the end of all songs

A question occurred to me while watching a documentary about Joy Division ; is there any better ending to a song than Ian Curtis bellowing FEELING FEELING FEELING FEELING FEELING FEELING FEEEEEELING! as the music clatters to a halt at the end of “Disorder”? Lyrically, despite its explosiveness, it isn’t cathartic, but in a musical way it is – for the listener at least – because until that point, the tempo has been too fast and the lyrics too complex for Curtis’s voice to do whatever the deep, melancholy equivalent of ‘taking flight’ is. There’s an underappreciated art to ending songs and it’s not something that even great bands do infallibly or that all great songs feature. Not all songs need to end with a crescendo or flourish, and very few songs benefit from just grinding to a halt or being cut off mid-flow, but the sense of completeness when a song (especially a relatively short song) ends perfectly is one of the things that makes you want to hear it again.

Ian Curtis in 1979 by Kevin Cummins

“Decades,” the final song on Closer, the final Joy Division album, is one of relatively few songs (given their vast number) where fading out at the end doesn’t seem like a cop out. There’s nothing wrong with fading out a song, but often it just feels like an easy option taken in order to dodge the question of how to end a song properly. Which is fine, except in live performances, where it’s difficult to satisfactorily replicate a fade-out. Partly that’s because of the practicality of it – does the band all try to play more quietly? Do they just get the sound person to turn down the volume, which works, unless you’re close to the stage, which, in that situation is sub-optimal, since hearing the unamplified sounds from the stage (drums clattering, guitars plinking etc) is kind of a mood-killer? And if so, when do they all stop? There’s also the awkwardness of the audience reaction; the crowd might start cheering/jeering before the song is actually finished, or they might not start until someone in the band indicates that that the song is definitely over, which is also not ideal. Basically, it feels artificial – but obviously it has the appeal of being simple – haven’t thought of a proper ending for you song? Just keep playing and fade it out afterwards. But Closer needed to fade into silence and it does.

Another musical ending this week – a seriously clunky segue this but bear with me – was the death of Ozzy Osbourne, a week after what was explicitly intended to be his final performance, a different kind of ending and a very unusual one in the music world where ‘farewell’ tours can become an annual occurrence and no split is too acrimonious to be healed by the prospect of bigger and bigger sums of money.

Ozzy Osbourne in 1974 by Mick Rock

On paper, any kinship between Ozzy and Joy Division seems unlikely to say the least, but the ears say otherwise. Regardless of the punk roots of Joy Division, the only real precursor to a song like “New Dawn Fades” from their 1979 debut album Unknown Pleasures is Black Sabbath. And it’s not only the oppressively doomladen atmosphere, though that’s important; Bernard Sumner’s opening guitar melody is remarkably like Tony Iommi’s melodic solo from “War Pigs” – a classic song, incidentally, which has one of the worst endings of any great song ever written. Presumably, Black Sabbath had no idea how to end it and so did something worse than a fade out; speeding it up until it ends with a comical squeak. Oh well. But anyway, there are many moments, especially on Unknown Pleasures, where Joy Division sound like a cross between Black Sabbath and the Doors, although I’m sure neither of those things were in the minds of Peter Hook, Bernard Sumner, Stephen Morris and Ian Curtis, any more than they were in the consciousness of the music journalists who lauded the band in ’79, who mostly tended to see punk as year zero, the new beginning from which the influence of anything pretentious or overblown had been erased.

That basic idea was one I also accepted without much thought as a teenage indie fan in the early 90s when Joy Division – by then defunct for a decade – became one of my favourite bands. With the honourable, weekly music paper-approved exception of the Velvet Underground, I was dubious about anything old or anything that I considered overtly commercial. Without giving it much thought I just assumed that mentality came from my reading of Melody Maker and the NME. I had definitely accepted their pre-Britpop genealogy of cool rock music that essentially began with the Velvet Underground and then continued via punk and post-punk into 80s indie guitar music, most of which existed firmly outside of the mainstream of the UK top 40. But reflecting on Ozzy on the news of his death, it seems my snobbery has older roots.

