Morecambe and Wise; Cheech and Chong; Trevor and Simon; Sooty and Sweep; Fish and Chips; Pete Doherty and Heroin – to add alongside these great double acts should also go musicians and plane artwork.
For that matter, any aerodynamic form of transport. Led Zeppelin announced themselves on their self-titled debut album with a picture of an exploding Hindenburg air ship (a reference to the suggestion from The Who’s Keith Moon that a Yardbirds off shoot supergroup would go down like “a lead balloon”… Yardbirds guitarist Jimmy Page took note).
The Beastie Boys producer Rick Rubin was so inspired by Led Zeppelin’s cover that for the band’s 1986’s Licensed to Ill album he got graphic designer Stephen Byrum to create the legendary sleeve of an Boeing 727 adorned with group’s insignia on its tail, crashing into the side of a mountain: a gloriously metaphoric and literal illustration of the group’s musical and cultural impact, as well as a sad lament to the loss of the gatefold sleeve and it’s imaginative uses (Bless poor Marshall Mathers whose attempt at a reboot for his Kamikaze album can be consigned to the reject bin along with wet carboard, rotten vegetables and Mafia snitches! – sometimes the best flattery is just to leave well alone).
When it comes to creative use of plane imagery on your artwork, nobody can come close to pop art’s high priests the Mael Brothers. The writer J.G Ballard once described Second World War London as being a physical representation of surrealist art, in which you would see buildings where the front and back had been blown out, but inside those buildings all of the furniture and furnishings remained intact. Sparks employ this on the cover of their 1975 album Indiscreet, where lead singer Russ in the guise of a pilot lies elegantly prostate against the crashed jet that appears on the suburban neighbourhood drive of Ron. Ron looks on with the casual disdain of a man whose scanned his petunias to find one of next-door neighbour’s dog turds gleaming back at him! The sleeve encapsulates the ordinary and the extraordinary in harmonic unity and holds a million different tales and interpretations which are both comic and profound.
(Colourhorizon – Russ is draped like a Roxy leading lady…a homage, a parody?)
U2 (A group named after an American fighter plane) have a cover with the band milling about in an Airport – are they departing or arriving? Who knows…who cares?! Green Day’s Dookie sees a tongue lapped, goggle adorned cartoon dog dropping bombs from a plane with chaotic glee as he hurtles to his own violent canine exit. A quartet of red neon jet silhouettes, ominously halo the mountains on the back cover of Talking Heads Remain in Light album and The Beat’s 1982 release Special Beat Service, shows the band acting as the ska revivalist convoy for a Middle Eastern dignitary, as they disembark from the plane on a dark night.
So within this hallowed group of aviation enthusiasts, is the debonair owner of the most geometrically perfect and aesthetically appealing upper lip foliage: Mr. B The Gentleman Rhymer. This is the man with Robert Donat and David Niven as guardian angels. A man who religiously adheres to the code of the great Viv Stanshall, whom when touring in America in the late 1960’s with his group the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band was asked by a Police Officer how without any weaponry was Viv going to protect himself against the violent extremes of American society? Viv defiantly answered: “…with good manners!” A man for whom Harris Tweed holds the same superhuman transformative powers as Popeye’s cans of spinach. Mr. B… whose only genuine rival to the master straw boater wearer title is Dirk Bogarde in Visconti’s Death in Venice.
Mr B is an embodiment of how class, distinction and invention can effortlessly shape, follow and design you without ever falling into the bottomless pit of nostalgia porn. There is space in this world for a modern Harry Flashman to operate with great elan. But remember tucked inside those crustless cucumber sandwiches is a healthy spicy dollop of Levi Roots Reggae Reggae sauce!
Be the synthesis, merge the great traditions with a thoroughly unstudied modern sensibility that is all encompassing, truly arresting and totally inspiring. The warning is heeded on the album cover as we see a beached and desiccated emblem of British national pride: a Hawker Typhoon on Brighton beach. A relic, not resuscitated by a resurgence of national pride and sentiment, but unwashed and unloved. An irony free representation of rusted metal hopes and dreams, no more out of place than any other bit of detritus that has come in with the sea. The missing picture from photographer Marin Parr’s 1984 collection of New Brighton holidaymakers’ pictures – where poor families descend for a day at the polluted seaside.
A decayed vessel pockmarked by the enemy’s bullet holes, waiting for a dignified burial which will never materialise beyond the solemn head shake of an enervated passer-by. Or could it just be a symbolism free portrait of a cool image? Is it even a plane album cover?
If not, will that then preclude it from all the words that have preceded? Could this be a fevered dream and the cover doesn’t actually exist? Could this be a Smiths style celluloid homage, where in Mr. B’ s case a wrecked plane is an avatar for George Sanders, Dennis Price or James Mason? In the words of Chuck Berry ‘”You never can tell”
————————- Henry Forrest
Further reading – Henry would like to point you in the direction of Martin Parr’s work The Last Resort
https://publicdelivery.org/martin-parr-last-resort/
Hit the Henry Forrest tag below to read more from Henry!
Thanks to @Grymm23 on twitter for the heads up on the source photo! https://m.facebook.com/hawkertyphoonRB396/photos/there-was-a-single-recorded-loss-on-this-day-in-1944-with-the-pilot-safesafe-1-2/2246341785581089/
Back issues of What’s In A Cover?…
What’s In A Cover? Garsa on The Unfairity
What’s In A Cover? Hawksmoor on Methods Of Dreaming
What’s In A Cover? Concrete Island with The Heartwood Institute
‘Paint Me A Dream’ with The Chemistry Set
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
Spying by Jennie Vee and Vintage Violence by John Cale
So Alone by Johnny Thunders and Marquee Moon by Television
Head over to the CONTENTS page to find the best in new music with review, interviews, articles and much more! You’ll find everything from psych to folk-horror!
colourhorizon 