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Music for the eyes. Cover art sells albums: Alex Steinweiss, inventor of the album cover

Alex Steinweiss invented the album cover as we know it, and created a new graphic art form. In 1940, as Columbia Records’ young new art director, he pitched an idea: Why not replace the standard plain brown wrapper with an eye-catching illustration? The company took a chance, and within months its record sales increased by over 800 per cent. His covers for Columbia — combining bold typography with modern, elegant illustrations — took the industry by storm and revolutionized the way records were sold.

Over three decades, Steinweiss made thousands of original artworks for classical, jazz, and popular record covers for Columbia, Decca, London, and Everest; as well as logos, labels, advertising material, even his own typeface, the Steinweiss Scrawl. He launched the golden age of album cover design and influenced generations of designers to follow. Less well known — but included here — are his posters for the U.S. Navy; packaging and label design for liquor companies; film title sequences; as well as his fine art. Includes essays by three-time Grammy Award-winning art director/designer Kevin Reagan and graphic design historian Steven Heller; Steinweiss’ personal recollections from an epic career; and extensive ephemera from the Steinweiss archive.

Record collectors and graphic designers rejoice! Previously available in a limited edition, the book is finally available in an affordable trade version.

The artist:
The father of record design is Alex Steinweiss, who in 1940, at the age of 23, single-handedly invented the album cover. He made thousands of classical, jazz, and pop covers for Columbia, London, Decca, and Everest and his modern designs graced the packaging, logos, and covers of dozens of distilleries, film studios, and magazines; earning him an AIGA Medal and the Art Directors Hall of Fame lifetime achievement award.

The authors:

Kevin Reagan is a triple Grammy Award-winning art director, also honored by the AIGA, Print, and Communication Arts. As former art director of Geffen, MCA, and Maverick, he designed packages for Madonna, Beck, Sonic Youth and many others. He lives in Los Angeles.

Steven Heller is the co-chair of the School of Visual Arts MFA Designer as Author Program. For 33 years he was an art director for The New York Times, and currently writes the "Visuals" column for The New York Times Book Review. He is the author of 120 books on graphic design, illustration, and satiric art.

The impulse to do AMERICAN MUSIC, writes famed photographer Annie Leibovitz, “came from a desire to return to my original subject and look at it with a mature eye. Bring my experience to it…make it a real American tapestry.” Her ambitious idea became AMERICAN MUSIC, a stunning collection of photographs of the musicians, places and people that enrich the landscape of American music.

As Rolling Stone’s chief photographer for over thirteen years, Leibovitz created a legendary body of work. Her portraits of some of the world’s most talented musicians capture more than the performer, they convey the art of making music. For AMERICAN MUSIC, Leibovitz traveled across the country to juke joints in the Mississippi Delta, honkytonks in Texas, and jazz clubs in New Orleans “to take pictures in places that mean something.” In her signature style, she shares stunning portraits of American greats -- B.B. King, Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt, Bruce Springsteen, Beck, Bob Dylan, Mary J. Blige, Jon Bon Jovi, Steve Earle, Ryan Adams, Miles Davis, Etta James, Pete Seeger, Emmylou Harris, Tom Waits, The Dixie Chicks, Dr. Dre, The Roots and many more.

AMERICAN MUSIC includes a commentary about the American Music project by Leibovitz, short essays by musicians Patti Smith, Rosanne Cash, Steve Earle, Mos Def, Ryan Adams, and Beck as well as biographical sketches of all the musicians.

About the Author:

Annie Leibovitz is one of the most influential photographers of our time. In 1970, she began creating what became her legendary work for Rolling Stone. Since the early 1980s, she has expanded her repertoire at Vanity Fair and Vogue and in independent projects. She is the recipient of many honors, including the International Center of Photography’s Lifetime Achievement Award and the Centenary Medal of the Royal Photographic Society.

Sound Art. An unprecedented collection of artists’ record covers from the 1950s to today

Since the dawn of modernism, visual and music production have had a particularly intimate relationship. From Luigi Russolo’s 1913 Futurist manifesto L’Arte dei Rumori (The Art of Noise) to Marcel Duchamp’s 1925 double-sided discs Rotoreliefs, the 20th century saw ever more fertile exchange between sounds and shapes, marks and melodies, and different fields of composition and performance.

