Fourth Grammy nomination

This year it is no less sweet to find myself nominated but uniquly so with my wife Jenice and Neil himself nominated with me. Not sure what I’ll wear but I’m pretty sure it won’t touch my first and second nomination outfits. Or will it?! I believe it’s reward enough to still be here doing what I love to do; making visual the music I so love. Hey, maybe four’s a charm.

First Grammy nomination

Second Grammy nomination

Third Grammy nomination

My first Grammy nomination was in 1969 for Richard Pryor’s comedy album. It was understandably a big deal. When I was notified of the nomination I immediately went to the largest Hollywood movie costume house and rented a tuxedo made for Elvis Presley that had sequined lapels and sequined stripes down the trouser legs. Oh boy! The coolest thing was that it fit me like a glove. Yeah, me and Elvis!

My second nomination was in 1975 for Eagles, One Of These Nights and for this one I went back to the costume house and rented a black mariachi suit with silver conchos down the pants legs and a jacket with tons of silver chains and buttons. ¡Aye caramba! I was a sight to see.

My third nomination came in 1995 for the Neil Young and Pearl Jam album Mirrorball. Don’t let anyone kid you about “Just being nominated is award enough”. I wanted to win and thought “Hey, three’s a charm” right, right? Nope. I didn’t rent a fancy costume for this one but I do remember, albeit fuzzily, that night. Neil, his manager Elliot Roberts and I made a point of hitting every Grammy party we could find into the wee hours of the morning. Ah, youth.

The Blu Ray version of the Neil Young Archives Vol. 1 is by far the most comprehensive and interactive box set ever done. The design was originally meant to be a box that could house 10 CDs, a poster, the stash box, and a book. But, as we worked with the archivists and found more and more material, I began to see the ways that I could make the "box" more than a box.

The box. The original design of the outer box was flatter and more square so that it would fit into a wooden frame, but we realized that would be too costly, and not the best way to house the discs, so we went for a taller design, so that everything could stand up in the box. I incorporated newspaper into the background design of the box, as well as the case that houses the discs. It also mirrors the contents of the journal, which contains hundreds of newspaper articles — I think it really ties the Archives together. The thick black lettering that wraps the outter box was intentional for store displays.  When you put four boxes side by side it spells out Neil Young.   The artwork on top of the box is a piece done by my wife, Jenice Heo, called "Neil Letters," from her Neil Young Series.

The stash box. Anyone who grew up in the 60's will get the significance of the stash box.  It was another way to pay homage to the times.  I wanted to include a pack of rolling papers and a lighter, but that wouldn't fly. But we did manage to print a few forgotten seeds in the corners. The wood grain design inside the stash box is remnant of one of the first design concepts of fitting the whole Archives box into a wooden frame.  This stash box hidden within the larger box contains a replica of a Whisky A Go Go "speaking pad," a bonus Sugar Mountain Live at Canterbury House 1968 CD & DVD, and a card that can be used to download MP3s of all the audio tracks from the Archives.

The discs. The design of the DVD box mimics the design of the big Archive box in that it has the newspaper background and the thickly painted black letters that spell out NEIL. On the back side of this is a closeup shot of Neil in jeans that I colored in by hand. Inside the box are 10 DVDs that tell Neil's life from 1963 - 1972. The images on each sleeve come straight from Neil's past and correspond to the music and time period covered by the DVD. You'll notice we worked newspaper into some of these, too.

The poster. The poster was designed by Toshi Onuki the Creative Director of Total Media Group, and organizes the information in the Neil Young Archives Vol. 1 exactly how we wish it had been before we began the project.

The journal. This was probably my favorite part of the design process. Neil has a leather bound journal that we wanted to imitate and include in the Archives because a journal is so private and also so telling. This journal, which contains rough lyrics, maps of Neil's travels, newspaper articles, old family photographs, sketches, notes, phone numbers and so much more. Out of everything in the Archives, the journal represents Neil's journey the best. We wanted the journal to feel and appear like Neil's original hand tooled, inked, and engraved journal without it actually being leather. We worked with material suppliers from around the world before we found Roswell Book Binding in Phoenix. They had the cover substrate handmade in Mexico and then silk-screened the substrate to match the colorization of Neil's journal from the 60's. We used Mohawk Via for the pages because the paper was sturdy enough to stand up to the heavy amounts of ink we used to get it as close to the original journal as possible, down to every coffee stain.

