BLACK SABBATH RUINED MY LIFE
Confessions of a Black Sabbath fan: Episode Two
by Hugh Gilmour
As I’ve said elsewhere, 2005 is something of an anniversary for me, partly
because it's ten years since I worked on Plastic Planet by g//z/r, Geezer
Butler's first solo project. Again, a true labour of love, when I was I found
out Castle Communications PLC were going to release Geezer's first solo set (as
well as the Sabbath catalogue), I confidently informed the product manager that
I'd be doing the artwork. "Nah, Hugh, they've probably got someone in the States
doing it." I don't know why a fruit fly with two globes for eyes was a suitable
image for the cover, but it seemed to convey the appropriate level of menace
required, and is still one of my favourite pieces in my portfolio. This was
followed by working on the re-issues of the Sabbath back catalogue (as both a
designer and sleeve note writer) as well as a number of compilations over the
years. It was through this work that eventually lead to the commission of the
artwork Fused in 2005.
Initially I had no title and no further information, other than it would be
Tony's third official release (the first, of course, a collection of
collaborations with the cream of rock music's finest vocalists, the second a
previously shelved collaboration with "the voice of rock" Glenn Hughes). I knew
Glenn would be involved, but I initially assumed he would be one of a number of
singers (as per the "IOMMI" debut). I instantly fired off twenty or so ideas
that I thought were suitably gothic, and would work well with the established
IOMMI logo. At the time no title was set in stone, so my initial ideas had no
other text than the IOMMI logo, but it was eventually settled that Fused would
be the title, and it would very much be a collaboration with Glenn. The brief I
was initially given was that Tony wanted to present an image that suggested
brotherhood, of two paths connecting, and designs were dispatched incorporating
these themes. Another theme required was a sense of heat, possibly hot furnaces
"fusing" metal together, and again, images and visuals were presented that
fulfiled these criteria.
I imagine like many music fans, designers or otherwise, I really miss 12" vinyl
records. A vinyl LP is something to cherish and pour over. Who would want to
cuddle a jewel case, or fondle a compact disc? But more importantly, the amount
of detail that you can add to a 12" square of cardboard gives you far more scope
than the much smaller 5 inches available of a CD booklet. My beloved sword and
sorcery inspired heavy metal LPs of yore sadly lose their impact when reduced to
120mm, so one very clear aspect of my brief was an image (if an image was
required at all) that was clear and clean and would not struggle to jump out of
the racks next to the other CDs. The very, very simple, but effectively striking
Rammstein album "Reise Reise", with its orange cover, broken by two bold
stripes, was given to me as a reference point, and I had to agree that when
browsing through the racks of HMV it was a sleeve that stood out. We had to
include the IOMMI logo prominently, established on the previous two releases, as
well as the title, but we also had to balance Tony's name with Glenn's. We
discussed adding a sticker with their names, but I pointed out we had no
guarantee that after the first few thousand pressings that the sticker would be
placed exactly where we specified. Firing off simultaneous emails of ideas to
the record label (in the New York) and the management (in London) from my studio
(in Kingston), I sent sleeves featuring different placement suggestions for the
logo, title and names. The present cover was eventually settled on after
numerous emails, phone calls and jpegs. I recently went back to count all of the
designs and variations I had produced for this project; it was 130. It wasn't as
if I designed 129 sleeves, then the 130th was chosen, mind, as there were many
similar variants, all with subtle changes in tone, colour and layout.
Look at Black Sabbath's Sabotage LP cover. This is one of my favourite Sabbs
albums, and I have absolutely no issue with the cover artwork, which has by
default become iconic in its own way. But this has probably become quite
embarrassing to the band, and probably the result of an album cover that
definitely WASN’T designed through any sort of committee meeting. It probably
makes more sense when you know that the design concept for Sabotage is credited
to one of Sabbath’s road crew. To make sure they wouldn't make the same error,
the next two covers were designed by Hipgnosis, famed for Pink Floyd and Led
Zeppelin, neither of which featured a photo of the band.