“Mad Housewife”-era Ozzy, c.1986

I don’t remember when I first heard Ozzy Osbourne’s name, but I do remember when I first heard his music. It was 1988 and I was about a year away from growing out of metal, but still immersed in it for the time being. Within metal itself I had fairly wide taste and my favourite bands included many of the biggest metal bands of the era; Iron Maiden, Metallica, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Helloween, Megadeth, Suicidal Tendencies, Queensrÿche, Slayer, Anthrax, plus many more. At that point I mostly discovered music via magazines (especially Metal Forces) and my friends. In addition to my modest collection of records and tapes I had many more cassettes that had been made for me by friends and I spent a good bit of my spare time making tapes for them; it was fun. And so; Ozzy. A friend had taped a couple of albums for me on a C90 cassette (the odd pairing, it seems now, of Mötley Crüe’s Girls, Girls Girls and Slayer’s Reign in Blood) and filled up the rest of the tape with random metal songs, among them “Foaming at the Mouth” by Rigor Mortis, “The Brave” by Metal Church, “Screamin’ in the Night” by Krokus and Ozzy’s latest single, “Miracle Man”. I pretty much hated it. I thought Ozzy’s voice was unbearably nasal and awful and the production really harsh and tinny (that was probably just the tape though).

Memorex C90s were pretty dependable
Teenage metal fans were obliged to like Elvira in 1989

By then, I knew who Ozzy was, and was aware of his bat-biting notoriety, though that definitely seemed to be a bigger deal in the USA than it was in the UK (or at least in my corner of rural Scotland). At some point just a little later, Cassandra Peterson, or more accurately Elvira, Mistress of the Dark presented a short series of metal-related shows for the BBC. One episode included Penelope Spheeris’ fantastic documentary The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years, which includes one of my favourite Ozzy interviews, but also concert footage of Ozzy during his ‘mad housewife’ era when his image seemed to be based on Jackie Collins’s style at the time. I love that era of Ozzy now, but at the time I thought it was laughably awful. It must have been around that time that I also became aware of Ozzy’s history with Black Sabbath, who I only knew in their then-current incarnation with Tony Martin, which again I now love but at the time thought irremediably middle aged and boring. The fact that Ozzy’s Black Sabbath was from the 70s meant that I pretty much dismissed them without needing to hear them. When Elvira showed a classic early Led Zeppelin concert in black and white I also found that tiresomely old and dull, especially in comparison with the Napalm Death concert she presented. It’s hard to relate to now, but in the 80s, for me – and I think for most people I knew of my age – the 70s was cheesy, embarrassing and possibly funny, but with no redeeming features. Actually, that’s how the 80s were for a good part of the 90s too; changed days.

Again, like most of the metal fans I knew, I loved metal, but I mostly didn’t like rock. Metal meant precision, virtuosity, heaviness and speed. Rock (to this kind of metal fan) was simplistic, old-fashioned and (worse) commercial. Oddly, I never thought to include the very glam-oriented hair metal bands I liked in the rock camp; which I can now see is where they really belonged. I loved bands like Poison, Faster Pussycat and Pretty Boy Floyd, despite the fact that their very obvious ambition was to be famous and that they wrote schmaltzy ballads. I made the same exception, mysteriously, for Guns ‘n’ Roses, who I loved. But I thought of them as metal, not rock.

