PART 1/10
Gary Burden (Graphic Design) & Henry Diltz (Photography) Crosby Stills & Nash
When taking the photos for this cover the band didn't yet know their name, so wasnt in the correct order in the photo. The order of the photo goes Nash, Stills & Crosby.
This was very confusing as fans thought Crosby was Nash and Nash was Crosby.
They agreed to go back and take the picture but to their horror the building had been demolished.
The album had to have all the major things on it- The Logo, The Title & 'Stereo"
Gary made these three things very small as to not interfere with the Henry's photography.
"The bottom line for the record company was they didn't spend money on album packaging, that was something they wouldn't even discuss. They put it in the cheapest possible packaging. Their philosophy was if you had a hit record you could put it in a brown paper bag and sent it out, so, here I was asking to spend three times as much money to make a package, and, you know, they were absolutely not going to do it. And fortunately I was able to resist their resistance by using the power of the band to say you will spend the money" - Gary Burden
The company gave in and agreed to spend more money on album packaging. CS&N was relseased in June of 1969 and by March of 1970 had sold more than 2 million copies.
The company from that point onwards always spent more money on album packaging.
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"Album covers for me, they were bigger than they are now and they were like a shield. Indians would dream up a dream or imagine or think of their thing that represented them" Jackson Browne
'Saturate Before Using' was one of the 100 greatest album covers of all time" Entertainment Weekly Magazine.
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Joni Mitchell- Blue
"I'm very proud of that album cover I think it's one of the best album covers I've made and I think its the only Joni Mitchell album cover that isn't her art work"
"What I tried to do was make something really simple and classy, rather than just use a black and white photo on an album that was called blue, i new there was such a thing as phenotypes and so I took a black and white photo and turned it into a blue package" Gary Burden
"What I tried to do was make something really simple and classy, rather than just use a black and white photo on an album that was called blue, i new there was such a thing as phenotypes and so I took a black and white photo and turned it into a blue package" Gary Burden
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The Eagles- Desperado
Gary Burden wanted to relate the rock guitarist of the 1970s to the gun slingers of the 1870s
'What it is is these 4 guys that come to ton and they have decided to stop working and to take the easy way and become outlaws, so they go in and rob the bank, in when coming out of the bank they get killed' Gary Burden
The set and the photographs actually looked like the 1870s.
It's been a record and a concept thats stood the test of time and has gotten better as the years have gone on. As a whole piece, you know, its a well recognised concept. But at the time there were some people who weren't too happy. All they could think of was (gasp) "they made a god dam cowbody record! Where's Witchy Woman, wheres Take It Easy for christ sake! They made a fucking cowboy record!" Glenn Frey
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I would say probably the biggest impact that we've had on the record industry and graphics would be creating imagery that helps to tell the story of what the music is about, and doing it in a way where we really take care and attention to the detail so that when the audience gets something and holds it in their hand and looks at it, it's something beautiful and something meaningful. In the days of these album covers there was no MTV so people would look at these
images while listening to the record and it would tell them the story and would be exactly what they wanted to know about this band, about these artists, who they were, what people they were, what were they thinking, what does the song mean, where does it come from. They would sit for hours and try and read into this...now its a whole other world, its a little square, quarter the size of an album cover. So everything keeps changing and we keep moving with it. We changed that record shape to what it was in the 40s and 50s and we would make it work for us and now were confined to this little shape right here" Gary Burden
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