a little bit like another release or a re-release.”
A portrait of Neil Peart (drummer and lyricist) painted by Syme
– this artwork was used in the booklet for Vapor Trails (2002)
and its remixed version (2013).
4. A Conversation with Hugh Syme cont.
• On the music medium shift to CD booklets:
• “I'm faced with all these blank canvases and I'm thinking 'What to do?'
Well, that was my new opportunity and my new task which was to create
imagery… that's entertaining and engaging and alludes to the lyric content
and somehow feels appropriate either under or adjacent to that lyric”
• “Dave Mustaine (of Megadeth) came to me during my project with him
called Youthanasia… He was the one that went to Tommy Steele, who was
the art director at Capitol in LA and Tommy called me and said, 'Well get
this. Dave wants art for every song.' And I said, 'Oh, God, really? You
know, that's going to be like doing eleven album covers!’… I didn't
anticipate it would become the template for everything I did for Rush
thereafter, and Dream Theater and any other band that, you know, had
the wherewithal…”
• When asked on going about the concept of artworks for individual
Rush songs:
• “It's with a band that I hold so dear, so it's not just going back and filling
space. It's also enjoying the opportunity to do justice to and again, as I
said, very early in this conversation, to refamiliarize myself, and in some
instances completely familiarize myself for the first time, because a lot of
my work is derived from just the album title.”
Megadeth’s 1994 album,
Youthanasia – a non-Rush Syme
project
Internal artwork for “Freewill”, a
song from Permanent Waves – an
example of Syme creating artwork
for individual songs.
5. Interview with Jason Draper – uDiscoverMusic
• What was your favourite album to work on?
• “They were all fun to work on, to be honest. But painting the Power Windows cover
was a special experience, and a special time in my life.”
• What album did you find the most challenging to represent visually?
• “Signals was just so open-ended as a concept, it was intimidating… We had lofty
notions of bringing in technicians and hooking each band member up to his own
electroencephalogram, and recording their brainwave and heartbeats at the same
measure of a given performance in the recording studio, then displaying each on
the cover as a unique graphic. This all proved all too serious in the end, in light of
the band’s favorable response to the dog and the hydrant concept. I’m pleased we
followed our gut.”
• What’s the history behind the “Starman” emblem?
• “The evolution of the star and man was Neil’s and mine’s first true collaboration. He
simply described the Red Star Of The Solar Federation as being all that is contrary to
free thought and creativity, and the man as our hero. I simply combined the two.”
Power Windows (1985) – Syme claimed
this was his favourite piece to work on
The Starman emblem,
became the de-facto
symbol for Rush
6. Interview with Jason Draper cont.
• The Permanent Waves artwork is a masterpiece of collage art.
What was the story behind it?
• “The cover marked our first foray into the realm of visual puns. Permanent
‘waves’ hairdo; permanent ‘waves’ of the tidal type; irony in the printed
‘wave’ of political optimism in the Chicago Tribune’s presumptuous (and
premature) headline (Dewey Defeats Truman) and, of course, the twit (who
is actually Syme himself) standing under the wave in the background.”
• How has creating album artwork changed over the years – both
technologically speaking, and also with the format shrinking in
size, from LP to CD and digital formats?
• “The technology has remained the same, really: ink on paper. The
downsizing presented some new considerations… which were at first
unwelcome, as we designers all lamented the loss of the 12” x 12” canvas.
But the CD booklet was the window that opened as the vinyl door was
closing: all those pages to incorporate art into – not a bad thing… As far as
the 5” square CD cover was concerned, designs needed to simplify and be
compliant with the new diminutive frame of reference. A whole era of
iconographic thinking arose for album cover artists. Many of the more
complex and ambitious vinyl covers of the 70s didn’t translate so well in
their reissued form as CD covers.”
Permanent Waves (1980) cover
artwork – the beginning of Syme’s
Rush artwork taking a turn
towards visual puns.
Test For Echo (1996) – an example
of Syme’s artwork adapting to
simple iconography for the sake
of the CD size.