You can't please all of the people all of the time, especially an artist's very
passionate fan-base, but one should accept that there are many factors involved
in executing a sleeve, and all of the approvals which are necessary before final
approval is given. I want this album to sell a million, as I believe that Glenn
and Tony deserve it. But it also means that they'd probably be more encouraged
make another record together, and a whole lot sooner too (they appear to make a
record together approximately every 10 years?).
I designed something like 130 covers for this release alone. I'm sure that out
of those sleeves rejected, there would be something to please everybody, but
that is not practical or possible. I sincerely miss vinyl, as you felt you were
really getting something for your money. I've also done designs for CD that I
hated, but looked great when adorning 12 inches of vinyl. Those classic Dio-style,
sword and sorcery/dungeons and dragons type sleeves looked amazing on vinyl, and
had a massive impact of me as a youth and what I wanted to do with my life. I
actually trained as a Technical Illustrator, using oils, airbrush, pencils,
gouache, watercolours...you name it, but it was incredibly hard work too. I
might spend two or three weeks on a painting, only to have it rejected if it
didn't quite work when finished. It's not that "computer aided graphic design"
isn't prone to similar problems, but you can just get it done (ie: approved OR
rejected) a lot quicker!
I appreciated this was an important release for Tony and the label, but this has
been such an important album for me to be involved with. I don't always get to
work on acts that I love for every single job I’m commissioned for. In fact I am
quite often asked to design a band’s album (as opposed to one of their eager
fans with an Apple Mac) specifically because I will approach the cover design
from the view of producing an image which is marketable and commercial,, but
without alienating the fanbase, nor putting off the casual purchaser. To have
designed an album directly for a musician who has been such an inspiration to me
for 25 years is a such a real privilege. And I can say as much for Glenn, as I
am such a big fan of both Trapeze and the funky third and fourth incarnations of
Deep Purple. Come Taste The Band and Stormbringer are without doubt (and
possibly controversially) my all time favourite Purple records. The one thing
that is sometimes hard to understand as a "fan" is that although you want a
piece of art to grace your favourite artist's cover, something which reflects
the artists' integrity, the quality of the music within and which is going to
act as a true and fair reflection of the musicians intent, Tony and Glenn’s
fanbase are going to buy the album regardless of what’s on the cover. It is a
record company's job (and if truth be told, the artists' wish) to sell as many
units as possible, and as such, from my experience, part of a designer's job
when working on what we call "frontline" product (ie; something that has a
definite chance of charting, and thus selling more units) is to create an image
that isn't going to put off a casual purchaser, who might not buy an album if
the cover looks too "heavy" (ie; covered in skulls, devils, blood, very dark
artwork etc...).
I was also given the lyrics to Fused for inclusion, and initially I did a
straight forward layout with all of the pages featuring a similar, cold,
scratched metal background to that of the approved cover, but I didn't think
that was enough. On the one hand, if you’re going to feature the words to songs,
I believe it’s important that the lyrics are in a type face and of a size that
is legible to the human eye (and possibly a human eye in need of reading
glasses). But I don't think people (especially not heavy metal fans, of which I
am very much one) need their artwork concepts spoon fed to them. One of the nice
things about some of my favourite album jackets is deciphering any meaning or
relevance in the artwork, but as I had the lyrics to hand, I thought it was
appropriate to include a series of images as backgrounds that at least hinted at
the lyrics. In this day of downloading, file sharing and iTunes, the artwork and
packaging of a “piece of product” seems to have taken on far less power and
importance over the actual transport of the digitised musical sounds. As a kid,
the artwork was of paramount importance. The cover artwork of Sergeant Pepper,
Dark Side Of the Moon, Led Zeppelin II or Sabbath Bloody Sabbath were so much
bound up in a very iconic fashion with the music therein, that it would be
unimaginable to have one without the other. Downloading a PDF file to print out
just doesn’t hold the same mystique for me.
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