Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - S9E04 - Sound + Vision: Album Covers As Marketing

Episode Date: January 23, 2020

This week on Under the Influence, we analyze album covers as marketing. We’ll look at a world famous record cover that was almost ruined by a zipper, why flights at Heathrow Airport had to be grounded for one band’s cover art and which album jacket is considered to be the worst of all time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan. You just have to love storytelling. Subscribe now and don't miss a single beat. new year new me season is here and honestly we're already over it enter felix the health care company helping canadians take a different approach to weight loss this year weight loss is more than just diet and exercise it can be about tackling genetics hormones metabolism felix

gets it they connect you with licensed healthcare practitioners online who'll create a personalized treatment plan that pairs your healthy lifestyle with a little help and a little extra support. Start your visit today at felix.ca. That's F-E-L-I-X.ca. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are.

So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. This is an apostrophe podcast production. king in it. You're in good hands with us. You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. Long before comedian Phil Hartman was a comedian, he had another profession. Hartman was born in Brantford, Ontario in 1948. When he was 10 years old, his family moved to the U.S.

There, he would go on to attend California State University and graduate with a degree in graphic art in 1974. His brother John went to work at the William Morris Talent Agency in Los Angeles. As he worked his way up the ranks of the entertainment industry, he began to get heavily involved in the music business. John began managing bands, and one of those bands was Poco. When the band needed an album cover, John hired his brother Phil. Phil had started a graphic design business and was doing a lot of advertising work.

Soon, he was busy designing album covers. Phil Hartman created some of Poco's most recognizable record covers, including the white minimalist horse cover for the album Legend, which contained two of their biggest hits, Heart of the Night and Crazy Love. Phil also designed many covers for the band America. Maybe the most famous is the band's 1975

greatest hits collection titled History, which reached number three on the Billboard charts. The cover was a watercolor painting of the band, a Phil Hartman original. Long before he pursued a career in comedy,

Phil Hartman also designed the Celtic style logo for Crosby, Stills, and Nash, which the band has used since the 70s and continues to use on their merchandise even today. His understanding of advertising and design helped him create the covers for over 40 albums, many of which you've had in your record collection for years. Little did you know you loved Phil Hartman's work long before you loved his work on Saturday Night Live. Album covers are an art form.

They not only capture the image of a band or express the music visually, album covers are marketing vehicles. The photography, illustration, and design of a record jacket can often dictate the success of an album. A great album cover captures attention, persuades record stores to put albums in the window,

helps the record stand out on the shelves, and leads to interesting advertising. The stories behind some of the most iconic rock and roll albums in history are fascinating, some are surprising, and some are hilarious. the influence. Alex Steinweis was born in 1917 in Brooklyn, New York. He was raised in a music-loving home and showed a talent for art at a young age. One of his high school teachers recognized Steinweis' ability and encouraged his artwork.

In 1934, Steinweis won a scholarship to the prestigious Parsons School of Design in New York. Not long after he graduated, he learned that CBS had purchased the American Gramophone Company and had renamed it Columbia Records. They were also looking for an art director. Steinweis applied and was hired. His job was to create advertisements for the company. While creating those ads at Columbia, Alex Steinweis took a long look at the records the company was promoting.

At that time, records were stiff, 78 RPM shellac-coated discs. They could only hold four or five minutes worth of music per side. So, multiple discs were packaged in pasteboard covers. You've probably seen these old records in antique stores. They look like binders with accordion-like

sleeves, the covers plain tan or green, stamped with the title of the work and the name of the artist. Steinweis thought it was ridiculous that beautiful music was being sold in an empty piece of cardboard. He felt there was no sales appeal. So he approached the management of Columbia Records with an idea. He wanted to design art for album covers. The brass balked at first, saying artwork would add to the cost. But Steinweis stood his ground and argued that artwork would attract the eye, that it could represent the beautiful music inside, and that

cover art would be a competitive marketing advantage over rival RCA records. It was a historic moment. Alex Steinweis was making a case to revolutionize the marketing of records. And get this, he was only 22 at the time. Alex Steinweis was making a case to revolutionize the marketing of records. And get this, he was only 22 at the time. But the vice president of sales liked his thinking. So, the young art director was given a test to create a cover for a collection of Broadway songs by Rogers and Hart. His design was striking. It looked like a brilliant theater marquee

with the name of the album in lights. It sold extremely well. Next, Steinweis redesigned an album cover for a Beethoven symphony that had originally been released in a plain package. Sales jumped 900%. That's when the management at Columbia Records changed its tune and Steinweis was off to the races.