7. “Art as expression”, Permanent Waves
• Took inspiration from 1950s advertising of women promoting home products,
specifically a “Donna Reed character walking away from a tidal wave”. Expecting a
negative response from the band, Geddy Lee (vocalist and bassist) was the one
who said to him that they liked the idea.
• He phoned Flip Schulke, a freelance photographer, on having permission to use
some photos he had taken of the Galveston hurricane, which would eventually
form the background of the front cover.
• Paula Turnbull was then brought in for a photo shoot as the archetypal 1950s
woman with the wavy hairstyle. He then details the easter egg of the “Dewey
Defeats Truman” headline, expressing the idea that the wave of politics in the
press isn’t what you always expect it to be.
• The final detail was “an idiot in the background, literally waving towards the
scene”. This actually appears to be Syme himself in the final cover.
• He states that the process of making the album cover was “very analog” and
done without Photoshop or any kind of digital technology. The photos of Turnbull
and “the person in the background” that were chosen for the final design were
cut out by emulsion strippers, put back into the negative space, and then stuck
onto the photo of the hurricane.
8. “The Camera Eye”, Syme’s visual puns
• Starting with Permanent Waves in 1980, Syme’s album artwork tended to take a less serious
tone, using visual puns relating to the album’s title as a general theme.
• Moving Pictures (1981) had numerous famous visual gags based on the title. The people in the
foreground are literally “moving” pictures, one of the women in the background is brought to
tears as she finds the pictures emotionally “moving”, and one of the booklet images reveals a
camera crew creating “moving pictures” of the scene. Syme stated the artwork cost an
estimated $9,500, and Anthem Records (Rush’s record label at the time) refused to pay the full
bill.
• Hold Your Fire (1987) features an image of a man juggling three fireballs, the still image sees the
fireballs forming a triangular shape similar to that of the three red balls on the front cover.
• Roll The Bones (1991) sees an image of a child legitimately kicking a skull and watching it roll
along the ground. Adding to the theme of rolling, the walls are filled with white dice, most of
them on the 3 face, whilst black dice descending from the numbers 6 to 1 fill out the band’s
name on the background. Even more cryptic is the idea that the word “bones” is slang for dice
in a game of craps, representing the concept of chance – Syme extends by saying, “I’ve always
been fascinated with the juxtaposition of youthful innocence and inevitable mortality, like
having a kid playing kick the can — but with a human skull”.
• In my mind, the only pun that this artwork is lacking is a dice reference to 2112, which itself is
another theme Syme’s artwork references.
• On the subject of 2112 references, Clockwork Angels (2012) front cover is based on an analogue
clock, the hands of the clock pointing to a time representing 21:12 in military time.
Moving Pictures (1981)
Roll The Bones (1991)
9. “Sunrise on the road behind”, Vapor Trails
• Syme stated about the late Rush drummer Neil Peart, “Fans know that's
when the band resumed work after Neil's long, dark journey [his daughter
and wife dying within a year of each other in the late 1990s]… and he was
talking about vapor trails, about how our lives, like comets, sparkle and
fade.“
• Peart had shown Syme a number of NASA photos of comets going through
the sky, when by chance one night, he had seen a comet pass through the
sky. “It must have taken about 10 full minutes to make its way from
overhead to the far horizon before going out of sight. You felt like you
could touch it.”
• Peart told Syme of his experience, describing the comet as a “big ball of
fire with a long tail”, which led to Syme re-approaching the artwork in a
different stance, to be “more gestural, more urgent and passionate”. "I
didn't know quite where I was going with that, except to say I didn't like
the relatively dry textbook feel of NASA photography.”
• After a quick rendering with a paintbrush and finger paint, initially only
intended as a sample design, Peart said to him “No no, that’s it… that is
right!”, despite Syme’s request to paint it proper.
• The artwork of the comet represents the album’s lyrical concepts
regarding how “our lives, like comets, sparkle and fade”, literally based on
the tragic events of Peart’s personal life during the late-90s.
