Peter Gabriel

When Peter Gabriel left Genesis in 1975 he embarked on a solo career that has spawned studio albums, film sound tracks, compilations and live recordings. For all these releases Gabriel took a keen interest in the artwork that adorned the packaging and eighteen months ago we at Hypergallery were approached to work with Real World to give these pieces their proper place as purchasable artworks in their own right.

Peter's journey in the artistic world is worth noting:

The first three albums - known by the fans as 'Car', 'Scratch' and ' Melt' were created by the world famous Hipgnosis studio who's track record in the music business was second to none and as well as classic covers for Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, they had designed several covers for Genesis so were well known to Gabriel.

In 1982 he moved away from Hipgnosis for the artwork for his fourth album 'Security' and made his first connections with the fine art world. In his words "The artwork on album 4 was something that I'd been working on with a sculptor called Malcolm Poynter who's work I thought was really strong, he used to do these things out of very dark heads".

1983's 'Plays Live' featured a close up of Peter in a mask and his soundtrack for the 'Birdy' used a still from the film, but for his next studio album 'So' he turned to the ex Factory Records designer Peter Saville, who combined a dramatic black and white close-up photograph of Gabriel with very simple, but equally dramatic, typography.

The next album release was the soundtrack for Martin Scorsese's 'The Last Temptation of Christ'. For this cover he chose an existing artwork he had seen in an exhibition by the artist Julian Grater. 'Passion' is a stunning piece of work, part drawing, part collage, part painting and perfectly reflects and complements the music on the album. Passion was a Grammy Award winner and the artwork was awarded album cover of the year.

1990's 'Shaking the Tree' was a greatest hits album and Gabriel used a photograph taken by one of America's greatest photographers, Robert Mapplethorpe, who had died the year before.

Then came 'Us' with a cover by the photographer David Scheinmann. This was a quite extraordinary piece of work that involved a combination of techniques including painting Gabriel's suit with pure blue pigment, using long exposures and combining images on a very early Apple Mac that had very little memory.

The artist and musician Martha Ladly, formerly of the band Martha and the Muffins, worked for Gabriel as manager of Real World Design between 1992 and 2001 and was responsible for the cover of the next live album, 'Secret World'.

For the production of the multimedia CDROM program 'Eve' Gabriel had collaborated with a number of renowned artists including Helen Chadwick, Rebecca Horn, Nils Udo, Andy Goldsworthy, David Mach and Yayoi Kusama, and it was a spectacular 'nest' made by the German installation artist Nils Udo at the Real World Studios, that was chosen for the cover of 'Ovo', the soundtrack made for the Millenium Dome in 2000.

In 2002 'Up' was released, an album that had been almost completed four years earlier. The cover was the product of the photographic artist Susan Derges, who uses cameraless photography techniques to produce eerie images directly onto photographic paper.

Peter Gabriel has created much great music in his career, but the preceeding paragraphs demonstrate that he has also brought great art to us as well.

Soon it will be seen in a different light.

Peter Saville

This is a while ago now, but just picked it up whilst searching:

Peter Saville, he of Factory Records fame, was interviewed in March at the D&AD 2009 President’s Lectures. I'd like to hear him debate with Storm Thorgerson after hearing these quotes "No one should be designing record covers after the age of 30", and "Music covers are not graphic design, they do not communicate anything, they have no purpose in that respect".

The report on the Eye Blog said 'Saville amused us with his directness – he was refreshingly opinionated'.

Indeed a formidable opponent for Storm.

Royal Mail Rocks

Rumours abound that Pink Floyd's 'Division Bell', David Bowie's 'The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars' and Led Zeppelin's 'Led Zeppelin IV' will be amongst a selection of 10 classic album covers to feature on a special edition of Royal Mail stamps to be released on Jan 7th 2010.

The stamp collecting website Norvic Philatelics featured the news which was then picked up by nme.com and band fansites.

I am pleased as punch to see some of my Hypergallery favourites making the shortlist and will be snapping up a set or two for my own personal collection........of rock goodies, just to be clear.