Cliff Burton rocking like it’s 1974 (c.1986)

It was a distinction that my parents’ generation seemed simply not to understand. To them and their friends if you liked Metallica wasn’t that basically the same as liking Meat Loaf? But I was of the generation for whom, from the earliest days of primary school, the idea of being seen in flared trousers was the stuff of nightmares. That horror of the era we were born in was hard to let go of., which is no doubt partly why the legacy of punk was easy to embrace later. In 1988, when I first heard them, Metallica instantly became one of my favourite bands and …And Justice For All one of my favourite albums. A crucial part of that was that the band, as I first knew them, looked cool to me. When, probably later that year, I first heard Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets I loved those too, but the sight of the great Cliff Burton (RIP) in his denim bellbottoms with his middle-parted hair and little moustache, looking like he should have been in Status Quo circa 1974 was extremely cringe-inducing; that was not cool. Not in Scotland in 1988 anyway.

It took a while for that attitude to change. One of the gateway albums that led young teen me away from heavy metal and towards the indie/alternative world was Faith No More’s The Real Thing, which included a cover of “War Pigs.” And at that time the song still felt old fashioned and less good than the rest of the album to me. It was only after a few years of hardcore indie snobbery that my attitude really changed. As my adolescence got to the more painfully introspective stage I stopped listening to metal, having been introduced to things like the Pixies and Ride and simultaneously discovering slightly older music like The Smiths, The Cure, Joy Division and the Jesus & Mary Chain. The part of me that still liked loud and heavy guitars didn’t care so much about precision anymore and so alongside the typical UK indie stuff, I also liked grunge for a while, mainly Mudhoney, Tad and Nirvana, but especially grunge-adjacent weirdness like the Butthole Surfers and Sonic Youth. That would seem to provide an obvious bridge to the hard rock of the 70s, since virtually all grunge-oriented bands referenced Sabbath and Kiss, but no.

a book that shaped my taste in the 90s

In fact, what happened was that in the Britpop era, I loved 70s-influenced bands like Pulp and Suede (I was never a fan of Blur or Oasis) and as Britpop became dull I started to get into the older music that Britpop referenced. At first it was mostly Bowie and Lou Reed, but after reading  Shots From the Hip (referenced a million times on this website) by Charles Shaar Murray, I broadened my horizons to include 70s glam in general (Roxy Music, Eno, Jobriath, Raw Power-era Stooges, but also the bubblegum stuff) and other things that Murray mentioned, whether positively or disparagingly. The latter seems odd but I’ve discovered lots of things I like that way. And suddenly, Ozzy was inescapable (though less so than he is this week).

I bought the Charles Shaar Murray book because Bowie was featured heavily in it; but he also wrote about Black Sabbath. I bought a book by the great photographer Mick Rock, because he had photographed Bowie and Lou Reed and Iggy and John Cale; but who should be in there but Ozzy, looking uncharacteristically thoughtful. I bought old 70s music annuals from glam and tail end of glam era; Fab 208 maybe – because they had Bowie and Mott the Hoople and Pilot and whatnot in them, but inside there was also mention of Black Sabbat. I remember a paragraph about their then-forthcoming compilation We Sold Our Souls for Rock ‘n’ Roll being especially intriguing.

Birmingham in the 1970s by Peter Trulock

Anyway, one thing led to another and I spent a large chunk of the late 90s and early 2000s immersing myself in the music of the 1970s. At first it was primarily glam, but then all kinds of rock, pop, soul, funk etc. At some point it started including bands that I’d long been aware of and never liked; like Led Zeppelin, Kiss – and Black Sabbath. The first Black Sabbath album I owned was Sabotage, bought for 50 pence in a charity shop. The texture of the sleeve was, interestingly, the same texture as my LP of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures, but the imagery was a little less classy, thanks to Bill Ward’s checked underpants being visible through his red tights; oh well. Ozzy sounded pretty much as I remembered from “Miracle Man,” but primed by Charles Shaar Murray’s description of Ozzy [caterwauling] about something or other in a locked basement and with a more sympathetic production and – crucially – the far more bare and elemental sound of Black Sabbath, so unappealing just a few years earlier, he sounded right. And then, when I heard the earliest Black Sabbath albums, Black Sabbath and Paranoid, both from 1970, one of the things they reminded me of, most unexpectedly, was Joy Division.