10. Person 2 – Storm Thorgerson
Background:
• Born in February 1944, in Middlesex, he was best known for his work as
a graphic designer, working with many rock bands for their album
covers, most notably Pink Floyd.
• Together with his friend Aubrey Powell, they form an art design group
known as Hipgnosis that formed in 1968, and dissolved in 1983.
• He had met with members of Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett and Roger Waters
in high school, and was a teenage friend of guitarist David Gilmour – he
would collaborate with the band from their second album in 1968, A
Saucerful Of Secrets, up until his passing in 2013. This artwork includes
the iconic covers of Dark Side Of The Moon (1973), Wish You Were Here
(1975) and Animals (1977).
• He had also created cover artwork for music artists such as Paul
McCartney and Wings, ELO, Led Zeppelin, Genesis, and Muse among so
many more.
• He also directed a number of music videos during his lifetimes, for the
likes of Pink Floyd, David Gilmour, Robert Plant, Bruce Dickinson, Nik
Kershaw and others. His directing career spanned from 1982 to 1996.
11. “The Prism”, Dark Side
Of The Moon
• Richard Wright (keyboardist) had requested Thorgerson to come up with
a “simple and elegant” cover for Pink Floyd’s 1973 album, leading to the
Hipgnosis team of Thorgerson, Powell, and George Hardie to produce the
prism dispersing light, subtly alluding to the band’s live light shows.
• The idea of the prism’s light extending to the inside of the vinyl cover
came at Roger Waters’ suggestion, with heart blips connecting the light
from the inside of the cover onto the back of it.
• The iconic spectral light is there to symbolise that whilst the album’s
concept is based loosely on the fragility of life, through basic pressures
such as money and mental illnesses, it is also a celebration of life, as the
shape of the triangle and pyramids bring such stability to life.
• Thorgerson in an interview with Rolling Stone "They hadn’t really
celebrated their light show. That was one thing. The other thing was the
triangle. I think the triangle, which is a symbol of thought and ambition,
was very much a subject of Roger’s lyrics… a very useful icon to deploy
and making it into the prism – you know, the prism belonged to the
Floyd."
12. “The Burning Man”, Wish You Were Here
• Thorgerson states that the picture is real, a man was legitimately being set
on fire whilst the photo was being taken – the stuntman was wearing a
fireproof suit underneath his business suit.
• The whole artwork for the album is said to focus on the theme of absence –
keeping theme with the title – with the action of the handshake symbolising
an empty gesture, and the idea that people often hide their true feelings
inside themselves for fear of “getting burnt”.
• Thorgerson states that he likes the picture as it creates a sense of irony:
“He’s paying no attention… how could he not be concerned about being on
fire?”, whilst also stating that he feels it creates ambiguity, leaving the
audience to make their own perspective on the photo.
• The banner sticker that featured on the packaging for most vinyl releases
was based on the idea of the 4 elements, earth, wind, fire, and water. Storm
was keen on the idea of the number 4, given the 4 words in the title, the 4
members of Pink Floyd, and the 4 elements. The fire is represented in the
main photograph, the water appears in a photo on the inner sleeve, earth
on the back cover with a faceless man in the desert, and the air as wind.
• The handshake also appears, in this instance it is in mechanical form.
The famous album cover for Wish You
Were Here (1975)
The banner that was packaged on the
album on black vinyl cases
13. The Muse collaboration
• Muse came to collaborate with Thorgerson for a couple of albums in the mid-
2000s. A more contemporary band, the trio looked for ideas for the cover of
their 2003 album Absolution, and Thorgerson’s concepts made them believe he
had what they needed.
• The theme was a character looking up towards figures in the sky, that we can
only see through their shadows, leaving the viewer in ambiguity as to whether
they may be on their way to absolution.
• “We met with Dom and agreed that we should try and render our pencil sketch
as a real event: shadows of flying people spread across the ground as if cast by a
squadron of flying craft, magical beings swooping over the Earth to the
amazement of the viewer… which can only be inferred by us, the viewers of the
picture, because all we see is shadows, whereas the viewer in the picture seems
them for real, gliding serenely overhead. He is deeply moved and experiences a
kind of absolution as one might in the presence of a such a miraculous sight.”
