In the first ever guest written piece on colourhorizon, the unutterable Henry Forrest finds himself with Lust For Life and gets Fried…
What’s in a cover looks at two iconoclastic artists whom used to front legendary bands and their second solo album attempts…
Lust For Life is a black and white photo haloed by a yellow border, with the name of the artist on the left-hand corner of the sleeve and the album’s title on the right. An acceptable passport photo and half an hour of the designer’s effort to find a suitable typography, yet we have a famous and much imitated record cover.
On Iggy’s 1977 debut The Idiot the cover photo was Iggy aping a German Expressionist painting: announcing his arrival as a serious artist as he warbled about former acquaintances (‘Dum Dum Boys’) and the jaded dynamics of night life (‘Nightclubbing’).
On Lust For Life (released the same year) the sleeve is intense in it’s apparent blandness. We know too much about the history of rock’s wildest frontman to write it off as a generic PR exercise.
This is Iggy, the former James Jewell Osterberg…Godfather of Punk announcing his rebirth on the album’s title track, cleansed of improprieties, but still riddled with some. Eyes gleaming, sporting the world’s longest eyelashes. Cold water washed, groomed and wearing his cleanest dirty shirt…. Reformed? The well-behaved Iggy, whom will now only piss in your sink rather than take a shit in it! Who’ll take the cash from your wallet but leave a handwritten I.O.U note in its place.
Iggy: the entry point for uptight Anglos like photographer Mick Rock and David Bowie to vicariously engage in nihilistic performance art. The peanut butter smeared chest is cleaned up and plucked of any indecent hairs and now sporting a reapplied CE sticker (Corporate Entity), the track marks scabbed over – with the only use for tin foil these days to cover the previous night’s homemade shepards pie. Iggy is appearing boyish, detoxed and wanting to shift more units than Fleetwood Mac with songs about dilapidated urban landscapes, fame disillusionment and drug and alcohol recovery. He’s sacrificed dignity, financial security and personal happiness and is crawling out on the other side ready for the ascension.
Iggy’s Lust for Life cover – wholesomely wholesome, affirming the positive and the clean cut, the confidence trick that will release Middle America of its dollars so that Lust for Life beats Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’ as 1977’s biggest release….(100,000 copies sold, only a mere 39,000,000 less than Fleetwood Mac – Kinda worked!)
Do you remember when ITV used to run programmes through the early hours of the night? Reruns of American sitcoms like Soap and Coach, Australian Prison drama Prisoner Cell Block H, raunchy dating shows that gave the world Graham Norton Carnal Knowledge, The Old Grey Whistle Test revived on an even smaller budget Helter Skelter and a music quiz show that was presented by Kerrang Magazine editor Phil Alexander Popped in, Crashed Out.
Popped in, Crashed Out was the unwashed alternative to ‘Never Mind the Buzzcocks’ where host Phil would give his famous musical contestants the answers if he liked you! It was usually the same non competing guests every week: Leigh from Terrorvision, the bassist from System of a Down and very occasionally Rock royalty in Ozzy Osbourne or Rob Halford. Syd Barrett featured in one of the answers and led to one of the contestants (maybe a Faith No More’s roadie) who derisively said: ‘I love Syd Barrett, that is what pisses me off about Julian Cope, he pretends to be mad whilst Syd Barrett whom he copies, is.”
Julian: naked, covered by a tortoise shell, playing with a toy car – is that not inspired madness pretention enough for you? For a Scott Walker devotee, Julian’s second album, Fried would not be as fantastically accessible or successful as the crooner’s own follow up. Like Iggy, Julian released his second album in the same year he released his debut, but unlike Iggy, Julian was trying to rid the stench of commercialised pop, not immerse himself in it.
The ubiquitous presence that was Julian Cope taking his cue from John Peel and Janice Long to mime his latest hit on Top of the Pops was gone. And now here was the hitless iconoclast’s seven stone frame sheltered under a half shell playing with a dinky toy on a slag heap! Polygram were not happy at the disappointing sales of Fried and got rid of Cope, as his psychedelic paganist ditties were not ringing the cash registers of Our Price and so Cope listened to what Bill Drummond said (whom would be topping the charts under first the uber commercial Timelords then the fabulously successful KLF) and Cope decided that alongside Pan, money was worth worshipping, and produced the Saint Julian album and hit single ‘World Shut Your Mouth’ Julian Cope was now competing with Roachford’s audience and winning handsomely. Fried’s naked fragility – contrived or not, was replaced by the traditional comforting rock and roll regalia of leather trousers and endless guitar solos.
Julian Cope’s Fried – the unacceptable album cover that all mothers returned to the racks seconds after being handed it by their kids
–Henry Forrest
If these classic albums aren’t in your collection – get on it!
Read more What’s In A Cover? articles…!
Summer Heads and Winter Beds by The Raft with Phil Wilson
‘Painting In Carlisle’ by The Maitlands
Hinterland by Lonelady and English Martyrs by Total Victory
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