Psaxnontas gia Marillion brhka mia poly endiaferousa synenteyxh tou Mark Wilkinson (sto rock avenue-aygoustos 2005 )o opoios exei kanei ta cover twn marillion alla kai kapoia twn judas priest kai twn iron maiden (
na o koinos syndesmos loipon 
)
exei plaka giati analyei kapoies leptomereies apo ta exwfylla twn marillion, twn priest kai twn maiden..oloi eyxaristhmenoi loipon
HH: „What project are you currently working on?“
MW: “I´m doing some merchandise designs for HIM, a DVD sleeve for Judas Priest, a solo album project for Glenn Tipton, some postage stamp designs for next year´s World Cup Football, an album sleeve for an Oz band called Medusa, Merch design for Juliette And the Licks, a book jacket design and some touring stuff for Fish´s next tour.”
HH: “First of all one of these boring fan questions – which LPs are lying on the floor on the ´Script´ and ´Fugazi´ albums next to the Pink Floyd albums?”
MW: “Now you are asking…see if I can remember off the top of my head…´Sacucerful of Secrets´ and ´The Wall´ from Floyd, ´Do you dream in colour´ by Bill Nelson and various singles by Marillion (I think).”
HH: “On the ´Market Square Heroes´ and the ´He knows you know´ cover art the jester is some kind of hiding behind the mask before he finally can be seen on the ´Script´ cover. Were you aware of the fact that Derek Riggs did a similar thing for the first Iron Maiden Single and then for their debut album?”
MW: “No I wasn´t aware of that. What was their first single sleeve design then? I don´t think I know it, I know their album sleeves better.”
HH: “Whenever I look at the ´Market Suare Heroes´ sleeve, I must think of Beefheart´s ´Trout Mask Replica´. What do you think about this analogy?”
MW: “What I think is ´great honour – thank you´. I love that album, love that cover, love that whole period of album sleeve art.”
HH: “What makes an album cover an extraordinarily good album cover?”
MW: “One that succeeds in making people think ´what is that?´ and if they don´t know the band feel as if they want to discover what they are like. ´Never judge a book by its cover´ they say…and I suppose some people might think you would be stupid to buy an album purely because of the cover…but I still do.”
HH: “Have you ever bought an album only because of its cover art?”
MW: “Oh yes! The worst example was when I bought an album by The Residents purely because of the cover…and the album was unlistenable, which I´m sure they would feel is a worthwile concept…being the kind of subversive artists they are. I bought a Tool album ´Lateralus´ because of the artwork; I´d never heard of them before that album, didn´t know what they sounded like…they were ´off my radar´ so to speak. But I began a fascination for the band and all their albums because of that first exposure to them from a visual perspective. I love their artwork and because of it I bought all the albums, luckily the music is as extraordinary as the artwork. I knew about Captain Beefheart from the beginning of his career because of John Peel playing him, but had I seen ´Trout Mask Replica´ before knowing who he was I would have bought the album because of the cover I´m sure, as I love interesting packaging. I bought a Durutti Column album in the eighties because the cover was made of sandpaper…brilliant idea…you put the album in your collection and it scrapes away at the albums either side…the album was brilliant too. The best example of packaging craziness though has to be an album by Tricky where the CD was sown up in a velvet bag so you couldn´t see the artwork. The idea was that people would have to buy two copies so they wouldn´t ruin the packaging of at least one for their collection! So that wasn´t such an extraordinary album cover, but it was an extraordinary concept. I love the idea of playing with people´s expectations of what´s inside the ´product´…I don´t get to do that much really as people come to me expecting to get a certain style of artwork. Maybe the metal box I did for Iron Maiden…originally I designed 3 inch ´spikes´ coming out of the box. The record company went bananas. ´You can´t do that…someone might cut themselves´ which I thought was a great idea for this band whose name was derived from a Victorian instrument of torture! But alas the legal eagles at EMI had it toned down for fear of a lawsuit from some poor fan cutting his fingers trying to open the box…shame…mind you the shipping was going to be a nightmare too. What with all those spikes tearing out the boxes!”
HH: “You did ´Painkiller´ and ´Ram it down´ for Judas Priest. Was the fist on the ´Ram it down´ cover inspired by Ken Kelly´s art for ´Rainbow Rising´?
MW: “No, I don´t know that artist or that album, sorry. The sleeve concept originally was to be a massive hammer hitting a blacksmith´s anvil with a huge blast of sparks. The metal fist was my idea after that failed to work in a very interesting way in the concept roughs.”
HH: “What do you think is the share of the album cover for the commercial success of the album?”
MW: “A great album sleeve can certainly help a great album be an even greater artistic success. But a great cover will not create a success out of a turkey. If the music´s crap, people won´t buy it. They aren´t stupid. In these days of downloading and MP3-ness, I doubt most of the younger set care much about the artwork. My son can save a whole day´s worth of music on to his MP3 player which he carries with him everywhere. He does buy albums but never cares for packaging that much. They get tossed into a corner of his room and he concentrates on the music alone. Where it comes into his life is through the T-Shirts and the marketing before the album is released. If he sees something interesting visually in the music magazines he is made aware of the album and takes time to watch out for it´s release. So it still works as a marketing tool, just in a different way to when I used to browse the record shops looking for interesting record sleeves housing (hopefully) interesting music. You can´t get too excited by CD packaging…shopping in some soulless Virgin Records with disinterested Saturday boys behind the counter not knowing about the stuff they sell. You have to know where to look I guess, and discover some little gem yourself; or find an independent shop with some class. Unfortunately they become fewer and fewer which is a shame. Gone are the days where you´d have a shop like the one that Nick Hornby wrote about in ´HiFidelity´, people with passion selling music to the passionately curious. They discover it now on the net. That´s where I find out about the new stuff anyway.”
HH: “You did some work for Iron Maiden, especially for the ´Eddies Archive´ box-set. What would you think about Derek Riggs creating his version of your classic jester figure?”
MW: “It really wouldn´t bother me, in fact I would be very interested in seeing what other artists would do with the jester. Whether Derek Riggs was pleased by other artists taking on the character ´Eddie´ who was his invention is another matter. But I dare say he is quite pleased to have moved on. Iron Maiden use a variety of different artists now to recreate the ´franchise´ of Eddie which is a good thing. Each artist brings his own artistic stamp to the various projects Maiden do and prevents it from becoming stale. I had my time with Eddie which I enjoyed. I don´t think I could have carried on as long as Derek did, or with the same degree of inventiveness. He´s acknowledged as the best of the Eddie artists, and rightly so.”
HH: “You´ve also created art for stamps. What´s the challenge to work for such a small format?”
MW: “It can be difficult as you have to work quite small, about A5 (half a sheet of type paper) and with my eyes giving in to old age and decrepitude it puts a strain on them. But I love it. The people behind the production of postage stamps take such great care with what they do. The printing (done in France usually) is so perfect, so exquisite. The end of the chain is ´the collector´ and they are very very fussy about the quality of the end product. I wish all companies took such care about what they do and how they present the artwork. It would help me enormously if they did.”
HH: “And finally what´s the worst album cover you´ve ever seen?”
MW: “Real to Reel´ by Marillion.”
Login
FAQ
/ balte / to fb forum / ston kolo sas
