Five Albums with Cover Art That Disturbed Me As a Kid

Fans of the vinyl LP often bemoan the fact that they no longer get a nice sleeve with big pretty pictures upon which to gaze when listening to new tunes. I can understand that, but at the same time I remember a few times when I was freaked out by an LP's cover art. Mind you, this was when I was a kid and my little mind was fresh for the taking when it came to rock and roll imagery I could never unsee. So let us celebrate a few of those examples now, which will undoubtedly be more amusing than wiggy.

Paul McCartney and Wings

Red Rose Speedway

I remember distinctly not liking this photo of Paulie with a big rose shoved in his mouth. I think it was also the expression on his face that to me looked like he wasn't enjoying that at all and may indeed be suffocating from it. Nowadays I find his mullet from this period to be more disturbing, with his wife Linda's even more so.

Nazareth

Hair of the Dog

This is exactly the kind of shit that can freak the mind out of a four or five-year-old's skull when they're gazing at it in full LP size.  Sure, from an older person's point of view it's just plain shitty, but this whatever-the-hell-it-is creature is the kinda crap that could jump out of your closet at night and make you listen to "Love Hurts" as it poked at your flesh with its pointy bits.   Not fun at all.

AC/DC

Powerage

I completely recall the first time I ever saw this cover.  I was a wee lad and was popping a squat on the toilet.  Somehow the bathroom door wound up opening and I looked out to my left into my brother's bedroom.  There in the dark, only lit from the natural ambient light floating in was Angus Young screaming violently in pain since his hands had been torn off and replaced with...wires.  Hmmm.  OK, yeah, well, it was the look on his face more than the wires that got to me.  Had I just gone in there and turned the album over to see the back cover photo of the band goofing off...I probably still would have been freaked.

UFO
Obsession

My brother had this one as well (actually he owned all of these except the last one in the list).  I would love just sitting and flipping through his box of albums and looking at the cover photos.  That is, until the one day this one showed up.  This fucking shit scared the fucking shit out of me when it suddenly appeared.  Why did those dudes have weird-ass silver balls covering up their facial bits?  Why was the dude in the back just standing there not caring?  Were they on a UFO?  Were the dudes in the front evil?  Were they going to hurt the dude in the back?  I didn't know and I quickly stopped looking at it.  Again, these days it just looks like shit.

Ozzy Osbourne
Speak of the Devil

I saw this one in a record store when it was new and I didn't like it.  I didn't like it when weird shit was coming out of dude's mouths.  I thought, "This guy must be pure evil."  Of course, this was the early '80s right before the PMRC came along and did indeed try to convince parents that dudes like Ozzy were not good for their kids.  Later on, I realized that he wasn't evil at all and made some groovy tunes on his own and with Black Sabbath.  It's still a crap cover, though.

Paul McCartney's '70s Wilderness

Poor Paulie McCartney. The guy hasn't been able to buy a hit single in what seems like ages. Not that it matters to him or his fans, but I remember the days when you'd hear a new Macca tune on the radio and it'd be a hit. I suppose the last time I really recall that happening for him was when he released Flowers in the Dirt and managed to score pretty well with "My Brave Face," "This One," "Put It There," and "Figure of Eight."  Then he kind of slid into a mediocre phase that his harshest critics had always accused him of peddling.

But enough of that.  Let's go back to the early '70s after The Beatles called it quits and Paul demanded that his first solo album be released before Let It Be.  It retrospect it makes sense in a backhanded way towards McCartney.  Let It Be was hardly a high note of the Fabs, but it was certainly more interesting than most of McCartney.  So John and Paul battled it out through tunes back and forth, culminating in Macca putting a picture of two beetles screwing on the back of his second LP Ram and dropping lyrical references to the misery in "Dear Boy" and "Too Many People."  Lennon attacked back with "How Do You Sleep?" on his own Imagine.

Fuck the Beatles, we got to rock!

Yes so the ex-Beatles were having a field day with their pissing contest.  Meanwhile, Paul decided to form a new band, christened it Wings and took the group a-touring in a little van across the English countryside, making surprise appearances at various colleges and the like.  Exciting stuff, to be sure, but music-wise McCartney crapped out the weird and loose Wild Life as Wings' debut.  Even stranger, the album managed to get all the way to #10 on the charts.  Back then, Paul could release absolute junk and it would sell because the fans were so rabid for the product.

How dare you bust Paulie for pot!  Now let's go make an album.

I really hated Wild Life for a period in my life.  As I've gotten older, though, I enjoy it quite a bit.  "Mumbo" might not be anything than a loosey goosey soundcheck, but it rocks harder than anything Paul does these days.  The pot-infused cover of "Love is Strange" is pleasant, and "Some People Never Know" is a lost classic.  Linda got to debut her vocals on the slight "I Am Your Singer," but even at this point Wings managed to create its own sound.  As the band got better, you always knew when you were listening to a Wings track on the radio.  So that's already in place.  Paul even managed to find the time to sing a kind song to Lennon entitled "Dear Friend."

Adding Paul's name first made the music sell like hotcakes!

After the album was released and met a scathing reception, Paul expressed disappointment that he had recorded it so fast (apparently he did so because he had read where Dylan had done his latest LP in a really short amount of time), but he also thought maybe the public at large didn't realize it was his band.  So for the next release, the wonderful Red Rose Speedway, the band became "Paul McCartney and Wings."  Hopefully after all these years, Paul has realized that it was the overall quality of Wild Life that let the folks down, and not that they didn't know who recorded it.

Red Rose Speedway has always been overlooked in the Macca canon.  It spawned the gooey and forgettable hit "My Love," but it also contains some of Paul's best stuff pre-Band on the Run superstardom.  The opening "Big Barn Bed" perfects the Wings vocal harmony formula and rocks well.  "One More Kiss" is a cross between English country and the old style stuff that Paul was so fond of and recreated himself in tracks like "Honey Pie."  "Little Lamb Dragonfly" is a lovely, slightly surreal piece of work.  And my absolute favorite is the gorgeous "When the Night."  At times Red Rose Speedway may seem slight, but it also features McCartney doing a sort of last grasp on the old experimental Beatles formula that was still fresh at the time.  Hell, Henry McCullough's guitar playing is worth it alone, even on "My Love" where his solo is the best thing about the whole song.

The album was a good primer for what was to follow.  It put Paul back in a larger spotlight, and even led him to do such things as the "James Paul McCartney" TV special which featured some tunes from the LP amongst other numbers.  Probably the most unfortunate thing to come from all this, though, was Paul and Linda's joint decision to start sporting mullets, a choice that they wouldn't change until around the time of London Town.  I suppose one could accuse Bowie of setting the trend, but I would rather think it was the sweet, sweet dank that the McCartneys were ingesting at a sizable rate at the time.

Ah mullet, much later.