Your art on your sleeves
Words | Virginia Blackburn The market for album artwork is booming. Find out how you can acquire your very own, superior piece of rock ’n’ roll history with our collector’s guide. Who cares if you’re not a teenager any more? ROCK MEMORABILIA HAS never been more popular, especially the artwork used on album covers. The most enthusiastic collectors are those who [...]
Words | Virginia Blackburn
The market for album artwork is booming. Find out how you can acquire your very own, superior
piece of rock ’n’ roll history with our collector’s guide. Who cares if you’re not a teenager any
more?
alt="Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd, signed by Storm Thorgerson, £770."
align="left"src="http://www.bmivoyager.com/images/2008/may/voyager_may_108.jpg">
ROCK MEMORABILIA HAS never been
more popular, especially the artwork used
on album covers. The most enthusiastic
collectors are those who bought the
original LPs and now want to recapture
their youth while having something to
put on the wall. “People grew up with a
particular kind of music, and now want to
buy something as a memento of it,” says Richard Goodall
of the Manchester-based Richard Goodall Gallery, which
specialises in, amongst other things, rock-related art. “They’re
obtaining a piece of history – cultural history and their own.”
But it’s not only middle-aged professionals in search of
their lost teenage years who are buyers. “I’ve had 15-yearolds
who buy at the cheaper end of the market,” says Simon
Bland of Birmingham-based St Pauls Gallery. “Then, at the
other end of the age scale, I had a 70-year-old lady buying
an image that had been created for Pink Floyd. She’d never
heard of the band but liked the illustration.”
alt="Black Rose, Thin Lizzy, by Jim Fitzpatrick, signed by the artist and guitarist Scott Gorham,
£595."
align="right"src="http://www.bmivoyager.com/images/2008/may/voyager_may_110.jpg">
Manchester – for a long time one of the most important
cities in the British music scene – is home to Central Station,
a trio of record sleeve artists, who have worked with
‘Madchester’ outfits Happy Mondays, James and Black Grape
among others, as well as collaborating with director Michael
Winterbottom on the film about Manchester’s colourful rock
’n’ roll history, 24 Hour Party People. To mark Central Station’s
25th birthday, Richard Goodall Gallery is exhibiting limited
edition fine art prints by the team this month.
Made up of brothers Matt and Pat Carroll and Karen
Jackson, Central Station had a particularly close working
relationship with Factory Records and the legendary Hacienda
nightclub, both dreamed up by the late music impresario Tony
Wilson, which were at the heart of the ‘Madchester’ music
and rave scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
alt="595. Electric Ladyland, Jimi Hendrix, by Karl Ferris, signed by the artist, £750."
align="left"src="http://www.bmivoyager.com/images/2008/may/voyager_may_109.jpg">
“Central Station’s work is widely accepted as amongst
the most influential. They inspired a generation of artists,
designers and music fans, and helped define the infamous
‘Madchester’ era,” Goodall notes. Tony Wilson – whose last
public appearance was at Goodall’s gallery – was in no doubt
about the trio’s significance. “The second half of the Factory
story is summed up by the painterly eccentricity of Central
Station, Matt, Pat and Karen,” he said before he died last year.
Probably the most famous artist to be associated with
album covers is Sir Peter Blake, who with his then wife
Jann Haworth designed the cover of The Beatles’ 1967
album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It cost the
then stratospheric sum of £2,868 (5s/3d) to produce,
approximately 100 times the average amount for illustrating
an album cover those days. Today, that looks like a bargain,
given that a copy of the LP’s cover, signed by all four Beatles,
was recently rumoured to have been sold for around £30,000.
But it is possible to buy limited edition screen prints signed
by Sir Peter – St Pauls Gallery has them at £1,550.
alt="Ziggy Stardust, signed by David Bowie and artist Terry Pastor, from St Pauls Gallery."
align="right"src="http://www.bmivoyager.com/images/2008/may/voyager_may_113.jpg">
There are two ways of collecting album artwork. Either
you buy the original photograph, painting, collage or what
have you, or far more commonly, you buy a limited edition
print – they can be photographs or pictures – signed by the
photographer or artist, or both. The latter are still highly
collectable in their own right and can also, sometimes quite
quickly, prove to be very good investments. The pricing
structure is intricate – it goes up as the print run goes down.
St Pauls Gallery is about to issue a series of limited edition
prints of Pink Floyd album artwork by Storm Thorgerson.
The print run will be 195, and the initial price will be £595.
However, the price will be higher when the print run is close
to selling out, while at the same time, a secondary market
exists. In addition, St Pauls Gallery has a selection of other
signed, limited edition prints created by Thorgerson, ranging in
price from £325 to £4,500. Meanwhile, collectors of a certain
age may recall Jamie Reid, who designed various covers for
the Sex Pistols, including Anarchy In The UK, of which St Pauls
Gallery is selling a limited edition print at £2,000.
alt="Yeah!, Black Grape, by Central Station, from Richard Goodall Gallery. Unused photograph of
Keith Richards" align="left"src="http://www.bmivoyager.com/images/2008/may/voyager_may_114.jpg">
The value of these prints is also based on the popularity
of the artists. “Anything to do with The Beatles will always
sell,” says Stuart Hellier, of the specialist auction house Cooper
Owen, which concentrates on rock art and memorabilia. It
holds online auctions throughout the year, as well as two or
three live auctions at well-known English venues. “Then there
are the Rolling Stones and Elvis,” he adds, “and these days
Queen are gaining a great deal of momentum.”
As for current artists, there are possibilities, but given
that LPs have largely given way to CDs, the nature of the
artwork has changed. “The Kaiser Chiefs, Snow Patrol and Amy
Winehouse attract attention, but the older designs were for
12” vinyl, and as such, are more interesting,” says Hellier
alt="Rolling Stones, which Christie’s sold for about £1,000 in late 2006"
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Some photographers are also highly collectable, like Gered
Mankowitz, who made his name snapping Jimi Hendrix and
the Rolling Stones. Another is Daniel Kramer, who took an
iconic series of photographs of Bob Dylan from 1964 to 1965,
the period when he moved from acoustic guitar to electric,
shedding one fan base and finding another. Now, he can count
collectors of artwork relating to him among his fanbase, who
believe it’s not just about rock ’n’ roll – but art, too.
HOW TO START
The best advice is always to buy something because you like it, not because you think
it will go up in value, as it may not. Christie’s holds two auctions a year, one in London
and the other in New York, devoted to entertainment memorabilia, which includes rockrelated
items. The next auction, on 10 July in London, is devoted to rock memorabilia.
WHERE TO GO
St Pauls Gallery, Birmingham, +44 (0)121 236 5800; href="www.cooperowen.com">www.cooperowen.com href="www.snapgalleries.com">www.snapgalleries.com
www.stpaulsgallery.com
Richard Goodall Gallery, Manchester, +44 (0)161 834 3330;
www.richardgoodallgallery.com
Cooper Owen online auction house;
Snap Galleries in Birmingham specialises in limited edition prints of rock-related
photographs, +44 (0)121 748 3408;
Various fairs are held throughout the year that offer a good selection of music-related
prints to choose from. One is the Affordable Art Fair;
www.affordableartfair.co.uk
