Pink Floyd's A Momentary Lapse of Reason -- unlike many of the band's greater efforts (The Final Cut, Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall) -- is not a concept album. The cover photo, on the other hand, is highly conceptual, conveying ideas of isolation, loneliness and irrationality. When contemplating prospective cover art, lyrics from the album track "Yet Another Movie" brought images of an empty bed to Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour. Gilmour explained his idea to Storm Thorgerson whose design firm was responsible for several notable rock album covers including the aforementioned Dark Side of the Moon, Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy and Pieces of Eight by Styx. Thorgerson's final design was a type of installation art that provided a nod to the album's track list and incorporated a soaring hang glider ("Learning to Fly") and several dogs ("Dogs of War") occupying an English beach with not one, but 700 carefully arranged wrought iron Victorian beds. Though shot on a typical gray day, the sky we see has a lovely purplish hue, which gives the photo and this cover a wonderfully serene feel.
Barbra Streisand's nineteenth album would be one of her best-selling. Released in 1977 when she was coming off the success of the chart topping "Evergreen" single and three straight box office hits (The Way We Were, Funny Lady and A Star is Born) Streisand was arguably at the peak of her career and rightly being considered the biggest female talent in entertainment. But on the Superman cover she belies prevailing opinions with a simple, demure pose against a plain blue backdrop. Wearing a white t-shirt emblazoned with the Superman logo, knee socks and white shorts, Streisand is shy but coquettish as she sheepishly cocks her head and tugs down on her shirt. Adorable!
Like Never Mind the Bullocks Here's the Sex Pistols, Green Day's Dookie is more than just a major label debut, it's a pronouncement. Just as the Sex Pistols' album had seventeen years prior, Dookie makes the statement: "We're here; we're kicking the effing doors in and we're changing the face of punk." Unfortunately, despite the fact that their lone album is considered one of the seminal works of its genre, the Sex Pistols didn't last. Green Day, however, is closing in on five decades of punk rock relevancy.
Dookie's cover is everything you'd expect from a punk album -- frenetic, irreverent, iconoclastic. In a jam-packed R. Crumb-like illustration by artist Richie Bucher, we see bombs dropped from a plane, a giant mushroom cloud, the "Bad Year" blimp, funny renderings of Patti Smith, fat Elvis and AC-DC's Angus Young; a satyr, a prospector, a giant talking fly, the woman from the first Black Sabbath album, and tons of dogs hurling their feces.
Apart from all the (often scatological) chaos you'll find, the Dookie cover is also a tribute to Green Day's old stomping ground of East Bay, San Francisco. The setting of the entire illustration is downtown Berkeley and Bucher includes representations of several locals from the East Bay punk scene along and the UC Berkeley Marching band. There's also a shout out to Huey Newton, the former Black Panther leader whose base of operations was just a few miles to the south in Oakland,
This is nowhere close to a full list of all the characters, Easter eggs and inside jokes included on this cover. I bought it when it first came out in 1994 and honestly, I'm still discovering things I hadn't previously.
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