Black Sabbath in 1970 by Keef, Joy Division in 1979 by Anton Corbijn

Yes, the whole aura is different, Sabbath were surly and aggressive where Joy Division were solemn and withdrawn, but there’s something about the simplicity of the sound. Geezer and Hooky’s basses took up as much space as Tony and Bernard’s guitars. Bill Ward, like Stephen Morris, was a drummer who brought a strong dance/funk element into the band’s rock music without any sense of incongruity. Ozzy and Ian Curtis are worlds apart as vocalists, but both have a despairing intensity that makes them stand out, even within their respective genres. Both bands were from the grim, grey, hopeless industrial 1970s north of England, but whereas Joy Division were definitively a product of Manchester, with all the gritty coolness that conferred upon them, Sabbath were solidly of Birmingham, with all of the perceived oafishness and lack of credibility that entailed in the music press at least. Both singers were self-destructive too, but the same year that Ian Curtis tragically ended his life, Ozzy was reflecting on his self-destructive behaviour in “Suicide Solution”* and starting his life anew, launching a solo career which, against all expectations, made him an even bigger star and ultimately the icon who is being mourned today, far more widely than I’m sure he would ever have imagined. It was a good ending.

*Ozzy was always a far more thoughtful lyricist than he’s given credit for; I can’t think of any other artist from the aggressively cocky 80s hair metal scene who would have written the glumly confessional anthem “Secret Loser” from Ozzy’s 1986 album The Ultimate Sin

Hulme, Manchester in the 1970s, by David Chadwick

Because I’m a nerd, and not just a music nerd, writing this piece made me think of Michael Moorcock’s elegiac sci-fi/fantasy novel novel, The End of All Songs, published in 1976, the year that Ian Curtis, Peter Hook and Bernard Sumner met at a Sex Pistols concert in the Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester, the year that Black Sabbath released their seventh album, Technical Ecstasy, generally agreed to be the one where the cracks started to show in the Ozzy-led lineup but one of my favourites. Moorcock took the title of his novel from a poem by the Victorian writer Ernest Dowson, which feels appropriate to end with, since fading out is kind of a hassle, text-wise.

With pale, indifferent eyes, we sit and wait
For the drop’d curtain and the closing gate:
This is the end of all the songs man sings.
Ernest Dowson, Dregs (1899)

Copy? Compliment? Coincidence? Incestuous album covers!

Firstly; if you’re looking at this because of the word ‘incestuous’, shame on you! Anyway, for a variety of reasons, lots of album covers seem to pay tribute to/copy/look like lots of other ones, which is what this is all about.

In the early days of shellac and then vinyl records the sleeve was mainly used to advertise either the record label or sometimes the retailer of the disc within.

sleeves

But this isn’t a history of picture sleeves, interesting though that would be. Once there were music stars who people recognised the faces of, the sleeve became a promotional tool in a far more specific way than before. The main reason initially for ‘lookalike’ sleeves was presumably that artists and/or record labels hoped (and still do) that something that worked for someone else will work for them, artistically and financially and possibly creates a link between the artists in the buyer’s mind. Then there are those who sincerely wish to pay tribute to one of their influences, those who are just unconsciously doing so, and those artists who share a background in a genre/culture etc, and…. well; lots of reasons. Some examples…

1. Blondie – Blondie (Private Stock, 1976) & Kim Wilde – Kim Wilde (RAK, 1981)

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By 1981, Blondie were no longer a cult, punky act, but international superstars. What better inspiration for a kind of pop pastiche of the new wave sound?  In comparison with Blondie, Wilde’s first album is pretty pretty weak, though it does have some great songs on it; if you think Kids In America is great.

