The most iconic album covers are often some of the simplest. Just think about it … Four guys cross the street across from the place where they work. Genius!
Now, it also helps if those four guys are the most famous popular musicians ever. But you’d also be surprised at how much work went into this as well.
First, there was the idea from Paul, represented by this very rough sketch he put together.
Art director Kosh then ran with it.
Next, the boys had to all get dressed up.
Finally, the police had to stop traffic (for 10 whole minutes), photographer Iain McMillan mounted a step ladder, and then 6 shots later … history.
Kosh has been here before, for Hotel California (and some Linda Ronstadt, Randy Newman, and Spinal Tap as well).
McMillan gets 25 more credits on discog.com, mostly for John and Yoko. No less than 4 of these are just ringing the changes on one particular image (all of which, though, are pretty creative):
Which means it's probably not a bad time to cover some favorite Lennon covers:
I probably don’t need to say anything about the Beatles, or about Abbey Road. The album is not my favorite (that would actually be the White Album), but I do think it’s definitely their magnum opus. I always really liked the way it all hung together, especially on the second side.
If this blog went on number of parodies generated, Abbey Road would rank #1 by a long way. Amiright.com list no less than 30 … and that’s just for the A’s!!! Multiply that by 26 more letters, and that gives us over 800!
Even the original participants got in on it. Here’s something from Paul, along with something from the photographer as well:
Of course, neither of those compare to these:
The cover is a big part of an album entering the public imaginarium. This also includes the parodies; even I made my own Abbey Road parody with Nintendo characters once.
ReplyDeleteCare to share that here? I'd love to see what you came up with
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