Judging A Cover By It’s Cover: Tom Waits “Heartattack and Vine”

July 2, 2008 by John Foster  Send to a Friend

John Foster takes music packaging very seriously. He has deconstructed the design of the recording industry through his personal work and his books, Maximum Page Design (HOW), New Masters of Poster Design (Rockport) and the upcoming For Sale: Innovative Solutions in Packaging Design (HOW) as well as a monograph of Sub Pop’s Art Director, Jeff Kleinsmith, slated for publication by the label in 2008.

He will be poking and prodding various albums on a weekly basis so please be sure to keep an eye out!

This week’s victims:

Is it worth listening to no matter what it looks like? I have a confession to make: there really aren’t any bad Tom Waits albums. Having said that, this disc may not even be in my top five. I highly recommend seeking out “Rain Dogs,” “Bone Machine,” “Frank’s Wild Years” and “Swordfishtrombones”and the one that started it all “Closing Time.” Now if you don’t know Waits it only takes a few notes before one of the most familiar guttural vocalists in music history grabs you with a sense of familiarity. That voice that sounds like it has walked a million miles and drained a million bottles has always been his calling card but his soulful rasp hangs on some of the most inventive music around. That might be my main knock on this disc as it’s primarily a smoky blues album. After the shuffle of the title track that becomes even more evident on the second track, “In Shades” which is an instrumental slow jam primarily featuring Roland Bautista’s simple guitar wails.

The late night piano workout of “Saving All My Love For You” is classic Waits romanticizing the life of the last man in the bar. The chimes at the beginning and the sappy strings do little to detract from lines like “I paid 15 dollars for a prostitute with too much makeup and a broken shoe.” Somewhere Shane MacGowan was taking notes.

Unfortunately “Downtown” cuts in with it’s by the numbers Hammond organ. Waits still scats and rasps but it builds to a queasy Steely Danesque chorus. “Jersey Girl” is minimal and basks in its dark beauty and seems tailor-made for Bruce Springsteen who quickly began performing it after this album came out. Waits gives the vocal the smell of Van Morrison after 12 whiskeys and I must admit I never tire of his performances. The rest continues in this vein with less success and “On The Nickel,” written for the Ralph Waite film of the same name is a hushed piano ballad of smart lines but sappy strings.

This album would wrap up his fruitful time on Asylum/Elektra and serve as little notice of the experimentation on that was to come during his amazing Island years.

Credit: “Art Direction/Design: Ron Coro, Norm Ung. Front Cover Photography: Greg Gorman.”

Any signs of creative interference in the design process by the artist? No. Coro had worked on Waits discs previously.

Does the look fit the sound? It certainly does and it reminds me of the time when a major label could house a songwriter like Waits for untold albums. For someone of this quality there seemed to always be a place no matter the number of copies sold. It was a badge of honor to “do things right” and take care of the finest songwriters of the time period. In that same vein, the designers here took great care to follow through on the details and ensure that the final product had the feeling of authenticity that an artist like Waits deserved. By this point, Coro was well established, making his bones in the 70’s with simple covers for The Doors, Leonard Cohen and Dylan to Dan Fogelberg and Art Garfunkel. The year prior he had made design waves art directing The Cars sextastic “Candy-O” cover. You can see him stretching his talents here as well.

In the days of photoshop it would be too easy to try to build this cover digitally now – having control over every stain. (Not to mention that most designers would default to an awful cross section of road signs for a concept.) That would leave a final product without all of the feeling we have here though. I see it every time I fish the racks at the record store. Doing it the “right” way (not that Coro and Ung had a choice) of type-setting out a real sheet of newsprint and then printing it out only to stain it themselves before photographing the final result caused a greater attention to detail and a much more rewarding package. The design team, knowing that they would be laying out an entire front page, made some major decisions. Using Waits song titles as the article heads and his lyrics for the copy made for dramatic reading. They lightened the mood with playful bylines attributed to “Preston Glass,” “Tulane Bowler” and “Tragic O’Hara.” They made sure to cross their t’s with the masthead and pricing and even dated the “issue” as coming out on July 4th (perfect timing for my lovely readers!)

Besides the beauty of the various stains, the true joy lies in the details like the fake telephone number written out upside down on top corner and the disturbing tragic pose of the photo in the center. Because of the low-tech way of printing to newsprint, you can’t really tell if the highlights are blown out or actually damp portions of Waits on his fingertips and around his mouth. This of course is dark and creepy in all the right ways. You also get something photoshop could never give you, the inconsistent registration of the plates of ink making for a moiré pattern and odd bits of streaked black in the photo.

When they place the photo in just a little off-kilter you know perfection is at hand.

Now my edition on CD was released long after the initial LP version and contains a major pet peeve and highlights a major issue with the record industry by the age of the computer. The label is the only new piece of design needed for the CD release. While it is nice that they add the expense of a hit of red solely to get the Elektra logo dead on (why couldn’t re-issues all have the old logos??? This so deserved the old Asylum look) the in-house team cops out in choosing a different font for the artist and title on the label. The tell tale “W” in “Waits” tells the story in full. It is so frustrating as they could have scanned the original in and lifted it if they were too lazy to dig through old type books – or god forbid pay to have someone replicate it. Lazy, lazy, lazy and an unnecessary blemish on a beautiful ugly package.

Final score (out of 10): 8.5 design (-.5 for the label) 6.5 for the music (judged against his other records)

Coro is still actively designing and as a nice bit of synergy, he art directed the Steel Pulse “True Democracy” sleeve that contained the track “Your House” discussed last week.

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