2. Kiss – Destroyer (Casablanca, 1976) & Manowar – Fighting the World (Atco, 1987)

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Kiss were tongue-in-cheek cartoonish macho hard rock. Manowar were cartoonish macho metal that was either so completely tongue-in-cheek that they refused to acknowledge the humour of their whole image or else were deadly serious, which is kinda scary; but either way pretty ace. Consciously or not, surely a manly tribute to ‘the old gods’

3. Elvis Presley – Loving You (RCA Victor, 1957) & many, many others including Fabian – The Fabulous Fabian (Chancellor, 1959) and Bryan Ferry – These Foolish Things (Virgin, 1973)

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Right from the start, Elvis’ album covers were to create the iconography of pop/rock music, imitated for commercial reasons by his imitators & later paid homage to by artists who grew up with Elvis as the face of rock ‘n’ roll (see also Elvis’ debut album & The Clash’s London Calling)

4. Joni Mitchell – Blue (Reprise, 1971) & Marianne Faithful – Broken English (Island, 1979)

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Probably coincidental, but both albums are the definitive releases of iconic female singers & were to an extent departures from their previous work, both are good and both pictures are blue innit. Also, although they are both self-consciously posing for a picture, neither artist was concerned with trading on their looks in the way that record labels have traditionally done with both female and male artists (see Elvis etc) from the 1950s onwards.

5. Carpathian Forest – Through Chasm, Caves & Titan Woods (Avantgarde Music, 1995) & Wongraven – Fjelltronen (Moonfog, 1995)

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Not exactly a coincidence; both bands used the same picture by Norwegian folkloric artist Theodor Kittelsen (1857-1914), iconic in the black metal scene ever since his drawing Fattigmannen was adopted by Varg Vikernes for Burzum’s Hvis Lyset Tar Oss in 1994

6. Jan & Dean and Friends- The Heart & Soul of Jan & Dean & Friends (Design Records, 1964) & Mel Torme – I’ve Got The World On A String (Allegro, 1964?)

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A strange one, presumably these were both budget releases & the labels sourced the attractive but irrelevant artwork from an image library.

7. The Beatles – Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Parlophone, 1967) & The Rolling Stones – Their Satanic Majesties Request (Decca, 1967)

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A notorious pairing, the Stones, famously at a bit of a dead end, tried to emulate the feel & popularity of Sgt Pepper with the extremely lavish holographic (etc) artwork of Satanic Majesties, but it didn’t really work. A much better album than it’s reputed to be however.

8. David Bowie – Aladdin Sane (RCA, 1973) & Jobriath – Creatures of the Street (Elektra, 1974)

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It’s fair to say that Jobriath was influenced by Bowie in pretty much every aspect of his early recording career, but although Creatures… (mentioned elsewhere in this blog) is an interesting but not great LP, the front cover is, alas, just a little bit ridiculous by comparison with Bowie at his iconic peak.

9. The Byrds – Mr Tambourine Man (Columbia, 1965) & The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Are You Experienced (Track Records, 1967)

comp27This comparison really traces the advance of psychedelia from a mild distortion of perception to a neon-coloured hallucination over the two years 1965-67

10. The Smiths – The Smiths (Rough Trade, 1984) & UK indie music in general (here; The Wedding Present – George Best (Reception Records, 1987) & Belle & Sebastian – The Boy With The Arab Strap (Jeepster, 1998)

indie

The Smiths (mainly, one presumes, Morrissey) cared about the appearance of their records in a way that few artists have, and the relatively brief period of their recording career (83-87) means that their oeuvre has a unified completeness which is both rare and pleasing; presumably if they had gone on forever they would have tried something new at some point. The look (as well as the sound) of The Smiths had an immediate and lasting impact on the UK indie scene; although The Wedding Present (often characterised as the Smiths fans’ second favourite band)’s classic George Best doesn’t look especially like a Smiths album, the whole aesthetic seems to come from a similar (if slightly less glamorous) source. Stuart Murdoch of Belle & Sebastian seems to have, like Morrissey, a complete vision for the way his band should be and to date the B&S discography has a distinctive (and slightly Smiths-like) appearance. A good proportion of UK indie sleeves still have a very post-Smiths appearance (as does the output of the great My Little Airport from Hong Kong)

11.. Iron Maiden – Number of the Beast (EMI, 1982) & Megadeth – Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying (Capitol, 1986)

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Iron Maiden’s Eddie has influenced the covers of thousands of heavy metal LPs throughout the 80s (and to the present day) but Megadeth’s Vic Rattlehead is probably the most blatant homage & Peace Sells… is probably their best album cover of the era.

