Love is Magic – King explains the influence of Brian Wilson, Martin Hannett and Johanna Went on John Grant’s album artwork
Bella Union, John Grant’s record label, contacted me in late 2017: ‘Would I be interested in meeting John to discuss the possibility of doing the artwork for his forthcoming album?’ I told them I would. I meet with John in Shoreditch, in the bar of a trendy hotel. It is almost Christmas.
I liked John immediately. He has the face of a General from the American Civil War, a kind of nobility. He is knowledgeable, a bit geeky, and he has lots of ideas. I can’t remember what we discussed exactly, but I remember him telling me that he liked American muscle cars – the big fuel guzzling penis extension kind.
I got quite excited about this – I immediately imagined a sleeve, I could see it clearly in my mind as we spoke. A real dumb-ass cock-rock, early 1980s, vulgar, badly designed record sleeve… maybe something like The Scorpions might have had, but not as sophisticated. A real bargain bin album cover – huge black muscle car, bright yellow background…
I was thinking we could make this great cliché, then mess it up, ‘subvert’ it… maybe John is draped over the car in a skimpy bikini – John is a huge bloke, with a beard – John as Daisy Duke. I could see it all in an instant – but I didn’t know John, so I said nothing, I didn’t want to put him off.
Over the coming weeks, John and I discussed sleeve ideas. I found an old portrait of Ernest Hemingway, a very beautiful, large format black and white photograph. You can clearly see every wrinkle in his face. I imagine doing a picture of John just like this, though in my version John has blue eye shadow, maybe a bit of lipstick.
I tried to convince John that this was a good idea. He said it’s “too gay”. John is gay, so I have to take his word for this. With my Daisy Duke bikini idea and Ernest in eye-shadow concept, I start to worry that I’m going down the wrong path, that my idea of camp comedy is really only what I’ve learned from British television in the 1970s.
We ground to a halt. Weeks passed. The album was due out in October 2018 – it was now early February. I worried that we’d started on this too soon.
Sometime in late February, John contacted me and said, “Could I be a praying mantis?” He means on the album sleeve, of course. My heart sank. I imagined his head Photoshopped on to the body of a praying mantis. I dragged my heels on the praying mantis idea, hoping it would pass, and it did. We went back to the muscle car. I bought some stock images of huge, sleek, black Mustangs and Pontiacs, and I mocked-up some sleeves. I liked them, but I didn’t love them. When I sent them to John he said, “This isn’t enough.” He was right. We needed a big idea.
Rejected ‘muscle car’ cover test.
By March I was quite exhausted. I always like to do the first idea that comes into my head. I often think it’s the right idea, it’s instinctive. The problems come when nobody else likes this idea… I find it hard to re-calibrate and move on. I told John I was stuck, and we had long chat. He was very encouraging, and told me to “go for it” – “a clean slate”, “start again”.
I cannot remember exactly where the final idea came from – but it arrived fully formed, it was whole, and it was this: we would treat John as a performance artist – no pop star stuff – we would try to conjure up the DIY’ness of old-fashioned performance art. I told John about my fascination with Jeff Nuttall and that whole 1970s cardboard box/step ladder/budgie type of protest street theatre. John told me how much he loved Johanna Went.
From that, somehow we quickly got to talking about the insanity of some record producers: the crazies. Martin Hannett, Brian Wilson, Phil Spector – people who obsessively ‘searched for that sound’ – the incredible lengths they would go to in search of it. Brian Wilson recording in a sandpit in order to get the correct ‘good vibrations’, Martin Hannett forcing Joy Division’s Stephen Morris to record his drums on a rooftop. We would put these two things together: performance art in the recording studio.
The sleeve would be John in the studio: a variety of costumes, a variety of ludicrous scenarios. John ‘searching for the perfect sound’ – Scott King
Love is Magic cover test.