London
In the early 1960s, Voormann decided to leave Germany and move to London. George Harrison invited him to live in the Green Street flat formerly shared by all four members of the Beatles, Lennon and McCartney having moved out: Lennon to live with his wife Cynthia Lennon, and McCartney to live in the attic of the home of Jane Asher's parents. Voormann lived with Harrison and Ringo Starr for a time before finding work as a commercial artist and renting an apartment of his own. He returned to Hamburg in 1963, where he founded a band with Paddy Chambers (guitar/vocals), Voormann (bass/vocals) and Gibson Kemp (drums) called Paddy, Klaus & Gibson.
In 1966, Voormann returned to London and was asked by Lennon to design the sleeve for the album Revolver. Klaus had a style of "scrapbook collage" art in mind. When showing his efforts to the band and their manager, Brian Epstein, the band loved it, although Voormann's payment for the album cover was £40. For this work, Klaus won the Grammy Award for Best Album Cover, Graphic Arts. Voormann later designed the cover art for Harrison's 1988 single, "When We Was Fab", which included the image of Harrison from the cover of Revolver along with an updated drawing in the same style.
Around the same time, another group was about to release their international debut album. The Bee Gees had recorded their first album, Bee Gees 1st, and Klaus was hired to design the cover for that album. The album cover featured all five group members standing above a colourful, psychedelic collage painted by Voormann. The following year, artwork by Klaus graced the front cover of the American edition of The Bee Gees' album Idea. In 1973, Voormann created the album sleeve and booklet artwork for Ringo Starr's album Ringo, on which he also played bass.
Read more about this topic: Klaus Voormann
Famous quotes containing the word london:
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When will you pay me?
Say the bells of Old Bailey.
When I grow rich,
Say the bells of Shoreditch.
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Say the bells of Stepney.
I am sure I don’t know,
Says the great bell of Bow.”
—Unknown. The Bells of London (l. 13–22)
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—Unknown. London Bridge (l. 1–6)
“I lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to read once more only the words Orpheus, Linus, Musæus,—those faint poetic sounds and echoes of a name, dying away on the ears of us modern men; and those hardly more substantial sounds, Mimnermus, Ibycus, Alcæus, Stesichorus, Menander. They lived not in vain. We can converse with these bodiless fames without reserve or personality.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)