Rivals RCA and Decca saw what Columbia was doing and put out albums with reproductions of existing paintings on the covers. But they didn't sell nearly as well as Steinweis' innovation of original cover art with strong images, distinctive lettering, and inventive color combinations. He began designing beautiful album covers for all the Columbia recording artists. From 1939 to 1945, he created cover art for over 850 albums. Alex Steinweis, still in his 20s, changed the way albums were designed and marketed. The record industry would never be the same.

In 1939, a record label called Blue Note was established in New York City, specializing in traditional jazz. Sixteen years later, in 1955, the company hired a young, 28-year-old art director named Reed Miles to adapt the covers of its existing catalog of 10-inch LPs and create the artwork for its new 12-inch LP releases of modern jazz. Reed Miles was born in Chicago and raised in California. He enrolled in art school after his time in the Navy, then moved to New York to look for a job. He landed at Esquire Magazine, where he attracted the attention of Blue Note Records. Not long after, the record company hired him as one of its first designers. What Reed Miles did at Blue Note

was nothing short of legendary. A Reed Miles jacket cover had defining features. He cropped photos in interesting ways. For budgetary reasons, Blue Note confined him to only one color per album besides black and white, and he used that constraint brilliantly. He liked rectangular bars, angular titles, and his use of white space was nothing short of daring. One look at a Reed Miles design and you instantly knew it was a Blue Note release, even though no two album covers

looked the same. He got 50 bucks an album, and for that small fee, Reed transformed the way jazz was marketed. During his time at the record company, Reed Miles created over 500 historic album covers for legendary jazz artists like Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, and John Coltrane. Reed left Blue Note in 1967 and eventually moved into the world of advertising as a photographer. And that's where I met him, when my agency hired him to shoot a photo for a big print campaign. Reed was quite the character. Big bushy mustache, a loud voice reminiscent of comedian Rip Taylor, and full of strong opinions.

His photography work occasionally led him back to album design. And if you look through your record collection, you'll see his work on the cover of the Chicago Nine Greatest Hits album. The legendary Read Miles passed away in 1993, but will always be remembered and revered for his groundbreaking designs on Blue Note jazz albums. And he told me something interesting once. He was never a jazz fan. When the Beatles released the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band album in 1967,

it put a sizable dent into musical history. Not just for the groundbreaking music, but the record jacket itself would literally change album cover design for all time. The rough sketch came from McCartney. His idea was to record a concept album in the guise of an alter ego band. The album cover, designed by Peter Blake and Jan Hayworth, was to theoretically show a crowd who had just watched the Sgt. Pepper concert. It consisted of 57 photographs of famous people the Beatles admired, from Bob Dylan and Marlon Brando to boxers Sonny Liston and Oscar Wilde. The album was a gatefold that included a sheet of Sgt. Pepper cutouts.

Instead of a plain white paper inner sleeve, the Pepper sleeve was an abstract pattern of red, white, and pink waves. And the back of the LP offered a rock and roll first, printed lyrics. The record company was initially against printing the lyrics, by the way, because they feared it would damage sheet music sales. But they needn't have worried. The groundbreaking cover cost the equivalent of $85,000 to produce in an era when most record covers cost about 80 bucks to produce. But it was a pretty good investment. The album has sold over 30 million copies to date. Sgt. Pepper ignited a sea change in album design and marketing. And it also inspired the birth of a legendary album cover design company. And we'll be right back. If you're enjoying this episode, why not dip into our archives?

Available wherever you download your pods. Go to terryoreilly.ca for a master episode list. In 1967, Pink Floyd approached their friends, Aubrey Powell and Storm Thorgerson, to design the cover of their second album, Saucer Full of Secrets. The success of that cover led to other work from bands like The Pretty Things, Free, and T-Rex. With all that business coming in, Powell and Thorgerson decided to start a design company. They just needed a name. The two of them happened to share an apartment with Sid

Barrett of Pink Floyd, and one day Barrett scrawled a name in ballpoint ink on their door. It was hypnosis, spelled H-I-P-G-N-O-S-I-S. The word hip referenced the cool subculture. Gnostics suggested mystical knowledge, and the word hypnosis itself implied a trance state. It was perfect. Hypnosis was born. The Sgt. Pepper design had opened the minds of the founders of hypnosis. They suddenly realized they didn't have to think in a linear fashion. That an album didn't have to conform to a typical portrait of the band on the cover.