The overall process always starts with sketches — I sketch, Neil sketches, then we meet and talk about our ideas, just as if I were designing him another cover. Back before computers and Photoshop came along, I used to make dye transfers, and the process would take weeks. Now, we sketch things, scan them into Photoshop, email each other, edit it in Photoshop, send it back, then go back to the drawing board. The design is never really made in Photoshop, because I always start with the physical sample, then tweak it in Photoshop, and if it looks good in Photoshop, I make the tweaks to the physical sample. I use it as a tool, not as my workshop.

So, we started with sketches, then Neil called in our archivist, Joel Bernstein, who collected material from every conceivable source. To say the very least Joel is detail oriented. We went to Neil's ranch and laid out everything chronologically on a table and just walked around it for a while. I mean, man! There was a lot of material. Then, from there, we just kept collaging things together, figuring out how to incorporate them, then kept refining and changing it until we had what's in stores now.

From the beginning of my design career, paper has always been my thing. I like working with quality paper.  It started at Atlantic Records with Crosby, Stills, and Nash's first album when I insisted on having high quality paper and a real color separator.  I remember Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler cornering me in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, saying there was no way I was getting away with using expensive paper and my own color separator.  Jerry said they could put  a record in a paper bag and it would sell.  He felt that album covers were only to appease the artists.  But I had the backing of the artists. In fact, I think that cover may have paved the way and started the trend of seeking out quality papers for album covers.
From the beginning, when I choose a paper I always try to make sustainability part of the equation.  Mohawk papers are my favorite environmental papers to use. I first used Mohawk Options for the Oil on Ice DVD cover because it was 100% postconsumer waste. I remember researching paper for the project and reading that Mohawk manufactures paper with wind-generated power and that was it for me. I just thought that was so cool.

So, when we were deciding which paper to use for the journal, Mohawk was the first that popped into my mind. We needed a paper that could hold the heavy coverage and clarity of the images and hand written notes. We used Mohawk Via Vellum for the journal and decided to use it again for the 10 DVD/Blu-Ray wallet packs.

The journal is literally a walk through time with Neil.  A map of his life during those years, photos of him with other musicians, hand written notes about what was happening in his life, the beginnings of song lyrics.  It's like a time capsule of an era and using an environmental paper was important to keep in the mood of that time.

Neil Young Archives, vol. 1 pieces

It may have been 20 years in the making but it was one of the most enjoyable and collaborative projects I've ever worked on. Neil Young Archives, Vol. 1: 1963-1972 hit stores June 2, 2009

I have been working with Neil on album covers since his release of After the Gold Rush in 1970. I would listen in on Neil's recording sessions, I mean really listen to the music, and most of the time the music will tell me what the design wants to be. I'd present my ideas to Neil, and he'd give me his own ideas and feedback, and we would incorporate both into the album design.

Neil is a prolific writer and a has great vision.  It's nice to collaborate with someone that doesn't do design, they see beyond the boundaries we put on ourselves and push us further.  Often times he would come up with things that I never thought would work -- and they would! For instance, we had the the journal in the Archives, Vol. 1 pretty much ready to go, and Neil decided he wanted to have maps in the background of every page. I thought, no way that will work, but it ended up working really, really well. It adds an element of a journey, like walking in Neil's footsteps. Neil doesn't understand the concept of "we can't do that," and his ideas almost always end up being right. It has been and remains a great, always mind expanding trip.

Working with Neil has always been a rich collaboration for me. I'm continually learning from him, learning not to accept boundaries, and this has led to a rich friendship. Neil was even the best man at my wedding to Jenice Heo, who is a brilliant painter/artist and she contributed her talents to the box set.

The whole enchilada...

Neil had the idea for the Archives 20 years ago, back in 1989. At first, the Archive was going to be all of his work up until 1989, but as we worked with our archivist and gathered more and more material, we realized we would have to break it down into periods. We just had too rich a volume of visual material and music. When we started to think about how to present it,we quickly realized  there just wasn't the kind of technology back then to fully implement Neil's vision. We waited for CD's to come out, and then we realized that they wouldn't be what we needed. When DVD's were first introduced, we thought for sure we hit the jackpot, but even that wasn't enough. When Blu-Ray was launched we knew we had what we needed technologically to tell this story.

With Blu-Ray, not only do you have high definition video and interactive menus, but you can also access new material as it comes out and archive it, which is great because with that ability the Neil Young Archives is a living, breathing, constantly growing project. It really has a life of its own. We are making a second edition of  Vol. I with the new material and updates we've added so far.

