Judging Albums by Their Covers: Ten Jackets that Rocked My World...

If you store your vinyl this way, go die. 

Sincerely, Anyone Who Has Ever Loved Vinyl

Blame it on the early June sunshine or the copious amounts of free time, but my brain has been coasting in the slow lane of memories for days now…and that ride always has a very specific soundtrack.

I started playing with the idea of how music and memory are connected, when it occurred to me that I was neglecting the power of the trifecta: there are images that accompany those melodies and memories and, to overlook their importance was to deny a foundational component of why they had become as deeply buried under my skin as any of my tattoos.

I hang out with way too many record store snobs who only listen to eighth generation Pussy Galore bootlegs, so I usually keep my relatively mainstream musical choices to myself, lest I suffer their condemnation—but album covers seem to hold a universal power over the collective unconscious.  They tap into different crevices of the brain and leave fingerprints as indelible as the melodies contained within their sleeves, music snobs be damned.

Album jackets used to obsess me, from my earliest memories of coveting my mom’s admirable collection to building my own archive.  As a latchkey kid from my first kindergarten days, my afternoon routine was set: 1) Get out homework, 2) Make butter and sugar sandwich [Jesus, how did I avoid juvenile diabetes?], and 3) Fill the quiet by sitting with said stack of vinyl, spinning records until my mom got home.

I loved the music to be sure—but often, it was the art and the liner notes that truly infatuated me and kept me company.  I sensed, at a ridiculously early age, that album covers were cryptic texts which held keys that would unlock the garden where the grown-ups hid the tree of good and evil, filled with the fruit of knowledge for which I was already developing a preternatural appetite.

To fill the sunshine today, may I present an extremely truncated list of the album covers that most captured my imagination and still vibrate within that delicate balance of fading innocence and eventual awareness that lives within us all:

 

Rod Stewart, “Blondes Have More Fun”—Yes, I loved the album…but oh, those photos.  The photos.  The way Rod’s eyes were directed into my tiny five year old (yes, you heard me right) soul?  I genuinely remember opening the album vertically and dancing with the Rod’s giant head, kissing his cheeks (and maybe the lips…as long as my mom wasn’t home).  I probably logged more hours on those eyes as a child than I have in my entire marriage.  Whoops. 

   

 

Bob Dylan, “Blood on the Tracks”—The music of this album often made me feel like I’d walked into one of those taboo conversations between adults, but the album itself did not judge my awareness of it.  From the pointillism of Bob falling apart in the cover art to the archaic bits of notes from deeper within, I knew something was wrong, but I was too young to know what…and the dichotomy of that confusion was intoxicating. 

   

 

Ohio Players, “Honey”—I was seven when I discovered this album amongst my mom’s stash.  If you’ve seen the cover or, God help you, opened it, you know damn well why this jacket would sear itself in a brain: it was the aural equivalent of finding your father’s stack of stroke magazines.  There is nothing esoteric or ironic about “Honey”, it is straight erotica…and it still works  (I stand by my theory that “Honey” is the single greatest influence on Frank Ocean's uncut “Pyramids” video).  Pure hormonal confusion.

  

Linda Ronstadt, “Living in the USA”/ Barbra Streisand, “Superman”/ Carly Simon “Playing Possum”—The thing with these three albums was that they completely inverted my (ridiculously young, admittedly) world view of women in general, not just women in music.  As a daughter of the seventies, perhaps I have a different take on this than the gentlemen, after all, I was only at the precipice of the idea that women could be smart and sexy, talented and desirable—and that these concepts were not mutually exclusive.  I mean, women with rare talent, torching it up with raw sex appeal—unafraid to show as much of their bodies as they were their intellect?   Fuck yeah.  [And for those guys who just stared at their legs?  You suck.]

 

 

  

The Eagles, “Hotel California”—Minute for minute, probably the album that charted more time burning itself into my retinas than any other.  I NEVER tire of listening to the album—those badasses of bluegrassy rock are in my blood and therefore always in my heart, so music snobs can step off—but damn.  That jacket.  Oh, the controversy!  Oh, the inside meaning!  Oh, who GAVE a SHIT?  I just loved the drama of interpreting its meaning as much “Abbey Road” or “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, manufacturing stories from their implications.  God bless those crazy fucking seventies musicians—I think they single-handedly made a writer of me.