• “We’re left to view them through his eyes… not sure who and what they are, nor
their effect on him. What are the flying giant people? What are they doing?
These questions are left open, because all the viewer knows is the shadows…”.
• Storm would also make the cover art for Muse’s 2006 album Black Holes And
Revelations, with the photo showcasing four men sitting around each other on a
table next to 4 miniature horses.
• “This sets thoughts was delivered directly from the music, which comprised
three songs that seemed to evoke galloping… “epic” or “biblical” coming to my
mind, biblical horses become the four horseman of apocalypse, obviously, but
hold on… Muse are a contemporary band so our four horseman needed to be
represented not the evils of a medieval world, but more contemporary evils.”
14. Person 3 – Klaus Voorman
Background:
• Born in April 1938, in Berlin, he was better known for his work as a
musician, playing alongside three members of The Beatles, John
Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, as they each embarked on
their solo careers after their breakup. At George Harrison’s Concert
For Bangladesh, Harrison introduced Klaus to the audience by saying
"There's somebody on bass who many people have heard about, but
they've never actually seen him”
• Alongside his music work, he is a well-known graphic artist, making
album artwork for The Beatles, The Bee Gees, and Wet Wet Wet –
most notably winning a Grammy Award for The Beatles’ Revolver
(1966) front cover, and later painting a collage for the front covers for
their Anthology collection (1995-96) alongside Alfons Kiefer.
• In 2009, he released his own solo project called A Sideman’s Journey,
credited as “Voormann & Friends” that featured guest appearances
from Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Cat Stevens among others –
creating the artwork for it himself.
• He has also created cover artwork for numerous magazines, such as
the Rolling Stone Germany, and Der Spiegel.
15. “Turn off your mind”, Revolver
• As Paul McCartney remembers, "We knew he drew and he'd been
involved in graphic design… I must admit we didn't really know
what he did, but he'd been to college. We knew he must be all
right, and so we said, 'Why don't you come up with something for
the album cover?’”
• Voormann used pen and black ink to create four large line
drawings of the Beatles, and combined the drawings with a
collage of black and white photos taken by Bob Whitaker, as well
as personal photos from the members themselves.
• McCartney then stated "We liked the way there were little things
coming out of people's ears, and how he'd collaged things on a
small scale while the drawings were on a big scale. He also knew
us well enough to capture us rather beautifully in the drawings.”
• The style of drawing used for this album cover has also formed the
basis for Voormann’s artwork later on in his life, often making
variation versions of the cover, with the members of The Beatles
looking more like their older selves, during the late 1960s.
• The artwork somewhat symbolised the changing musical direction
The Beatles would undertake on Revolver, opting for a more
psychedelic-rock sound, as heard on the final track ‘Tomorrow
Never Knows’, which Voormann heard and used as his inspiration
when creating the front cover artwork.
• The choice of black and white was said to make it stand out from
the “muddle of colour” that would appear on shelves in record
stores at the time.
16. “The life that we
once knew”,
Anthology 1-3
• The premise for the Anthology 1-3 (1995-96) album covers was that they were all part of
one continuous collage, eventually split into thirds to represent each Anthology album.
Voormann and Kiefer based the artwork based off of Beatles posters, photos, and album
covers from their Hamburg tours in 1960 to their final album Let It Be (1970).
• Conveniently, Voormann had known the members ever since their Hamburg tours, going
as far back as the days of John, Paul, and George playing with Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete
Best on the bass and drums.
• Among the numerous easter eggs throughout the entire cover includes Pete Best’s face
(he was the original drummer) being ripped off of the central image on the left hand
side, revealing Ringo Starr (the replacement drummer) underneath in his guise of the
Please Please Me (1963) album cover.
• In a fun twist, Pete Best would take the cut-out version of his face from this photo as the
album cover for the 2008 Pete Best Band album Haymans Green.
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