![]() The cover, featuring a baby chasing a dollar bill while swimming in a pool of water is instantly recognizable. The album style is a significant departure from the band’s first album in that frontman Kirt Cobain took a more commercial, melodic approach to songwriting thanks to his influences of REM, The Melvins, The Smithereens, and Pixies. The American rock scene was dominated by ‘Hair Metal’ bands Nevermind changed all that. If there’s one thing everyone agrees on about Nirvana’s second studio album, it’s that it changed the direction of popular music and set the scene for a decade. Steve Jones claims he overheard the phrase said by fans, but vocalist Johnny Rotten later explained its meaning is a working-class expression, meaning “stop talking rubbish”. The album was originally titled God Save Sex Pistols until it was replaced by “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols”. The brash colors clearly represent the bands in your face attitude and musical delivery. Jamie Reid is the artist behind the bold, iconic album cover whose crude newspaper cut-out style has defined much of the punk aesthetic. As they say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity, and today, Never Mind the Bollocks is regarded by many as the most influential punk album. They were also fired from two record labels. The Sex Pistols were perhaps the epitome of punk, with their infamous bad attitude gaining them countless bans from playing live across the UK. Add into the mix the fact Sid was famously bad at playing bass, to the point where guitarist Steve Jones had to step in and play bass during the various recording sessions.īut hey, punk wasn’t about whether or not you could play, it was about attitude, shock, and shaking up the status quo. It’s even more impressive given the band changed bass player part-way through the recording when the original member, Glen Matlock left and was replaced by Sid Vicious. Never Mind the Bollocks is regarded by many as one the best debut albums of all time it was also their last album, which makes its longevity all the more impressive. No matter what your view of post-war architecture, the cover is undoubtedly a powerful portrait of progress. The new post-war concrete tower block is Sailsbury Tower in Birmingham. Turn around to the back (or better still, open the two so they’re visible together) and you complete the scene. It was attached to the wall of a partly demolished old house for the photograph. The front shows a 19th-century rustic oil painting that Robert Plant reportedly purchased from an antique shop. The album cover art is one you have to open fully to appreciate. The result has set the tone for big stadium rock drum sounds to this day. The large open ceiling made for a huge reverberant drum sound captured with only a few microphones. The most significant unconventional approach was to shift the drums to a large open staircase. The recording techniques are much less conventional, thanks in part to the more informal location of Headley Grange (a country house in Hampshire, England c1795). The album’s style took the band in a more ethereal direction with plenty of influence from J.R Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings. For a band that didn’t release singles, the ubiquity of that song is quite the achievement. But, hey, there’s only one way to become “overplayed,” and that’s to strike a chord (so to speak) with the masses. Led Zep’s fourth studio album is the one most people know, least of all for the admittedly over-played Stairway to Heaven. Countless artists cite this album as a key influence undoubtedly, the album art played a big part in its lasting success. The album cover is such a pop icon we still talk about it to this day in 2008, the album was repressed on 180g vinyl, complete with the peelable banana sticker (this is the copy I own).īy combining modern art with avant-garde music, the album was both culturally revolutionary and boundary-pushing. Peeling back the banana skin revealed a flesh-colored banana underneath. Early copies of the album invited the owner to “Peel slowly and see”. The album cover is the famous Andy Warhol banana print. I’d go as far as to say, if you don’t recognize this famous album cover, there’s a good chance you’ve been living under a rock! He is credited as producing the album, although in reality, he had more influence on the album cover than the recording process. It was a commercial flop during its early years but eventually became recognized as one of the most influential rock albums of all time.įamously, the band were managed and produced by pop art sensation Andy Warhol. The lyrics are laden with controversial drug and sexual references and certainly played a big part in forming the 60s avant-garde sound. The album was just too controversial for some, both from an artistic aesthetic and a topical viewpoint. The album struggled to gain acceptance from many major labels before Verve finally decided to give it a shot.
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