12. Bob Dylan – Bob Dylan (Columbia, 1962) & Donovan – What’s Bin Did and What’s Bin Hid (Pye, 1965)

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Despite their essentially very different styles, Pye Records was determined to use the surface similarities between the two young folksters to promote Donovan as the British Bob Dylan and to that end, What’s Bin Did… features an informal Dylanesque photo as its cover image.

13. Poison – Look What The Cat Dragged In (Capitol, 1986) & Dogs D’Amour – In The Dynamite Jet Saloon (China Records, 1988)

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Although the rougher, more rock ‘n’ roll-glam oriented Dogs D’Amour were less influenced by Poison than bands like Tigertailz were, the layout of their least all-over-the-place album is, by accident or design, a scuzzy-glam echo of Poison’s more Hollywood-looking debut.

14. Randy Newman – Randy Newman (Reprise, 1968) & Elton John – Elton John (DJM, 1970)

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It may be no coincidence that Elton John, with one not-massively-successful album behind him and a few years away from his outrageous glam-era costumes etc should seemingly model the cover of this, his breakthrough album, on Randy Newman; dour, unflamboyant , thus far critically and commercially neglected, but already an artist’s artist. It worked better for Elton.

15. Carnivore – Retaliation (Roadrunner, 1987) & Sodom – Persecution Mania (Steamhammer, 1987)

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Presumably a coincidence, both of these albums are speed metal classics, although Carnivore are less well remembered than Sodom (who, to be fair are still going). The passing resemblance of these covers probably says as much about the atmosphere of the Cold War era as it does about metal.

16. The Beatles – With The Beatles (Parlophone, 1963) & The Nazz – Nazz (SGC, 1968)

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As with the aforementioned Elvis sleeves, every picture of The Beatles in their early years was influential, and none more so than the cool, simple sleeve for With The Beatles. Even so, it’s somewhat surprising to see its influence lingering as late as the psychedelic era, when Todd Rundgren’s Nazz released their debut (which arguably is modelled on the early covers of The Rolling Stones as much as The Beatles. But then the early Stones albums wouldn’t have looked as they do without The Beatles either.

17. The Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers (Rolling Stones, 1971) and Mötley Crüe – Too Fast For Love (Leathür Records, 1981)

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Although only a passing similarity, Motley Crue inherited much of their spirit and attitude from the Stones and the cover of their debut is appropriately a more in-your-face updating of the classic Stones artwork.

18. David Bowie – “Heroes” (RCA, 1977) & Iggy Pop – The Idiot (RCA, 1977)

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Not a coincidence, Bowie & Iggy Pop worked closely in their Berlin period & both were influenced by German Expressionism, here in particular by Erich Heckel’s painting Roquairol. Iggy’s album is a bit better than Bowie’s though; if only he had worked with Eno!

19. Kate Bush – Never For Ever (EMI, 1980) & Toyah – Anthem (Safari, 1981)

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Anthem was probably Toyah’s best album; a nice mix of post-punk and new wave/synth pop influences, but despite her strong image she was never as individual or idiosyncratic as Kate Bush, although the fairytale-ish album cover suggests some similarity.

20. Charles Lloyd – Geeta (A&M, 1973) & Weather Report – Black Market (Columbia, 1976)

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Charles Lloyd started out as a pretty standard post-Coltrane bop-saxophone player, specialising in ‘chamber jazz’, but by the early 70s he, like jazz in general, had become interested in fusion and elements of world music, reflected in the artwork for Geeta. That was pretty much where Weather Report came in, and although mostly Miles Davis influenced, Black Market has, coincidentally or not, a certain Charles Lloyd-ish quality.