In Francesco Spampinato’s unique anthology of artists’ record covers, we discover the rhythm of this particular cultural history. The book presents 450 covers and records by visual artists from the 1950s through to today, exploring how modernism, Pop Art, Conceptual Art, postmodernism, and various forms of contemporary art practice have all informed this collateral field of visual production and supported the mass distribution of music with defining imagery that swiftly and suggestively evokes an aural encounter.

Along the way, we find Jean-Michel Basquiat’s urban hieroglyphs for his own Tartown record label, Banksy’s stenciled graffiti for Blur, and a skewered Salvador Dalí butterfly on Jackie Gleason’s Lonesome Echo. There are insightful analyses and fact sheets alongside the covers listing the artist, performer, album name, label, year of release, and information on the original artwork. Interviews with Tauba Auerbach, Shepard Fairey, Kim Gordon, Christian Marclay, Albert Oehlen, and Raymond Pettibon add personal accounts on the collaborative relationship between artists and musicians.

The author:

Francesco Spampinato is a writer and historian of contemporary art and visual culture. He holds degrees from the University of Bologna and Columbia University, and a PhD from the Sorbonne Nouvelle University. From 2011 to 2015, he was an adjunct professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, and since 2019 he is a senior assistant professor at the University of Bologna. Author of several books and regular contributor to magazines and academic journals, he focuses on how contemporary artists interact with the media and everyday life in his own academic research.

The editor:

Julius Wiedemann studied graphic design and marketing and was an art editor for newspapers and design magazines in Tokyo before joining TASCHEN in 2001. His titles include the Illustration Now! and Record Covers series, as well as the infographics collection and books about advertising and visual culture.

About the series:

TASCHEN is 40! Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible publishing, helping bookworms around the world curate their own library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia at an unbeatable price. Today we celebrate 40 years of incredible books by staying true to our company credo. The 40 series presents new editions of some of the stars of our program — now more compact, friendly in price, and still realized with the same commitment to impeccable production

Berlin is a concept album that represented a brave departure from the familiar sounds and themes of Lou Reed’s earlier solo work, a tragic tale about heartbreak and addiction meant to be played live as a rock opera, in the vein of The Who’s Tommy. But its poor reception meant that plans for a live performance were put on hold until 2007, when, with a renewed confidence in the material, Reed toured with a full orchestra and choir, giving some of the most personal and powerful performances of his career.

The tour was filmed by legendary artist Julian Schnabel, a longtime friend of Reed’s who also designed the spare and beautiful set, and whose daughter Lola contributed moving images projected behind the stage. This immeasurably powerful book draws on stills from Schnabel’s film, photographs of the set design, printed lyrics of Reed’s original verse, and images from Schnabel’s projections to tell the twin stories of Berlin as rock opera and as unique collaboration between two geniuses of contemporary art, music, words, and film.

The book also includes a rare conversation between Reed and Schnabel.

About the Author

Lou Reed is a founding member of the Velvet Underground and an accomplished solo artist, poet, writer, and photographer. He lives in New York. Julian Schnabel is a celebrated artist and filmmaker whose work is in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum and MoMA in New York, and whose film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was nominated for four Academy Awards. He lives in New York.

An expansive collection that introduces the short-lived and ruthlessly creative phenomenon that was Blacklips.

From June 1992 to March 1995, in the midst of the AIDS crisis in NYC, an extraordinary theatrical collective emerged from the queer underground. Blacklips Performance Cult, initiated by ANOHNI and joined by a cabal of fellow artists, drag queens, punks, nightlife veterans and students, performed a new play every Monday night at 1:00 a.m. at the Pyramid Club on 101 Avenue A. Blacklips never courted mainstream attention. However, the group left a sustaining impression within New York's late night subculture by melding hysterical drag, surreal horror, and disconcerting tenderness.

