Album Cover Art
The band's album covers often incorporate complex and intricate art intended to reflect the themes explored in the music. The initial release of the band's first album, From Genesis to Revelation, used a plain black sleeve with Genesis written in a green gothic typeface. The three subsequent album covers were developed by the popular Charisma Records graphic artist Paul Whitehead. The Foxtrot sleeve depicts a feminine figure in a red dress with the head of a fox. Whitehead has said in an interview that Jimi Hendrix's "Foxy Lady" was an inspiration for the character.
The cover for Selling England by the Pound was painted by Betty Swanwick. Peter Gabriel saw the original drawing, called The Dream, at an exhibition and asked Swanwick to modify it for use as the album cover. Most notably, Swanwick added a lawnmower to the image in order to tie the painting to the lyrics of "I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)".
After Whitehead moved to Los Angeles, Genesis signed with the art collective Hipgnosis, whose artists had created high profile album covers for Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon and Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy. Hipgnosis's first Genesis album cover was for The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, which featured a male model, credited simply as "Omar", portraying the album's protagonist "Rael". Peter Gabriel has said in an interview for the 2008 box-set release of The Lamb that he was not happy about the choice of model as he had vividly imagined Rael as being Puerto Rican.
Through the rest of the 1970s, various Hipgnosis artists heavily—designed all Genesis studio albums. The Trick of the Tail cover depicts the characters from the album songs, including the robber from "Robbery, Assault and Battery", the beast from the title track, and a metaphoric image of old age reminiscing on youth from the song "Ripples..." and a squonk (from the song of the same name) is also featured on the rear of the cover. Beginning with Duke, Genesis albums have featured artwork designed by Bill Smith Studios. The band's highest-selling album Invisible Touch, features the artwork of Assorted Images, which had previously designed sleeves for Simple Minds, Duran Duran and Culture Club. The We Can't Dance cover art features the work of Felicity Roma Bowers, and is reminiscent of Wind & Wuthering, now presented in hazy watercolour. The Calling All Stations and the compilation Turn It on Again: The Hits sleeves were designed by Wherefore Art?.
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Famous quotes containing the words album, cover and/or art:
“What a long strange trip it’s been.”
—Robert Hunter, U.S. rock lyricist. “Truckin’,” on the Grateful Dead album American Beauty (1971)
“Between us, we cover all knowledge; he knows all that can be known and I know the rest.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“There is no mystery in a looking glass until someone looks into it. Then, though it remains the same glass, it presents a different face to each man who holds it in front of him. The same is true of a work of art. It has no proper existence as art until someone is reflected in it—and no two will ever be reflected in the same way. However much we all see in common in such a work, at the center we behold a fragment of our own soul, and the greater the art the greater the fragment.”
—Harold C. Goddard (1878–1950)