21. Witchfynde – Give ‘Em Hell (Rondelet, 1980) & Venom – Black Metal (Neat, 1981)

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More a case of shared influences than anything else, both Witchfynde and Venom came from the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal and had an interest in the occult and biker rock. Cheap, effective visuals were pretty much an essential part of the NWOBHM, with even early Iron Maiden artwork having a somewhat rough & ready charm.

22. Tigertailz – Young & Crazy (Music For Nations, 1987) & Britny Fox – Britny Fox (Columbia, 1988)

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>It’s slightly unlikely that foppish Rococo glamsters Britny Fox would be influenced by Wales’ super-glam Tigertailz, but both bands, despite their idiosyncracies, were drawing from a pool of shared glamorous male influences, going back in pop music to the 70s, but historically back to 16th (and in the case of Britny fox, specifically the 17th/18th) century.

23. The Rolling Stones – Rolling Stones No. 2 (Decca, 1965) & The Dead Boys – We Have Come For Your Children (Sire, 1978)

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Arguably the Stones cover here has its roots in With The Beatles, but the Stones brought their own surly charisma to the style and it was this that The Dead Boys channelled for their version of (in this case punk) rock, and the cover for their second album seems to pay homage to the Rolling Stones’ second.

24. Mayhem – Live In Leipzig (Obscure Plasma, 1993) & Darkthrone – Transilvanian Hunger (Peaceville, 1994)

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Strictly this should be a comparison of Live in Leipzig with Darkthrone’s A Blaze in the Northern Sky (1992), but although A Blaze... pre-dated the release of the Mayhem album (recorded in 1990), the cover picture of Per Yngve “Dead” Ohlin used for the release of Live in Leipzig was well known in the Norwegian black metal underground and indeed, photographs of early Mayhem were, despite King Diamond, Sarcofago etc, pretty much the basis for the 90s Norwegian black metal aesthetic.

25. Jobriath – Jobriath (Elektra, 1973) & David Bowie – Diamond Dogs (RCA, 1974)

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Although it seems unlikely (to say the least) that Bowie would be influenced by Jobriath, there is a slight passing resemblance between the excellent, slightly creepy gatefold artwork of Jobriath’s much hyped but unsuccessful debut and Bowie’s superlative dark glam masterpiece; possibly more to do with a shared influence of traditions of depicting the male nude than anything else.

26. David Bowie – Ziggy Stardust era appearance (1972-4) & Leslie R McKeown – All Washed Up (Ego Trip, 1978)

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Although not based on any single image of Bowie, ex-Bay City Rollers frontman Les McKeown’s first solo album & singles showcased an image clearly based on the glam-era Bowie of a few years earlier.

27. Venom – Welcome To Hell (Neat, 1981) & Dødheimsgard – Monumental Possession (Malicious, 1995)

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Hardly a coincidence; a large part of black metal’s satanic iconography was brought to the genre by its inventors, and the cover of Venom’s debut has been paid homage to by metal in general more times than almost any other image apart from Iron Maiden’s Eddie

28. David Bowie (again) – Space Oddity (RCA, 1972 reissue) & Marc Bolan & T-Rex – Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow (EMI, 1974)

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It’s no surprise to see as visual an artist as Bowie featuring repeatedly in this list, but here he seems to have influenced his glam predeccesor and friendly rival Marc Bolan; Whereas earlier T-Rex albums had pioneered Bolan’s fey/fairytale glam image, by ’74 his music had become tired and limited (and ego-centric; T-Rex was now appended to the artist’s name rather than being an entity in its own right) in comparison with that of his old friend Bowie, and Zinc Alloy ( yep :/ ) was all-too-transparently influenced by Ziggy Stardust. The cover, however, seems more influenced by Bowie’s covers for Aladdin Sane and the glam-era reissue of his 1969 album, retitled Space Oddity. Given the slight deterioration of Bolan’s pixie-like charm, Zinc Alloy is unfortunately a less than bewitching or otherworldly sleeve.

