Tom Wilkes, Album Cover Designer, Dies at 69

I thought this one would be of interest.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/arts/des...;ref=obituaries

Tom Wilkes, Album Cover Designer, Dies at 69

By BRUCE WEBER [New York TImes]

Published: July 18, 2009

Tom Wilkes, an art director, photographer and designer whose posters for the

Monterey Pop Festival and album covers for the Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin,

Joe Cocker, George Harrison and others helped illustrate the age of rock 'n'

roll, died on June 28 [2009] in Pioneertown, Calif., in the high desert east

of Los Angeles. He was 69.

The cause was a heart attack, said his daughter, Katherine Wilkes Fotch. Mr.

Wilkes suffered from primary lateral sclerosis, a progressive neuromuscular

disease.

Mr. Wilkes was an art director for a small advertising firm in his hometown,

Long Beach, Calif., and taking on occasional freelance work designing album

covers when he was hired by Lou Adler, the manager of the Mamas and the

Papas, to create imagery for what was then a new idea: a rock 'n' roll music

festival.

Officially billed as the First Annual Monterey International Pop Festival,

the event took place over three days in June 1967, two years before

Woodstock. It attracted about 200,000 people, with performers like Jimi

Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, the Who, the Byrds and Otis Redding, among many

others.

Mr. Wilkes's memorable poster images included the Greek god Pan, playing the

panpipes and wearing a psychedelic necktie. Another shows a shapely woman

photographed as a silent film star, wearing a strikingly loopy tie - it has

a photograph of another woman on it - that has been painted around her neck,

and her suggestively clad figure is set against a pattern of snail-like

swirls.

His work at the festival landed him a job as art director for A&M Records,

where he designed album covers for Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Sergio

Mendes and Brasil '66, Claudine Longet and Phil Ochs, but it was as a

freelancer that he created his most enduring work.

Mr. Wilkes's visual style was hard to nail down; working often with a

partner, Barry Feinstein, he was known for tailoring his imagery to an idea

of the music.

For the Rolling Stones, he created a controversial cover for the album

"Beggars Banquet," using a photograph of a toilet stall with the name of the

band prominent on a wall filled with graffiti. The record label initially

refused to release the cover, and replaced it with a fake invitation to a

dinner. Mr. Wilkes's version was released later.

For Dave Mason's "Alone Together," Mr. Wilkes photographed Mr. Mason wearing

a top hat and a long-tailed coat against a backdrop of canyon rocks. For Joe

Cocker's "Mad Dogs & Englishmen," he placed a photograph of the long-haired

Mr. Cocker flexing his right bicep within an illustration of a mirror frame.

For George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass," he depicted the former Beatle

as if he were a woodsman in a fairy tale, surrounded by reclining trolls.

Only hours before Janis Joplin's fatal drug overdose in 1970, Mr. Wilkes

photographed her for the album "Pearl," colorfully dressed and coiffed and

looking remarkably relaxed and happy. He photographed Eric Clapton, sitting

in a chair in a white suit, for his first solo album, and for Neil Young's

"Harvest," he created the typescript title over a red sun set against a

wheat-colored background.

The cover for the London Philharmonic Orchestra's rendition of the Who's

rock opera "Tommy," featuring close-up images of gleaming silver pinballs,

two with embedded golden eyeballs, won a 1973 Grammy Award for Mr. Wilkes's

company, Wilkes and Braun.

Thomas Edward Wilkes was born in Long Beach on July 30, 1939. His father,

Edward, managed a company that sold vending machines. His grandfather, a

sign painter, was the source of his artistic interest. He went to art

school, his daughter said, at the Art Center School in Los Angeles (now the

Art Center College of Design, in Pasadena).

Mr. Wilkes was married and divorced three times. In addition to his

daughter, Ms. Wilkes Fotch, who lives in Orange, Calif., he is survived by a

brother, Dennis, of Chattanooga, Tenn.; and three grandchildren.

Mr. Wilkes had gotten to know the Rolling Stones when he designed some of

the graphics for their 1967 album, "Flowers." In an interview on Wednesday

Ms. Wilkes Fotch said that after "Flowers," her father and the Stones were

hanging out in London, talking about what would be suitable for the cover of

"Beggar's Banquet."

"They went to some god-awful pub, and my dad went to the bathroom, and

someone had written 'Rolling Stones' in red lipstick over the toilet," she

said. "That's where they shot it."