 

 

Fleetwood Mac, “Rumours”—Do I even really have to explain this one?  The music is unquestionably amazing—but that photo…that PHOTO!  Mick’s lanky dominance?   Stevie’s elegant acquiescence?  The absence of everything but these two bodies, locked in a dance of mastery and submission?  I’m still breathless.

 

  

 

Patti Smith, “Horses”—Fun personal fact: I have a thing with androgyny.  I find the malleability of sexual identity fascinating…and any David Bowie album could have made this list for that very reason.  [There’s a story involving a drag club in college and my falling in love for a night with a stunning queen with red hair and an emerald dress and the greatest laugh I ever heard that would explain this all further—but you’ll have to take me out for drinks if you want that one.]  Suffice it to say that the cover of “Horses” conveys an underlying intimacy that sucked me in, even as a young girl—Smith exudes this strange quality of harmony with herself that is completely devastating.  I was drawn to this decades before her fabulous memoir “Just Kids” delineated the relationship she shared with the photographer, her former lover and best friend, the inimitable Robert Mapplethorpe.  You can almost feel the ache behind the bravado.

 

The Ramones, “Ramones” / Rolling Stones, “Sticky Fingers”—the moment I pulled the Ramones album  from the stack was the moment a little girl’s palate for men was forever set for the rest of her life.  I mean, come ON:  Hair.  Legs. Jeans. Leather.  Honey-badger-don’t-care-expressions.  Legs.  So many inches of legs.  Yeah, so the Stones’ “Sticky Fingers” caused the same impulse, but with far less subtlety.  I’m actually a little embarrassed to admit how much I studied this cover (sadly, more than I ever listened to the album)—but, personal note: I can attest that I learned to draw the human form off of the delicate lines of Johnny’s body.  The way he’d stepped forward and claimed dominion over the photo?  Yeah, I really, really liked that.  [What was I saying again?]  

Prince, “Purple Rain”—This was one of my very first vinyl purchases of my very own, so loving this album (and its cover) were easy statements of my own burgeoning independence and autonomy in my musical sensibilities.  The photography is straight-cheesy-80’s gloss—but undeniably attractive to ten-year-old eyes.  The directness of its message was inescapable to little-me: I mean, just look at the rack on that woman waiting in the doorway for her Prince to come [don’t you just love what I did there?] and yet he’s still looking at ME with those eyes—holding out for ME to hop on the back of that bike with him and ride off into the night…!  Goodbye adolescence…

 

Nirvana, “Nevermind”—Sigh.  Kurt Cobain.  It still hurts so bad.  I could write volumes on the impact this man has had on my world.  His role in my psyche vacillated from lover to father to messiah and back again.  His time in my life was too brief and I still know exactly where I was and what I was doing the moment I learned of his death.  I wept.  But, I’m here to talk about the album cover, not the mythology of the man.  Prior to Nirvana, I was listening to a lot of early 90’s R&B after withdrawing from my hair-metal addictions.  Once “Nevermind” arrived, it was all over—I dove head first into rainy West-Coast cities and boys who wore flannel and Ethan Hawke films.  The taste of it all still lingers in my mouth—I’m an English teacher and I still write nevermind like this, despite its complete inaccuracy.  I remember when this album was first available in the tiny town I lived in; there was a ridiculous Walmart-related outcry over the baby’s weenie.  I was seventeen and in utter loathing of the very basis of the controversy, so I refused to buy the weenie-less copy and drove forty five minutes away to the nearest real city to purchase the uncensored version of the album.  The message of the album jacket may not have been subtle, but “Nevermind” made me connect the myriad of unconscious choices we make every day as we train our children to covet the wrong things… and forever solidified the album as one of the greatest in my memories.

It’s kind of hard to stop at ten…there are countless other album covers that entertained, delighted, and enthralled me.  It’s even harder to admit that my vinyl and I parted ways several moves ago [I actually think it was all left behind in a cold, dark basement in a move after college…and the thought haunts me every day.]  I think sometimes about starting over…finding a shop and sharing the experience with my kids.  I miss the sound of a record and the familiarity of sitting down, perusing a jacket—but, then I remember that I’m already mocked mercilessly for my lack of smartphone technology or fuel efficient vehicles…so perhaps I have to let this one go. 

It’s lonely being a dinosaur in a digital age.  Rawr.