This box set is unlike anything else.  There are about 60 hours of music, the Blue Ray version is customizable, you can go online and add material to your archive.  This is a truly organic project that has a life of its own.

I can't wait to see what the Volume 2 will hold for us all.

Something unique to rock and roll bands is the very special and nearly impossible dynamic of several powerful creative artists collaborating and making it work as a group on all of the levels that the situation demands. It is fascinating in the extreme.

Well, I never did get to make a cover for the Beatles though I did collaborate with Paul and Linda McCartney on a songbook. We used lots of Linda’s photos and it was cool working with the two of them. It was lots of fun and laughs in clouds of smoke. More on that sometime soon.

I was blessed to be able to work with Crosby, Stills and Nash and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young starting when they were a bunch of young guys. That experience set me on the path I am still trodding today. Thanks pals.

The Eagles were a band I worked with on their first several albums. We made some damn amazing covers if I do say so myself. These guys mean a lot to me. Talk about story telling with images in concert with the music, how about Desperado?

Anyway, I digress in order to progress.

This year, 2009, has been a very good and creatively rewarding year. We finished Neil Young’ Archival box set Volume l which I worked on for twenty years and we had the great good fortune to be asked to collaborate with Conor Oberst, Jim James, Matt Ward and Mike Mogis on the artwork for their musical collaboration, Monsters of Folk.

All in a matter of two years since we met these fine young artists who are keeping alive the best things that happened back in the day, and we had the opportunity to work with them making art. I’ve already lived a couple of second childhoods so these opportunities with My Morning Jacket, Conor Oberst solo record and now MOF is like yet another flood of Love, trust, innocence, brotherhood and the spirit of fun and play common to being a child. As Neil says; I am a Child.

For the MOF package we wanted something classic and craftsman like so I looked for inspiration from the likes of Aubrey Beardsley and William Morris. Conor had suggested the idea of drawn portraits of the four band members and we were lucky enough to find a wonderful illustrator in Matthew Hollings a young artist from London, England. We had many trans Atlantic calls and emails back and forth with him coming up with a drawing style and composition that suited our needs. Beardsley and Morris made beautiful natural looking twisty vines and purely organic designs and that was the direction we settled on. For inspiration on the portrait drawings we used photos taken by Autumn DeWilde. Matthew did a terrific job of creating the drawn portraits. He managed to capture the spirit of each of these unique artists. The packages themselves utilize a template we originally created for Neil Young. I have always disliked a vinyl package that when you put it down the “mouths” gape open and look like a mistake. The MOF board packages for the vinyl and CD are smooth, classy construction that looks like someone cared and the board is this beautiful material that has a really fine look and touch that says “quality”. The paper board is produced by a paper company that I love because of their environmental stand. Mohawk paper first got my attention when I learned that their papers are produced utilizing wind generated power. We have had some very successful collaborations with them on paper stock including Neil Young’s archival box set.

It never ceases to amaze me when magical sequences of events happen, are somehow tied together and make visible shifts in one’s life.

A little earlier in the same year we made the cover for Conor in Mexico we were invited to collaborate with Jim James on a cover for one of our most favorite bands’ ever My Morning Jacket. Wow! Jim came to Malibu where we live and we spent three intense days in our studio working out the cover art. Jenice and I had done many days of research and collecting images, stories, etc beforehand. It was electric when ideas were crackling around the room between the three of us. We were building a very large and elaborate montage of images to tell a story that started with Jim. It was about World’s Fairs and large congregation of humanity, energy, thought, art and money around a central idea that has global reach. These events were always met with great enthusiasm and people marked epochs in their lives by having attended a World’s Fair. One story that is a part of the lore of the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1890 was told in a very popular book The Devil in the White City. It tells of a serial killer who was connected to the Fair itself and was big news at the time in the city of Chicago. I really love the final art we made and think it is a “talking picture”; it has a story to tell and tells it eloquently. At the same time it’s very mysterious too.

My Morning Jacket had never had a photo of themselves on an album cover - it had always been some kind of art. This time we were able to include some beautiful photos of the band that Autumn De Wilde took in an elaborate gilded Baroque theatre building in Chicago. We integrated the balconies into the elaborate shapes and designs of the Ferris wheel and other structures at the Fair. I think this is one of the very best covers we have made. I love telling stories with images and that is what informs everything I do in visualizing the music I so love. For me it’s all about communicating visually and how you can orchestrate visual elements and put together a string of predictable responses utilizing the most subtle, honest and organic influences. When you are creating imagery for music you have that as a guide, a map and a thread to follow either with the lyric content or the tone, and mood of the music itself.

