M
any a metalhead will no doubt vividly recall the first time they set eyes on an Iron Maiden album cover. WHILE ENTRANCED BY THE HORROR OF A SKELE-
TAL, ALMOST MUMMIFIED-LOOKING FIGURE STANDING ON A SODIUM LIGHT- WASHED BRITISH STREET (IRON MAIDEN, 1980) OR THAT SAME WILD-HAIRED GHOUL, GRINNING WHILE WIELDING A BLOODY AXE OVER A VICTIM GROPING FOR MERCY (KILLERS, 1981), YOU MAY NOT HAVE KNOWN YOU WERE STARING AT THE WORK OF BRITISH ILLUSTRATOR DEREK RIGGS – A MAN WHOSE TAKE
“Eddie started out as a punk but got adopted by the newly re-arising
metal world,” Riggs explains. “The backgrounds [of the early album covers] are the places I lived at when I first moved to London; a railway bridge in Finsbury Park (Iron Maiden) and a block of apartments in Finchley (Killers). There were whole areas that were completely rundown, boarded up and empty. Now it’s full of yuppies, but back then it was desolate, trash blowing around in the streets, squatters in all the empty houses. When I came home from work, I had to pass street after street waiting to be demolished. On an emotional level, that’s who we were, that’s where we lived. We were the wasted, the for- gotten, the walking dead.” From this landscape of societal
ills came one of pop culture’s most enduring heavy metal icons – a story retraced by esteemed heavy metal journalist Martin Popoff in his 2006 full-colour art book on Eddie’s reclusive cre- ator called Run For Cover: The Art of Derek Riggs, recently reissued in soft- cover. Besides featuring approxi- mately 200 images – including Riggs’ art before Iron Maiden, his work for other bands such as Gamma Ray and Stratovar- ius, a new Eddie painting on
ON HEAVY METAL ARTWORK WAS AN ARRESTING, DOWNRIGHT FRIGHTENING COUNTERPOINT TO THE T&A HUMOUR SO PREVALENT IN MAINSTREAM ROCK IL- LUSTRATION OF THE DAY. THE PORTSMOUTH-BORN ARTIST’S CHARACTER (WE’D LATER LEARN HE WAS NAMED “EDDIE THE HEAD”) WAS THE ANTITHESIS OF THATCHER’S BRITAIN, AN AGE OF VICTORIAN VALUES (CLASS DIVISION, POVERTY AND CENSORSHIP). HORROR WAS SOMETHING THAT ABSOLUTELY HAPPENED ELSEWHERE, YET HERE IT WAS, THE BEAST LITERALLY ON THE DOORSTEP. THIS ART WAS PUNK, URBAN AND VERY ENGLISH.
the cover and previously unreleased originals from the Iron Maiden vaults – the book also has the self-taught artist revealing his techniques in traditional (and later digital) media, the meanings behind his work, the battles with his health that have often threatened his output, and his ruminations on the punk symbolism and D.I.Y. ideals that he projected. “I was in art college for about six weeks,” recounts the 52-
year-old artist. “I got thrown out because I kept on telling them that the course was shit and that they didn’t know
what they were talking about, so they asked me to leave. Then the course was shut down by the CNAA [The Council for National Academic Awards], who govern such things, because the course was shit and they didn’t know what they were talking about. I moved to London, made a portfolio and started showing it around to art di- rectors. I was with an agency for a while but they didn’t really do much for me, so I ditched them and went around to record companies myself. That was when I started getting some work. If you want to do something like that, you don’t sit around and wait for somebody’s permission. Ac-
49
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128