In Blacklips: Her Life and Her Many, Many Deaths, ANOHNI and coeditor Marti Wilkerson lay bare the collective's archives in photographs, scripts, and the assembled ephemera from more than one hundred and twenty original "plays." Featuring images from newly digitized film and video recordings, texts from participants and audience members, and an introduction by Lia Gangitano, this expansive collection introduces to the twenty-first century the short-lived and ruthlessly creative phenomenon that was Blacklips.

About the Author:

ANOHNI is a visual artist, musician, and playwright who spent her twenties performing music and staging plays in late-night clubs and experimental theatres in New York City. She formed her music group Antony and the Johnsons - named in memory of trans activist Marsha P. Johnson - in 1998. After releasing the group’s self-titled first record in 2000 and touring around the world with Lou Reed as a backup singer, her second album, I Am a Bird Now (2005), was awarded the Mercury Prize in the UK. ANOHNI has since released The Crying Light (2008), Swanlights (2009), the live album Cut the World (2012), and HOPELESSNESS (2016), a collaboration with Hudson Mohawke and Daniel Lopatin. She curated the 2012 Meltdown Festival at the Southbank in London, and has performed her music with symphonies in venues including the Royal Opera House in London, Teatro Royale in Madrid, Sydney Opera House, the Olympia in Paris and Radio City Music Hall. ANOHNI’s visual installations, performances, and plays have been presented by institutions including Kunsthal Nikolaj in Copenhagen, Bielefeld Kunsthalle in Germany, MoMA, the Whitney Museum, The Kitchen NYC, Aarhus 2017 Capital of Culture, and the Barbican. She scored Valentino’s Spring collection presentation “Anatomy of Couture” in Milan in February

It contains a book and 4 CDs. Blues-its melodies were created as an expression of profound sorrow and melancholy in the scorching heat of the cotton plantations. Its power encouraged the people and gave them support. The book offers a homage to this moving musical genre. Unique photographs of famous blues musicians taken by the famous photographer Giuseppe Pino celebrate a grand emotion. The CDs offer a collection of recording which impressively survey the many facets of the roots of Blues. It includes such great names as: Big Joe turner, Son House, Muddy Water and Memphis Slim. It contains a book and 4 CDs. Blues-its melodies were created as an expression of profound sorrow and melancholy in the scorching heat of the cotton plantations. Its power encouraged the people and gave them support. The book offers a homage to this moving musical genre. Unique photographs of famous blues musicians taken by the famous photographer Giuseppe Pino celebrate a grand emotion. The CDs offer a collection of recording which impressively survey the many facets of the roots of Blues. It includes such great names as: Big Joe turner, Son House, Muddy Water and Memphis Slim.

Blue Note Records ― co-founded in 1939 by Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff ― celebrates seventy-five years dedicated to recording the greatest musicians in jazz history.

One hundred of the musicians who defined the premier jazz label are celebrated in photographs by Wolff. These photographs, taken from 1948–1969, catch the stars in action: performing onstage, in recording sessions, or cutting stylish silhouettes around town. The powerful images were used to illustrate the label’s iconic album covers, and this curated selection features jazz greats Louis Armstrong, Art Blakey, Ornette Coleman, Chick Corea, John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Dexter Gordon, Herbie Hancock, Joe Henderson, and many more.

Lion and Wolff shared a lifelong passion for music and an unwavering commitment to record quality albums by innovative musicians, even in the face of economic crises and changing musical trends. They witnessed the greatest jazz acts of all time and Wolff’s photographs bring to life their most intimate and exciting performances. Each photograph is identified by subject, session or album being cut, and date; and the featured artists are indexed for easy reference.

This volume ― enriched with one hundred intimate and candid photographs ― recounts the label’s dazzling saga.

Following the success of Rizzoli's The Blue Note Years, the treasured archive of Francis Wolff photographs has been opened once again to present a previously unseen collection of dynamic images. Included are never-before-published colour images from Wolff's later years of photography. This volume is a collection of the jazz photographs taken from 1941 to 1968 by Francis Wolff, co-founder of Blue Note Records, to document the world's most famous jazz label.

Vignettes tell the story of Blue Note Records; its founders, Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff; recording master, Rudy Van Gelder; and many of the labels' great artists -- Jimmy Smith, Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Grant Green, John Coltrane, Lee Morgan, Hank Mobley, Joe Henderson, and Art Blakey, among others.

