THE ALBUM COVER ALBUM Edited by Storm Thorgerson and Roger Dean Ilex www.ilex-press.com


The album cover at its greatest contains a spiritual link to the music held within, conjuring up a whole imagined world in the listener’s head.


This book is a reprint of the original 1977 tome edited by Storm Thorgerson and Roger Dean and returns in glorious hardback, jam- packed full of colour silvery quality printed images. Plans are also under way for the reprinting of the further five volumes. The pleasure of the book is as you


would expect: the gorgeous technicolour reproductions all together in one handy volume. For those in love with design its a chance to gaze at those great ’70s prog sleeves without having to worry about the musical content contained within (Relayer by Yes… I’m looking at you here). Those put off by the proliferation


of Yes and Pink Floyd covers will find much to appreciate in the covers of less well known artists such as Birth Control, UFO and Jade Warrior. It’s good to see an eclectic choice of albums obviously chosen before the music press insisted on codifying what they considered the classic rock canon to the exclusion of the really interesting stuff. The book is split into sections on


jazz, psychedelia, ‘Golden Years’, ‘Influences And Coincidence’, ‘Miscellany’, ‘Portfolios’ and ‘Devices and Disguises’. The last of these contains pictures of a great triangular German ’70s record sleeve that no collector could leave on the shelf. ‘Influences And Coincidences,’ on the other hand, brings together several albums of similar design ideas. If you’ve ever wanted to see another eight albums in the same vein as the legendary Toe Fat sleeve then this is your chance.


There are many interesting little


subsections within the chapters; records linked by a common theme, censored records, those with sleeves designed by the recording artist. I would have appreciated a little more narrative than the brief chapter forewords, but the focus is very squarely on the visual feast. A great coffee table book for the


more discerning coffee table in your life. Austin Matthews


DUSTY!: QUEEN OF THE POSTMODS Annie J. Randall Oxford University Press www.oup.co.uk Finally, an un-sensationalist look into the life and music of Dusty Springfield. Which was the real Dusty? The


“White Queen Of Soul”; the Britpop diva; 78


the over-the-top camp performer with the beehive hairdo, overdone mascara and melodramatic hand gestures; the studio perfectionist who didn’t like to work alongside musicians while recording and who took outrageous numbers of tries before being satisfied with a recording of her vocals on a track; the lesbian who never outright denied her sexual persuasion but who was cautious about admitting it? All of these sides of Dusty are


examined in Randall’s thoughtful book. Also looked at are aspects of the singer’s life some may not have heard about before, such as the time she took a defiant stance against the government of South Africa when they wanted her to sign a statement saying she would not perform to mixed race audiences while touring in their country. And we get a glimpse of the mentally unbalanced side of Dusty – she was bipolar and possibly suffered from a kind of multiple personality disorder, “Dusty” maybe being a character that exploded out of the more staid psyche of Mary O’Brien, a middle class English lass and one-time convent girl. Randall is a professor of


Musicology at an American university, and while most of her book is something that can be read and appreciated by lay people, she slips into dull academic speak in the section where she deconstructs the “establishing shots” in the openings of some of Dusty’s “pop arias”. It’s hard to imagine who will gain any insight or appreciation of Dusty’s music by knowing how many seconds into a certain song we are given a clue about its ultimate emotional intent.


However, that same chapter contains the most entertaining part of the book, where Randall makes a connection between the varied and always dramatic hand gestures Dusty used while singing with the similar


motions employed by 19th century opera singers and actors. The photo figures which compare some of Dusty’s moves with those of actress Sarah Berhnardt’s are both hilarious and convincing. It would be great to read a book


on Dusty’s music by someone with less of a scholarly leaning. But as a serious exploration of the complicated character of one of the great pop and soul singers to have ever held a mic, this is quite effective.


Brian Greene


I WANT TO TAKE YOU HIGHER: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SLYAND THE FAMILYSTONE Jeff Kaliss Backbeat www.backbeatbooks.com Marketed as including “the first face-to-face interview with the reclusive superstar in over 20 years”, Kaliss’ biography is a thoroughly researched account of the rise and fall of one of rock’s most enigmatic


chameleons. In addition to personal interviews with all of the Family Stone members, Kaliss does eventually speak (twice) with Sylvester ‘Sly’ Stewart, but the substance of those short conversations is limited to a few paragraphs in the last chapter and the Afterword. Before that, Kaliss takes the reader on a magical journey from Stewart’s early years as house producer for fellow DJ, Tom Donahue’s Autumn Records (home of his earliest solo recordings and production duties for acts like The Beau Brummels, Great Society and Charlatans) through the band’s triumphant Woodstock performance and subsequent rise to the top of the charts.


But Kaliss doesn’t soft pedal Stewart’s downslide into the cesspool of guns, attack dogs, nefarious hangers- on and drugs that eventually alienated him from his fellow band members. Convinced no one could fully


translate the sounds in his head onto vinyl, Sly diminished the roles of fellow Family members, often resorting to electronic substitutes, multiple overdubs, tape loops, and providing his own bass and guitar parts. Nevertheless, his early rhythmic experiments influenced everyone from Stevie Wonder, Prince, and Miles Davis (an occasional visitor to Sly’s drug den in LA) to the jazz fusion of Weather Report, Chick Corea’s Return To Forever and Herbie Hancock to later pop- soul acts like Earth, Wind & Fire, The Commodores, Kool & The Gang, and Parliament/Funkadelic, whose fellow space cadet, George Clinton labelled Sly “my idol” and inducted The Family Stone into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 (and who also provides the book’s Preface). Kaliss also suggests that Sly’s insistence that his band were “perceived more as entertainers and musicians than as a psychedelic freak show” may have convinced Jimi Hendrix to tone down his guitar pyrotechnics in favour of “the more soulful palette displayed on Electric Ladyland and Band Of Gypsies”. If there’s any hesitation in fully


recommending the book, it’s Kaliss’ over- reliance on third-hand quotes. Much of the conversations with Family members Jerry Martini, Cynthia Robinson and Sly’s sister (Rose) and brother (Freddie, himself now an ordained minister) are overshadowed by extensive excerpts from Joel Selvin’s 1998 Sly & The Family Stone: An Oral History and the Showtime documentary, The Skin I’m In. Readers and fans looking for behind- the-scenes anecdotes about the recording sessions will, for the most part be disappointed, although his tales of the drug- induced debauchery surrounding the recording of There’s A Riot Going On accurately reflect his subject’s spiral out of the public’s eye into failed rehab attempts and a multitude of legal hassles. Future publicity stunts like his marriage to Kathy Silva at New York’s Madison Square Garden, the band’s numerous failed attempts at


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