Albums re-imagined as books

Designer Christophe Gowans created book jackets inspired by rock albums. "What If Your Favorite Album Was a Book?" (Mother Jones)

• [penguinchris]

  I’ve read countless comments across the internet from people who thought Blood on the Tracks should have had a better cover, with many suggesting something literal, like this one (I do like that illustration, though I’m guessing it’s re-purposed from an actual 50′s pulp novel and not original, and I like the tag-line taken from the lyrics).

  I always thought the actual cover was brilliant, though. Definitely extremely understated considering the emotional content of the album, but anything more would have been too much and, indeed, trite.

• [UnnecessaryUmlaut]

  Love the Purple Rain.

  Also, the artist LittlePixel did a whole series of LP Covers As Pelican Books: http://bit.ly/3pCuRw

• [burritoflats]

  These are fantastic and well done. On the other hand some album and group names have been lifted directly from book titles – Velvet Underground, Supertramp, Guadalcanal Diary, Primal Scream, The Doors, New Riders of the Purple Sage, etc – not to mention specific pop music songs that were inspired by books and short stories.

• [Anonymous]

  I like the ones where the graphics say something about the music – the horse clipart used for Patti Smith doesn’t really rise above the level of a visual gag. I’d like to see the book-music-art connection explored further, as suggested by the other comments.

• [Philboyd Studge]

  It would have been funnier if the image was a bloody and mangled cap, while Bob’s rent-a-girlfriend looks in horror.

• [pauldrye]

  “Never Mind the Bullocks”? *sigh*

• [procrastinet]

  These are terrific. The quotes around ‘Arcade Fire’ seem like cheating though – maybe the author of THE SUBURBS is R. Cade Fire?

• [RSFSmee]

  These are arilliant and, as Burritoflats highlights, point up the close relationship between many popular songs and books, both fictional and non-fictional. While plenty of hit tunes would, in book form, become memoirs or biographies (well, chapters therefrom), it’s interesting to consider the the Dewey Decimal categories into which other songs would fall. Rocket Man, anyone?

  • [burritoflats]

    “While plenty of hit tunes would…become memoirs or biographies”

    A good 90% of the music biographies I’ve ever read use actual song titles of songs written by the book’s subject as chapter headings – ie; “The Long and Winding Road – My Life As a Beatle” etc