That inventive cover art could sell albums. Conversely, bands came to the realization they weren't bound to the conservative in-house art departments at record companies. The relationship between Pink Floyd and Hypnosis would bring on the next seismic change in cover art and marketing. When the band released Adam Hart Mother in 1970,

Hypnosis created an album cover that just showed the rear end of a cow in a field. And in a remarkably bold move, there was no band name and no title, just a cow in a field. The record company hated it, saying it wouldn't generate any interest because it was too blind. Pink Floyd loved it. Adam Hartmother would become Pink Floyd's first number one album in America. When people saw the image of the cow on billboards or in record store windows,

it didn't produce a lack of interest. It generated intense curiosity. It was the beginning of the dramatic, surreal album cover era. When Pink Floyd released Dark Side of the Moon in 1973, the album featured maybe the most famous hypnosis front cover of all time. In their typical style, it bore no band name or album title. It simply showed a ray of white light passing through a prism to form the bright colors of the spectrum against a dramatic black background. It was elegant and bold.

It was also a striking image to display in record store windows and in advertising. The LP stood out in the record bins. Dark Side of the Moon would remain in the Billboard charts for 741 weeks

between 1973 and 1988. It would re-enter the charts in 1991 to become a permanent presence, selling close to 50 million copies and counting. Today, in a slow week, it sells 8,000 to 9,000 copies

around the world. Hypnosis would go to great lengths to create Pink Floyd album covers, or should I say, great heights. Bassist Roger Waters had an idea for the cover of their 1977 Animals LP. He lived near an old power station, and he wanted to photograph a giant pig floating over the Victorian-era building. So they found an enormous plastic pig,

went to the power station, but the pig wouldn't inflate. So the shoot was cancelled. The following day, the pig was repaired, they went back to the site, the giant hog was inflated, it floated perfectly between the two chimneys on the power station,

and suddenly, the ropes holding the pig broke. It floated past the power station, then floated right into the air lanes at Heathrow Airport. Here's the best part. All flights coming into London and departing for Europe had to be grounded. Fighter jets were sent up to find the pig. It was last spotted by a startled 747 pilot at 40,000 feet. An alert was sent out on radio and television, asking the public to report any sightings of the floating pig. At 10 o'clock that night, the phone rang,

and a farmer said the pig had landed in a field at the back of his farm, and it was scaring his cows. Amazingly, the next morning, the police gave hypnosis permission to try photographing the floating pig once more. Only this time, a marksman was on hand to shoot it down in case the porker broke free again. The pig behaved, the shot was captured, and another memorable Hypnosis Pink Floyd album cover went into the history books. The Rolling Stones hit their stride in the 70s with one of the more iconic album covers.

Designed by Andy Warhol, the LP showed a close-up of a bulging male crotch in jeans. The record was called Sticky Fingers, and what made it highly marketable wasn't just the photograph, but the fact it contained a real zipper. And when you pulled the zipper down,

you saw white cotton underwear. Some found it obscene, but it was a marketing department's dream because the press wrote about it endlessly, and it was perfectly in keeping with the Stones' bad boy image. The band even posed for a Sticky Fingers ad, without pants on, each holding the album at crotch level. The inventive cover did eventually pose one problem. The zipper began to damage the vinyl when the albums were stacked. Solution? Pull the zipper halfway down

so that it pressed on the label, not the vinyl. It was also the first Stones album to feature the now-famous Tongue & Lips logo. The design would become a marketing bonanza for the band. Emblazoned on t-shirts, hats, key rings, coffee cups, and just about everything you could imagine. New year, new me. Season is here and honestly we're already over it. Enter Felix, the healthcare company helping Canadians take a different approach to weight loss this year. Weight loss is more than just diet and exercise.

It can be about tackling genetics, hormones, metabolism. Felix gets it. They connect you with licensed healthcare practitioners online who will create a personalized treatment plan that pairs your healthy lifestyle with a little help and a little extra support. Start your visit today at felix.ca. That's F-E-L-I-X dot C-A. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program,

they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. In the 1970s, a band knew they had made it when their record company put up a giant billboard advertising their album on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. The choice of location was strategic marketing because a large number of influential radio stations were located on the strip.