For awhile people were asking what ever happened to good music and bemoaning there not being good bands out there. I was so busy doing art for continuously new and exciting music with Neil Young that it never occurred to me there was any validity to that argument. In the end I have irrefutable verification that good music and all that goes with that is alive and well in the 21st Century. Conor, Jim and other young singer-songwriter troubadours are hard at work making music to feed our spirits.

Conor Oberst

I met Conor Oberst at Neil Young’s Bridge School Benefit a few years ago when his band, Bright Eyes, played the show. We instantly became friends and formed a bond that continues to grow stronger every day. In spite of Conor’s rigorous touring and my work schedule we have managed to spend a lot of time hanging out together.

In 2008 Conor decided to make his first solo record under his own name and surprisingly wanted to use an image of himself on the cover, a first for him. He invited me to make the cover art and I leapt at the chance to collaborate.

Conor had found Tepotzlan, an amazing little ancient Aztec village an hour west of Mexico City built around a small pyramid above the center of town. He rented a gated resort complex called Valle Mistico (Mystic valley), shipped in recording equipment and flew in the band and an engineer/musician. Everyone stayed in separate little casas, one of which was set up as the recording studio, they ate breakfast, lunch and dinner together every day and usually had some great adventure during the day with the night filled with making and recording music, cerveza and swinging in a hammock under the stars. In the process Conor and the band made a great record that has a lot of these experience in the songs. I got to photograph it all.

At Conor’s insistence I had agreed to take the photos myself for this package. This is something I had judicially avoided doing for forty years. I always had the vision of what I was going to make for the cover art and I first drew and figured it all out on paper. But when it came to realizing the image I was so intimidated by the camera that I hired photographers to do that part of the job and then I art directed everything; found the locations, put together wardrobe and directed the artists to realize the vision we had worked out beforehand. This time I was going to be responsible for all of it, including shooting the pictures.

My wife and I flew into Mexico City, were picked up by Conor and spent the next ten days hanging out, listening to great music being made and shooting photos all day. I had an idea of what I wanted to present Conor with and actually being there in Mexico was confirmation of how cool it would be. I was going for a “Viva Zapata” peon look. My wife and I scoured the little village of Tepotzlan looking for funky white muslin pants and shirts and authentic hats and sashes for Conor and the members of the band. Miraculously we found everything we needed in the living room of a little old lady who supplied costumes for native Indian dance performances. Genuine authentic outfits that had a lot of history and magical energies woven into the warp and woof of the antique garments.

The actual cover photo was taken late at night on the porch of a casa, in the dark using the firelight and bouncing it with sheets of aluminum foil onto Conor lying in a hammock. Technology made it possible for me to rent a 35mm film camera and lenses that were so automatic that it made me look like I knew what I was doing. It was very satisfying to be able to look through the lens and compose the moment myself.

After getting home and seeing the images and how well things had turned out I was inspired and went out and bought the exact same camera and lens outfit. Now there need never again be any middleman between my vision and the final image. Thanks Conor.

Gary Burden:

The book came about as a result of Domtar and I sharing a vision and together creating a graphic revisitation of fourteen of my old friends (album artworks). I was allowed to lavish every kind of print effect I could dream up on them. It was a great deal of fun. Fun and… for me, filled with “flashbacks” to another time and place.

We are expanding on the “Flashback” concept and have created a traveling multimedia ‘60s/’70s EXPERIENCE, a “trip” if you will, and are taking it on the road with an old fashion hands-on liquid-light show, slides and film of the era accompanied by music of the period.

The events are set in rock and roll related period-appropriate venues everywhere possible.

Our “tour” started rolling, appropriately, at the world famous WHISKY A GO GO on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood. Next we held the event in a tent in the gardens of the corporate headquarters of Domtar in Montreal. We tie dyed their 15 story headquarters building. Really! We have pictures. Most recently we stopped at the FILLMORE auditorium in Denver, Colorado where we rocked the rockies.

You can virtually browse the contents of the book here.

This alliance with Domtar has been another one of those magical occurrences on the Road of Life that comes from a convergence of ideas and the intentions of people. That is one of the things about this project I found most appealing. (I also loved revisiting a lot of old friends (Covers) and giving them every kind of embellishment and enhancement they ever might have wanted.) The spirit behind Domtar's EarthChoice is not unlike the spirit that prevailed in the times that most of these covers were made. Good people agreed on doing good things together in the interest of something bigger than themselves and they, amazingly, succeeded on every level. Back in "the day" a war was stopped, rights were acknowledged and freedoms long denied were finally respected. All this happened because someone launched the idea and then a lot of people agreed and things got done.