The official illustrated history of Blue Note, the most influential and important brand in jazz

Blue Note is not only known as the purveyor of extraordinary jazz but is also famous as an arbiter of cool. The superb photography of co-founder Francis Wolff and the cover designs of Reid Miles were integral to the label’s success and this highly illustrated publication – featuring the very best photographs, covers and ephemera from the archives, including never-before-published material – commemorates Blue Note’s momentous contribution to jazz, to art and design, and to the music business.

Tracing the evolution of jazz from the boogie-woogie and swing of the 1930s, through bebop, funk and fusion, to the eclectic mix Blue Note releases today, the book also narrates a complex social history from the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany to the developments in music and technology in the late 20th century. Celebrating over eight decades of extraordinary music, this book demonstrates how Blue Note has stayed true to its founders’ commitment to ‘Uncompromising Expression’.

About the Author:

Richard Havers was a British music author, journalist, consultant and broadcaster. He was the author of over fifty books, including Rolling Stones 50 and Verve: The Sound of America, both published by Thames & Hudson.

Here is the autobiography of Cheetah Chrome, lead guitarist of the Dead Boys, one of the greatest punk bands ever. It’s a tale of success - and excess: great music, drugs (he overdosed and was pronounced dead three times), and resurrection.

The Dead Boys, with roots in the band Rocket from the Tombs, came out of Cleveland to dominate the NYC punk scene in the mid-1970s. Their hit “Sonic Reducer” soon became a punk anthem. Now, for the first time, Cheetah dishes on the people he’s known onstage and off, including the Dead Boys’ legendary singer Stiv Bators, Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls, the Ramones, the Clash, Pere Ubu, and the Ghetto Dogs, as well as life at CBGBs, a year with Nico, and more.

Straight from the man, these are the backstage stories that every punk fan will want to hear. Never mind the Sex Pistols, here’s Cheetah Chrome!

He was born Eric Patrick Clapton, but you can just call him “Slowhand.”

Over the years, fans of Eric Clapton have debated the high points of an epic career in blues and rock ‘n’ roll spanning nearly fifty years. Which song best epitomizes Clapton’s skills as a songwriter? Which era—the Yardbirds, Cream or his solo work—stands about above the rest? Where does Clapton rank on the list of all-time guitar greats?

Whatever your opinions may be, one this is for sure: few artists have contributed as much to the world of music as the six-string magician from Ripley.

Put simply, one look at Clapton’s five-decade-long résumé is enough to blow any rock ‘n’ roll junkie’s mind. It includes time with the Yardbirds, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Cream, Blind Faith, the Plastic Ono Band, Bonnie & Delaney, Derek and the Dominoes, and his own solo discography, not to mention his Crossroads festivals and appearances at the Concert for Bangladesh, the Last Waltz, Live Aid, the Secret Policeman’s Other Ball, and so much more.

Along the way, Clapton has won seven Grammy Awards and eighteen gold, eight platinum, and seven multi-platinum albums—including one ten-times platinum LP. And if that weren’t enough, he’s also the only musician to have been inducted in the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame three times—as a solo performer and as a member of the Yardbirds and Cream.

From respected author and rock journo Chris Welch, Clapton: The Ultimate Illustrated History is a beautifully illustrated celebration of all things Clapton. Packed with more than 400 photographs, guitars, concert posters, and other memorabilia, this first-of-its kind book also houses eleven chapters following Clapton’s remarkable career—from its earliest days to his various work in several now-legendary bands to his stunning solo career. Also included is a wealth of sidebars covering the gear Clapton has used through the years, as well as extensive appendices detailing his complete discography.

The hectic cultural and political upheavals occurring in the 1960s marked a divide between the relatively stable cultural environment of the previous decade and what is now regarded as the golden age of pop music and youth culture.

Flourishing alternative cultures in the latter part of the decade laid many of the foundations of later trends and subcultures and this influence is nowhere more apparent than in record packaging, with classic graphic design and layouts reappearing again and again. This newly reformatted edition of Classic Album Covers of the 60s is a collection of over 200 of the very best (and in some cases worst) that designers had to offer throughout the decade. Representative designs from each period are illustrated in full colour, taking the reader on a journey from the wholesome joviality of the Very Merry Macs and Muscle Beach Party, through stylish and understated jazz cover designs, to the best psychedelic designs of the late 60s such as the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper and the Incredible String Band’s The 5000 Spirits.