The first record album to ever be advertised on a giant billboard there was The Doors' debut album in 1967. When Abbey Road came out in 1969, a giant reproduction of the cover was put up on a billboard, with the Beatles' heads protruding above the top of the board. And if you're old enough to remember, there was a Paul is Dead rumor floating around at the time, claiming McCartney had died in a car accident, forcing the band to replace him with a lookalike. And the Abbey Road album was supposedly full of clues. Conspiracy theorists believe the cover symbolized a funeral procession.

George in denim was the gravedigger, Ringo in black was the minister, Lennon's all-white suit was the color of mourning in Eastern religions, and Paul walked barefoot, symbolizing some cultures where the dead are buried without shoes. And he was holding a cigarette, a sign of death. There was a Volkswagen parked on the side of the road in the photo with a license plate that said 28 if, supposedly stating Paul would have turned 28 if he had lived. On the back of the album, there is a series of dots in the upper left corner

that, if joined, formed the number 3, signifying the remaining three Beatles. There was also a crack running through the Beatles' name on the back cover. The band decided not to comment for a long time because the hoax was fueling record sales. Meanwhile,

on Sunset Boulevard, someone scaled the giant billboard late one night and cut McCartney's head off. The record company decided to leave McCartney headless on the billboard for one very specific reason. It generated a ton of attention. Photos of the headless billboard ran in newspapers around the world. When the Rolling Stones released their Black and Blue album in 1976, the record company erected a giant billboard showing a woman tied up B&D style

with the headline, I'm black and blue from the Rolling Stones and I love it. Shocking, to say the least, and it didn't take long for someone with a spray can to add graffiti to the board that said, quote, this is a crime against women. Not all graffiti was done by outraged fans, by the way. When Bruce Springsteen released Darkness on the Edge of Town that same year,

the record company put up a giant billboard on Sunset promoting the album. Springsteen thought the billboard was so ugly that he, saxophonist Clarence Clemens and bassist Gary Talent, climbed the billboard late one night with 20 cans of black spray paint. They wrote graffiti all over the sign, and because there was no mention of the E Street band on the board, they spray-painted E Street in huge letters. Springsteen even said he climbed up on Clarence Clemens' shoulders

to paint a mustache on his own face, but the billboard was just too high and he couldn't reach. In the world of marketing, very occasionally, a product will sell well even though it has terrible advertising. It's a bit of a mystery to us in the marketing world. Bad advertising is usually either invisible or insipid. But somehow, someway, there are products that seem to succeed in spite of their advertising. It usually comes down to one reason.

The product is so good, it can overcome bad marketing. That happens occasionally in the world of album cover design, too. Take the Beach Boys' historic Pet Sounds album. It has been heralded as one of the greatest albums ever made. It contains two of Brian Wilson's towering achievements, Wouldn't It Be Nice and God Only Knows. The Beatles said Pet Sounds inspired Sgt. Pepper. But the cover? Not so much.

It showed the Beach Boys feeding goats. While beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and there certainly is a pet connection going on there, that cover tops just about every list of the worst album covers of all time. Yet, that remarkable record overcame its, shall we say, unfortunate cover. How that cover ever got approved by the Beach Boys and the record company,

God only knows. When Alex Steinweiss persuaded his bosses to let him design artwork for album covers, little did they know he was changing music history. Alex made music for the eyes, and thus began the art of album cover design. From that point on, kids around the world would sit in their bedrooms examining every inch of those 12 by 12 inch pieces of art.

Sometimes the covers fascinated us. Sometimes they puzzled us. And more often than not, they seduced us. Reed Miles once said, to be a good designer, you have to be

a good storyteller. And those artists who created iconic record covers were indeed gifted storytellers. But it wasn't art for art's sake. It was art in the service of selling records.

Dramatic and unforgettable covers that helped sell millions of albums. Album covers that are still iconic 50 years later. In part two of our episode, we'll track the evolution of cover art as CDs suddenly shrink the available space dramatically, and record companies begin to worry that reduced cover art may affect music marketing. We'll also explore the arrival of the digital era, where album art pixelized and shrunk again to the size of a postage stamp. But when it comes to marketing, there's always a way to keep you

under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. This episode was recorded in the Terrastream Mobile Recording Studio. Producer, Debbie O'Reilly. Sound Engineer, Keith Ullman. Co-Writer, Sidney O'Reilly. Theme music by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre. Research, Callie O'Reilly.

If you liked this episode, you might also enjoy Marketing Hit Songs, Season 4, Episode 6. You'll find it in our archives wherever you download your podcasts. Tune in for Part 2. See you next week. For best results, enjoy the Pet Sounds album without actually looking at the Pet Sounds album.