"Aqualung" cover story

[Matt Wilson]

The point that I am making is does he get a cut or a percentage every time that the Pink Floyd album cover is used in media?

[Thang-y]

Don't know but contracts, financing and expectation of merchandising such work is very well-established now and he's clearly OK with whatever he's got or he wouldn't keep doing it.

But yes would be interesting to know.

[`]

Always thought the guys from Hipgnosis were big mates with various PF members from their pre-band days.

[Thang-y]

OK, just read it through again.

Destitute?

Dad’s studio is located on the top floor of my parents’ brownstone on the Upper West Side.

Doesn't sound like it. Neither does being able to engage a few top music lawyers.

Given the haggard figure he created

You could say 'created'. Others would say 'interpreted'.

a character in the opening track, described as an “old man” with “Snots running down his nose / Greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes” who’s waiting for the Salvation Army to reopen. Poring over the lyrics, dad recalls saying to himself, “This is a misbegotten street person, an angry man at war with an unjust world, who would yell incoherent things.”
...
It’s a relatively simple image of Aqualung at rest, plunked on the sidewalk with a friendly dog perched by his side, a compositional choice informed, again, in part by the lyrics and partly by dad’s desire to be done with the job. “I was thinking, 'I've just got to finish this fucker,’" he said. After all, “I thought this was a throwaway gig."

He just wanted that fucking commission finished. Now, though he says it

— define[d] his career, even —

Because of the success of the album.

Dad cranked out a few sketches and snapped some photos, all of which have since been discarded or subsumed by dad’s haphazard storage and record-keeping system ..

And yet he was incredulous that the artwork got lost.

only to see his ownership of the work taken away

So this is what we're talking about. "Ownership". I say he was commissioned and paid for the works. If you work for or are commissioned for a newspaper article, they've paid for it and can use it how they like. (I've had my photos used and reused by publications with no such agreement - or even consideration).

As the artist discovered, ownership for merchandising wasn't covered in the original contract - which in fact was oral and closed with a handshake - not out of an attempt to rip him off but that's just how it was. When did things change?

when dad and Chrysalis came to a handshake agreement, as long as the paintings were originally considered “works made for hire,” the copyright for the paintings always belonged to Chrysalis, thanks to the 1909 Copyright Act. Copyright laws were amended in 1978, making it more difficult for commissioned works to qualify as “works made for hire”

Generally speaking. I'm sure practice and very specific contractual wording is very-well established now.

[Thang-y]

well, I don't see how this is any different than P.T. Barnum giving the guy who bit the heads off chickens a bottle at the end of the week. Hey, quit complaining, you got paid. well, how nice it would have been for P.T. to take a video, sell the videos and then never buy that guy another bottle of booze.

Except the non-destitute chicken-biter got 10,000 bottles of booze in today's booze currency for a very brief chicken-biting gig when he was just a young chicken botherer.

[Thang-y]

If the tramp is not meant to represent Ian Anderson then why did Silverman paint him to look like Anderson? I've spent most of my life assuming that it was meant to him and clearly Anderson thought the same.

Silverman photographed Anderson in the pose for the front cover and Anderson asked him to not give it his likeness and was a bit annoyed when he did. Maybe Terry Ellis told him to do it that way as a better marketing ploy. Who knows.

[Matt Wilson]

If the tramp is not meant to represent Ian Anderson then why did Silverman paint him to look like Anderson? I've spent most of my life assuming that it was meant to him and clearly Anderson thought the same.

Silverman photographed Anderson in the pose for the front cover and Anderson asked him to not give it his likeness and was a bit annoyed when he did. Maybe Terry Ellis told him to do it that way as a better marketing ploy. Who knows.

Ah, this makes sense. I'd love to see the actual photograph.

[Charlie O.]

Silverman photographed Anderson in the pose for the front cover and Anderson asked him to not give it his likeness and was a bit annoyed when he did.

Where did this info come from?

[Thang-y]

An Ian Anderson quote.

[Quaco]

Thought SU was one of hte best album covers of that era.

Think B tries to carry the stand up figures from the gatefold through, but the whole thing looks hopelessly cheap.

The other great cover that JT did around then was the double Living In the Past comp which contained a full colour book housed
in some kind of lavish leather-look cardboard

If Benefit actually had had a foldout cardboard stage and real cardboard band members you could place on it, that would have been better.

It's been said a few times here, and I can't dispute it, that some massive percentage of "this type of thing" ends up in the cutout bin immediately and for all eternity (for narrative purposes, there is a 1980s indie-ish band called Dumptruck - yes, Dumptruck - whom I have never heard, nor have I ever seen a record cover: their trade name lends itself well to a certain type of shorthand. To the point that is made upthread, I'm guessing no one feels they were unjustly compensated for their contribution to those records).

They had a couple good songs, like a less-pretentious R.E.M.

[Darkness_Fish]

See Coan, you mock NOW PLAYING, and this is what you get.

Careful what you wish for.

[C]

Notwithstanding, a great cover





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