Love Songs

Love Songs - Front of U.K. Cover	Love Songs - Rear AND Gold vinyl Edition
Love Songs - Gatefold Interior

Side 1

Side 2

Side 3

Side 4

Story Of The Album Design

"At Capitol Records, I'd been given the assignment to create a deluxe package for a new Beatles double l.p. set.
With Christmas 1977 approaching, Capitol was swinging for the bleacher seats: 25 mushy tunes that Grandma could love. But they were all songs everyone already owned, nothing new was being offered, just a potentially fancy package. For the inside double spread, I'd sold The Powers That Be on the use of an iconic Richard Avedon photo. It had been seen in 1968 in LOOK magazine in the U.S. and in STERN in Europe. Not the individual psychedelic color photos, but the iconic 4-page fold-out, b&w group panorama... known as "Mount Rushmore".

Love Songs - The Mount Rushmore Original

Just one hitch: Paul was in the original photo, but was hiding in the lower left corner, about half John's size. Now I had to persuade Avedon to not only to sell us the photo, but to allow us to tear apart & rebuild his famous image so Paul would be more equal than the others. (Paul was the only ex-Beatle still on Capitol, in Wings, and would be touring the U.S. as part of Capitol's incentive ).

"Send me a layout." Avedon simply agreed, and now I knew why. Unlike Robert Freeman's photo for "Meet the Beatles," Avedon's well-known portrait was actually four individual photos that had been stitched together. That's why everyone was in focus regardless of size or position; it wasn't just Avedon's famous large-format 8x10 view camera.

Love Songs - Richard Avedon's Individual Photos

In the dark confines of a hooded lucigraph, I drew my composition actual size on tracing paper. The cloak they were wearing had a huge collar. I tried to maintain the overall rhythm of the original version, allowing space for the album's gatefold. My detailed sketch was shipped to New York.

In the years before Photoshop and the internet, the combination print process was slow and cumbersome.
Avedon's print eventually arrived with the four photos exposed independently on a large white sheet, as per my drawing. The airbrush retouching job was given to Alan Williams, who followed my indication for silhouetting their shoulders. A gray background blended & united the overall image. Some of the airbrushing was done on the print, some on an acetate overlay. Paul was now the leader of the pack, slightly bigger than John and above him. It was a new & improved Mt. Rushmore.

Love Songs - The Final Print

I developed a graphic version from successive exposures of the art onto litho film. Those were painstakingly matched, cut & pasted together using the best parts to create a final high-contrast icon. I actually created two: one for positive reading uses, another for reversing out of dark backgrounds. The second version was used for the front cover: a gold foil oval stamped on a simulated rich leather album.
That rich leather was really a piece of tan textured cover stock I got from McManus & Morgan on 7th Street. On the asphalt of the Capitol Records parking lot, I sprayed the paper with Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber paint. After the cover was printed, it was embossed with texture, like a discount fake oil painting reproduction. Fancy.

Love Songs - The Leather Sleeve

The complete package included an 11" x 11" booklet with calligraphy-style lyrics on simulated parchment paper.
Michael Manoogian did the lettering, and the parchment look was a 2-color photographic fake.
A limited run of lps were pressed on gold (yellow) vinyl.

For the Rolling Stone ad, I rented some props from Western Costume on Santa Monica Blvd. and shot it all on velvet. I'd broken The Lads up, but they were together again. The L.P. did fine for Christmas and stayed on the Billboard charts for 31 weeks, eventually selling 3,000,000 units.
The compilation was deleted from the catalog in the late 1980s.

Love Songs - Rolling Stone Advert