While the golden age of records may never be recreated, the importance of album art has never diminished. Capturing a musician's talent visually is an essential part of their branding successs. Behind the album features several designers and their process for creating covers, posters, lyric books, and all the packaging essentials for top musicians. Many innovative designs from the past and recent times give the reader an idea of what is possible within the art of music packaging design.
AC/DC have reigned over rock 'n' roll for almost four decades. Their signature power chord rock was the sonic standard bearer of the genre they pioneered, summarised in Rolling Stone's declaration that they 'are one of the top hard rock bands in history'. The group has transcended their Australian roots to become a global phenomenon. Their albums consistently go platinum and they have earned their reputation as one of the best bands on the planet.The band's live arsenal includes 'It's a Long Way to the Top (If you want to Rock 'n 'Roll); 'Highway to Hell and 'You Shook Me All Night Long' and their influence is felt today as strongly as ever. 2008's Black Ice sold an astonishing more than 1.5 million copies in its first week, and would go on to sell seven million copies worldwide, spending several weeks on the top of the Billboard Top 200. In November 2012, Live at River Plate was released - the band's first live album for 20 years.Featuring exclusive interviews with producers and engineers, AC/DC in the Studio is the definitive account of the making of the greatest hard rock anthems of all time. Every album is featured in incredible detail, from 1975's TNT all the way to 2008 and Black Ice.
Focuses on the stories behind 100 of the most memorable album covers in the history of rock and roll music, tracing the history of rock music and culture from Elvis to Blur. The collection has been personally selected by Storm Thorgerson, known for his work on Pink Floyd album covers.
A starkly beautiful, wordless graphic novel about the end of the world by the cult artist and longtime Radiohead collaborator. A wild seascape, a distant island, a full moon. Gradually the island grows nearer until we land on a primeval wilderness, rich in vegetation and huge, strange beasts. Time passes and man appears, with clubs, with spears, with crueler weapons still—and things do not go well for the wilderness. Civilization rises as towers of stone and metal and smoke choke the undergrowth and the creatures that once moved through it. This is not a happy story, and it will not have a happy ending. Working in his distinctive, monochromatic linocut style, Stanley Donwood achieves with his art what words cannot convey, carving out a mesmerizing, stark parable of environmental disaster and the end of civilization.
Iron Maiden are without one of heavy metal's most successful indie bands. From their first album in 1980 they have led the way in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal with Billboard pointing out they have 'always been an underground attraction'. Though other pioneering peers like Metallica have been around on the scene just as long provided their own innovations metal and advanced the genre to a mainstream level, it was Iron Maiden who have been the fans' favourites. Their crossover to chart success showed many bands how it could be done. They were key in getting heavy metal to be accepted as a credible genre. With an impressive catalogue of 15 studio albums spread over 20 years including Iron Maiden (1980), The Number of the Beast (1982), Seventh Son of a Seventh Son and The Final Frontier (2010), their influence speaks for itself. For the first time ever, the writing and recording of such iconic hits as 'The Number of the Beast', 'Flight of Icarus', 'Two Minutes to Midnight', 'Wasted Years', 'Can I Play with Madness' and 'Hallowed Be Thy Name' are explored in-depth. This book takes you into the studio with a band who show no sign of slowing down and whose influence can still be heard in a thousand metal bands today.
This is a comprehensive, illustrated book about one of the most enduringly popular forms of music. Combining biography, critical analysis, and detailed reference sections, it profiles all the major heavy metal artists as well as a huge selection of other niche acts from around the world. Metal: The Definitive Guide includes new firsthand interviews with many major metal musicians and detailed discographies. It is the definitive metal encyclopedia.The over 300 illustrations in this book encompass fantastic including artist pictures and memorabilia such as posters, ticket stubs, and much more.
Inside the making of one of the biggest-selling albums of all time: Fleetwood Mac's Rumours Fleetwood Mac's classic 1977 Rumours album topped the Billboard 200 for thirty-one weeks and won the Album of the Year Grammy. More recently, Rolling Stone named it the twenty-fifth greatest album of all time and the hit TV series Glee devoted an entire episode to songs from Rumours, introducing it to a new generation. Now, for the first time, Ken Caillat, the album's co-producer, tells the full story of what really went into making Rumours—from the endless partying and relationship dramas to the creative struggles to write and record "You Make Loving Fun," "Don't Stop," "Go Your Own Way," "The Chain," and other timeless tracks. Tells the fascinating, behind-the-music story of the making of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, written by the producer who saw it all happen Filled with new and surprising details, such as Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham's screaming match while recording "You Make Loving Fun," how the band coped with the pressures of increasing success, how the master tape nearly disintegrated, and the incredible attention paid to even the tiniest elements of songs, from Lindsey playing a chair to Mick breaking glass Includes eighty black-and-white photographs
Bob Mould, Grant Hart, and Greg Norton formed Hüsker Dü in 1979 as a wildly cathartic outfit fueled by a cocktail of anger, volume, and velocity. Here's the first book to dissect the trio that countless critics and musicians have cited as one of the most influential bands of the 1980s. Author Andrew Earles examines how Hüsker Dü became the first hardcore band to marry pop melodies with psychedelic influences and ear-shattering volume. Readers witness the band create the untouchable noise-pop of LPs like New Day Rising, Flip Your Wig, and Candy Apple Grey, not to mention the sprawling double-length Zen Arcade. Few bands from the original American indie movement did more to inform the alternative rock styles that breached the mainstream in the 1990s. Hüsker Dü truly were visionaries.