The Planet's Life supercedes any and all other issues, conflicts and battles. No Planet. No thing! Sustainability is about the Planet and the future. I salute Domtar for their courage and commitment to the planet and life for all of our children and their children.

It starts now. Lead, follow or get out of the way.

This is one of the most interesting and deeply inspired packages I have been a part of making. It is filled with mystery and heavy drama that includes the death of a young man who was very close to Neil, the project, and all of us.

Bruce Berry was a long time roadie for Neil. He had been struggling with his addiction to heroin for some time and finally lost the battle and his life. Neil celebrates Bruce in the song Tonight’s The Night. For this record Neil was looking for a particular sound appropriate to the songs and he found it at a place called Studio Instrument Rentals, SIR, ironically owned by Bruce Berry’s brother. There was another Berry brother, Jan Berry of the group Jan and Dean and he suffered a horrendous fate when at the peak of his career he was paralyzed in a car wreck I digress. SIR was located in a very seedy part of Hollywood as dark as what was going on on the record. The rehearsal room Neil liked the sound of was way in the back and it was a hassle to set it up as a studio, run cables etc. So Neil had them knock a hole in the outside wall of the building, they pulled the remote recording truck up next to the building and ran all of the cables etc. through the new hole in the wall. Neil is nothing if not determined.

During the time Neil was recording the album David Geffen and Neil’s manager Elliot Roberts, with their other partners, opened a new club on the strip (Sunset Blvd.) The Roxy and On The Rocks. That was a wild night. Neil was the first artist to play the club. It’s still a famous rock and roll music venue. I saw one of the greatest nights of music ever when Bob Marley played there. The night Neil opened the club the backstage was wall-to-wall celebrities. Everyone from Jack Nicholson to Elton John. I shot super 8 movie film all night long in every nook and cranny of the club and in every notable face I could find. In line with the vibe in the air at the time I lost all of that film, hours and hours of amazing stuff that I never saw any of. Some of the mysterious elements in this package included a photo of Neil at Barney’s Beanery sitting inside one of the famous assemblage artist Ed Keinholz’s pieces, man with clocks for heads. There is a full-page spread of an article from a newspaper in Holland all written in Dutch, a photo of Mickey Rooney as Huck Finn and Neil’s very abstract rap about Waterface and Miami Beach, where, “Everything is cheaper than it looks”.

In designing the package and selecting the paper stock the first challenge Neil presented was that he wanted the package art to rub off and wear out in a short period of time. I researched and found that the most easily destructible paper, that would disintegrate the quickest, was blotter paper. Now, not many people print on blotter paper and a more experienced graphic artist would have known that, but being blissfully/purposefully ignorant I didn’t known the pit falls. When the printer got over his apoplexy and settled down I told him why and what we wanted to do. We ran some test on press and actually did one where we ran four color process on blotter paper! The poor printer was very frustrated because every time he would get up and running the blotter paper would be disintegrating and the blanket of the presses would get clogged up and he would have to stop and clean them before continuing. In the end we were able to give Neil what he wanted and later when I would see the cover in other people’s homes looking old, funky and worn out when it was only a few weeks old I got a big smile.

Steppenwolf - The Second

When I look at the Steppenwolf album covers I made, I did their first three or four, I think of a few important things. For the first time I was able to force my hand with the record company and get them to agree to my using special papers and effects on some of the covers.

As a result of Steppenwolf’s first album cover I met my dear friend and brother artist Rick Griffin because I had printed their first cover on reflective silver foil and at the same time up in San Francisco Rick had created a cover for Quicksilver Messenger Service that was also on silver foil. Great minds… and all that. Rick and I remained close friends and collaborators until his untimely death. Together we created some very cool art I am very proud of.

On this cover I had originally wanted to use reflective silver Mylar so it would be a perfect mirrored surface. There were so many technical difficulties that I wound up settling for using reflective silver foil. My idea was to create a piece of art that would draw the viewer into the art, and the experience of the music inside. How better than letting the viewer see himself reflected in the art itself. The star in the center was meant to be a mirror of the viewer as “star”. The early “psychedelic” background was created by several days of air brushing and the photo of the band I had shot by Henry Diltz. The angle of them looking down into the camera was also meant to be inviting the viewer in and helping to create the effect of depth.