Rock Mythology
1970-1979. Hipgnosis at Pink Floyd. Roger Dean at Yes. Mick Rock at Bowie. The gatefold becomes a canvas. Punk arrives at the end of the decade and tears the canvas up.
Part of Album Cover
36 moments in this segment.
- — Led Zeppelin — Led Zeppelin III. · Year: 1970 · Designer: Zacron Rotating wheel inside the sleeve — turn the inner disc and different images appear in cutout windows. Mechanical-cover engineering at its most ambitious.
- — Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin III (Remaster) [Official Full Album]. ] · 00:43:08
- — The Rolling Stones — Sticky Fingers. · Year: 1971 · Designer: Andy Warhol A real working zipper on a denim jeans crotch. The first pressings damaged the records in shipping when the zipper pressed into the vinyl underneath.
- — Brown Sugar (Remastered 2009). ) · 00:03:49
- — Marvin Gaye — What's Going On. · Year: 1971 · Designer: Curtis McNair · photo by Jim Hendin Gaye in the rain, collar turned up. The protest-soul album cover that established Black-album-art as a serious design discipline.
- — Marvin Gaye - What's Going On. · 00:03:52
- — John Lennon — Imagine. · Year: 1971 · Designer: John & Yoko · Iain Macmillan photo A cloudscape with Lennon's head softly emerging from it — the cover for the album of the same name.
- — Imagine - John Lennon & The Plastic Ono Band (w The Flux Fiddlers) (Ultimate Mix 2018) - 4K REMASTER. · 00:03:14
- — David Bowie — Hunky Dory. · Year: 1971 · Designer: George Underwood · photo by Brian Ward Bowie in three-quarter profile, hand brushed through hair — colorised in pastel by Underwood from a Brian Ward photo. The Ziggy Stardust character was conceived during the same sessions.
- — David Bowie - Hunky Dory (Full Album). ) · 00:41:58
- — David Bowie — The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. · Year: 1972 · Designer: Brian Ward Bowie outside K. West furrier's shop, Heddon Street London, in a phone-booth-lit blue jumpsuit. Photographed at 3am to get the empty street.
- — David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust (Official Video). ) · 00:03:18
- — Roxy Music — Roxy Music. · Year: 1972 · Designer: Nicholas de Ville · photo by Karl Stoecker Model Kari-Ann Muller reclining on satin — the album as 1940s pin-up. Six subsequent Roxy Music albums kept the woman-on-cover format.
- — Pink Floyd — The Dark Side of the Moon. · Year: 1973 · Designer: Hipgnosis · George Hardie Storm Thorgerson asked the band for "something simple". Hardie drew the prism in ink on tracing paper. The album has charted continuously for 50+ years.
- — Pink Floyd - The Dark Side Of The Moon (50th Anniversary) [2023 Remaster] {Full Album}. } · 00:42:56
- — Stevie Wonder — Innervisions. · Year: 1973 · Designer: Efrem Wolff Painted illustration of Wonder with rays emerging from his head onto a fragmented urban America. The cover for one of the most acclaimed albums in pop history.
- — Visions. · 00:05:23
- — Bruce Springsteen — Born to Run. · Year: 1975 · Designer: photo by Eric Meola Springsteen leaning on Clarence Clemons, gatefold continues across both panels — designed so you needed both halves to see the friendship.
- — Born to Run. Provided to YouTube by Columbia Born to Run · Bruce Springsteen
- — Pink Floyd — Wish You Were Here. · Year: 1975 · Designer: Hipgnosis · Storm Thorgerson Two businessmen shake hands; one is on fire (real flame, real burns to stuntman Ronnie Rondell). The cover came shrink-wrapped in opaque black so you couldn't see it before buying.
- — Wish You Were Here. · 00:05:21
- — Stevie Wonder — Songs in the Key of Life. · Year: 1976 · Designer: Stevie Wonder Wonder in close-up, eyes closed, hands raised — a portrait that doubled as an album-of-the-year campaign image.
- — David Bowie — Low. · Year: 1977 · Designer: photo from The Man Who Fell to Earth A still from Bowie's 1976 Nicolas Roeg film, recoloured in orange. The bridge between the Berlin Trilogy and the cover-art-as-film-still device that would dominate the 80s.
- — David Bowie - Low Full Album. · 00:38:52
- — Fleetwood Mac — Rumours. · Year: 1977 · Designer: Desmond Strobel · photo by Herbert Worthington Stevie Nicks twirling barefoot with Mick Fleetwood — taken during a rehearsal break. Captures the soap-opera year of the album's recording.
- — Fleetwood Mac - Rumours [Full Album]. ] · 00:44:28
- — Eagles — Hotel California. · Year: 1976 · Designer: John Kosh · David Alexander photo Sunset photograph of the Beverly Hills Hotel taken from a 60-ft cherry-picker. The dust silhouettes were real — they came in at 11pm.
- — Eagles - Hotel California (Official Audio). ) · 00:06:31
- — Sex Pistols — Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols. · Year: 1977 · Designer: Jamie Reid Day-Glo cut-and-paste typography in pink and yellow — punk's defining design language assembled from ransom-note clippings.
- — Joy Division — Unknown Pleasures. · Year: 1979 · Designer: Peter Saville Pulsar CP1919 radio-wave plot in white-on-black. Saville chose the image from the Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Astronomy. The most-T-shirt-ified album cover ever made.
- — Disorder (2007 Remaster). ) · 00:03:29
- — Pink Floyd — The Wall. · Year: 1979 · Designer: Gerald Scarfe Bare-brick white wall — the album cover that became the stage prop that became the 1982 Alan Parker film. Scarfe also drew the animated sequences.
- — pink floyd - another brick in the wall. · 00:03:49
- — The Clash — London Calling. · Year: 1979 · Designer: Ray Lowry · photo by Pennie Smith Paul Simonon smashing his bass at the Palladium, NYC. Pennie Smith almost refused the photo because it was "out of focus". Voted greatest rock and roll photograph by Q magazine.
- — London Calling. · 00:03:20
- — Roxy Music - More Than This (High Audio Quality). ) · 00:04:27