29. Steeler – Strike Back (SPV, 1986), Helter Skelter – Welcome to the World of Helter Skelter (Metronome, 1988) & Pretty Boy Floyd – Leather Boyz With Electric Toyz (MCA 1989)

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Presumably coincidence based on the common language of 80’s metal (but ultimately traceable back to Kiss in the mid-70s), both Helter Skelter and Pretty Boy Floyd’s late 80s glam-pop masterpieces have ludicrous paintings of the artists on them, very similar in style to German metallists Steeler’s 1986 opus Strike Back. Strangely, the Helter Skelter painting is by Games Workshop legend John Blanche, better known for the kind of dark fantasy images used in Warhammer etc (but also showcased on the cover of Sabbat’s classic UK thrash album History of a Time to Come.) The sleeve for Strike Back seems to be the first updating of this kind of thing since the classic Ken Kelly Kiss covers(!) from the 70s (see above).

30. Eric Carmen – Eric Carmen (Arista, 1975) & John Travolta – Can’t let You Go (Midland, 1977)

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Ex-Raspberries frontman Eric Carmen’s debut solo album is best remembered for ‘All By Myself‘, but it was a strong album that revealed an excellent songwriter and performer with an eclectic range, from the Brian Wilson-esque ‘Sunrise‘ to the near-classical arrangement of that famous hit. John Travolta’s Can’t let You Go was released just as the young actor became a star with Saturday Night Fever and is, not surprisingly wet, bland, funky disco-lite with some soppy ballads thrown in. The covers of both albums showcase the sensitive (and in Travolta’s case, nakedly vulnerable) side of the young stars.

31. Cheap Trick – In Color…and in Black & White (Epic, 1977) & M

ötley CrüeGirls, Girls, Girls (Elektra, 1987)

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Ten years on from Cheap Trick’s In Color… one of the great hard/pop-rock albums of all time, came one of Mötley Crüe’s best, at the time notable for a (slight) toning down of the band’s glam image. The Crüe cover lacks the humour of Cheap Trick’s (admittedly not really evident in the front image only; the back cover has the band’s two quirkier-looking members on non-motor cycles), but is iconic in its own decadent, 80s way….

32. Pink Floyd – Animals (EMI/Harvest, 1977) & The Orb – The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld (Big Life, 1991)

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An explicit homage, Dr Alex Patterson’s original vision for The Orb was inseparable from the psychedelic explorations of Pink Floyd. Admittedly, by 1977, the spirit of the prog legends’ optimistic experimentation had mostly evaporated, but the Animals sleeve, with its giant inflatable pig drifting over Battersea Power Station remains an iconic, dreamlike and good-natured image which, by 1991 seemed ripe for an update.

33. Genesis – A Trick of the Tail (Charisma, 1976) & FFWD – FFWD (Inter-Modo, 1994)

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As with The Orb’s music above, FFWD (Robert Fripp, Thomas Fehlmann, Kris Weston, and Dr. Alex Paterson)’s 1994 ambient/prog/experimental album bears a resemblance (only slight in this case) to an album which was fundamentally different from the prog that inspired it. Indeed, the FFWD album seems to be influenced more by the ambient works of Eno than by a progressive band like Genesis (or Fripp’s King Crimson for that matter), but there is at times an atmosphere of pastoral whimsy that recollects the Peter Gabriel-era Genesis of Nursery Cryme or Foxtrot, far removed from the glossy, accessible rock of the Phil Collins-led Trick of the Tail. But that album’s cover has an archetypical prog feel, even if the album doesn’t, and so does the sleeve of FFWD.

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