The changing style of album cover design illustrated in Classic Album Covers of the 60s provides a fascinating reflection of changing cultural trends during a decade whose ideas and artistic expressions sought to break the prevailing rules and, so doing, laid the foundations for cover design today.

About the Author

Storm Thorgerson is a graphic designer and filmmaker who shot to prominence in 1968 as one half of Hipgnosis. Along with Aubrey Powell, he designed iconic record covers for the likes of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Genesis. In 1983 Storm formed Green Back Films and made clips for Paul Young, Yes, Robert Plant, Nik Kershaw and others. Today, Storm continues to design album covers (Phish, Cranberries, Pink Floyd, Catherine Wheel, Megadeth, Muse), to execute assorted graphics for DVDs, websites, programmes, T-shirts and to direct the occasional film. He has written and designed several books including '100 Best Album Covers' (Dorling Kindersley) and 'Eye Of The Storm' (Sanctuary Books).

The visualization of sound presented in book form and accompanied by a CD-ROM by Ryoji Ikeda and Carsten Nicolai

Ryoji Ikeda and Carsten Nicolai both work at the cutting-edge of contemporary electronic music and sound art. In 1999, the two artists initiated the joint project cyclo., which is devoted to the visualization of sound. In their shared work, they generate new hybrid forms of audiovisual art and expand the possibilities of digital technology.

The project's first publication is cyclo. id, a book and included CD-ROM that offer a multimedia and interactive documentation of the audiovisual material that Nicolai and Ikeda have collected, researched, and created since they began working together. The featured images are formed by the metering of sound bits that have been selected by the artists with meticulous care according to their acoustic and illustrative potential.

Loving the Alien. Behind the scenes of Nic Roeg’s 1976 sci-fi masterpiece starring David Bowie

Haunting, hallucinatory, and with a mesmerizing lead role performance from David Bowie, Nic Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth is a cult piece of science fiction. This book gathers a bumper collection of stills and behind-the-scenes images by unit photographer David James, including stunning shots of Bowie as humanoid alien Thomas Jerome Newton.

First advertised as a “mind-stretching experience,” Nicolas Roeg’s 1976 The Man Who Fell to Earth stunned the cinema world. A tour-de-force of science fiction as art form, the movie brought not only hallucinatory visuals and haunting exploration of contemporary alienation, but also glam-rock legend David Bowie in his lead role debut as paranoid alien Newton.

Based on Walter Tevis’s 1963 sci-fi fable of the same title, The Man Who Fell to Earth follows alien Newton from his arrival on earth in search of water; his transition to wealthy entrepreneur, leveraging the advanced technologies of his native planet; his sexual awakening with the young Mary-Lou; and then the discovery of his alien identity, his imprisonment, abandonment, and descent into alcoholism. Throughout, Roeg coaxed a beguiling performance from his cast, presenting not only Bowie in ethereal space-traveller glory, but also pitch-perfect supporting performances from Candy Clark, Rip Torn, and Buck Henry.

TASCHEN’s The Man Who Fell to Earth presents a plenitude of stills and behind-the-scenes images by unit photographer David James, including numerous shots of Bowie at his playful and ambiguous best. A fresh introductory essay explores the shooting of the film and its lasting impact, drawing upon an exclusive interview with David James, who brings first-hand insights into the making of this sci-fi masterwork.

The editor:

Paul Duncan is a film historian whose TASCHEN books include The James Bond Archives, The Charlie Chaplin Archives, The Godfather Family Album, Taxi Driver, Film Noir, and Horror Cinema, as well as publications on film directors, film genres, movie stars, and film posters.

About the series:

Bibliotheca Universalis — Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe at an unbeatable, democratic price!

Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible, open-minded publishing. Bibliotheca Universalis brings together more than 100 of our all-time favourite titles in a neat new format so you can curate your own affordable library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia.

Bookworm’s delight — never bore, always excite!