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BACKSTORY
Eventually Convoy reached the ceiling of the tiny room they were
playing in. They needed a bigger room with more air to breathe.
Louis XIV was born. Needless to say, I’ve been involved ever
since. For the most part, I’ve designed most all things that
come directly from the band. Posters, CDs, albums, web sites, you
name it. I’m not sure how it works out with other bands and
their designers, but I think this loyal relationship has worked
well to achieve a cohesive, consistent style. Jason and I have always
been on the same page. Sometimes it seems like we’re the only
ones reading from that page, and that’s pretty damn cool.   The design of that CD was done without a budget. There really is
no budget when you're an unsigned band. Initially, Jason had emailed
me an image of a Lawrence Welk cover. It was simple and bold. Something
about it seemed so smart. We loved how all the old records had the
names of the songs right there on the cover. It gives the songs
power. It’s not just about a hit or two. It’s an album.
It’s a collection of thoughts that don’t work unless
all that thinking is put side-by-side on the cover. That’s
cool. I’ve always loved the look of old Blue Note Jazz records.
Clean, two-color art with san serif, bold writing. I love the spare
black and white backs on all the records put out in the ‘50s
and ‘60s. They had an image or two and a story, review, or
poem that you could sit and read while listening to the album. We
wanted that. In the end, I designed a full-sized record that we
shrank down to fit in a jewel case. On the cover and back, I used
still images from a video Jason had created for “The Hunt.”
Brian wrote a poem for the back. It fit the formula of a vintage
album, but I think we added enough to make it our own.  Initial Illegal Tender cover sketch It wasn’t easy. I have a decent collection of old magazines from the ‘30s to the ‘60s that I occasionally pull ideas from. I’ve got tons of Life, Esquire, and other misc. magazines with unbelievable amounts of amazing imagery. We initially showed them a design that was a collage of images pulled from these magazines. Red lights started flashing over at Atlantic. “You can’t use that. We don’t have rights to any of that stuff.” It was back to the drawing board. I didn’t have a big archive of sexy images of girls and Atlantic really wasn’t prepared to spend any money on a photo shoot and there wasn’t a budget for anything. The design had to be done yesterday. We were already losing time with “Finding Out.” While in Boston with my wife, I stopped into Newbury Comics (a local record store) and bought a book that seemed perfect. It had vintage, home grown nudes. The cover had oriental characters all over. There’s something about the oriental characters that seemed right. It was odd, but just sexy enough to be perfect. It was full of housewives and such from the ‘40s and ‘50s. It was vintage, low-budget, semi-erotic porn. For some reason I just knew it would work.
We were accustomed to creating things on our own without a budget, but we weren’t used to being regulated. Atlantic, for obvious reasons, wasn’t going to let us just use the images I pulled from the book. I called the gentleman who compiled the images. He lived in New Jersey. Interesting guy. He came up with a reasonable fee for us to use a series of images from the book.  Great. Unfortunately, Atlantic wasn’t comfortable with us using any of the girls faces on the cover because we didn’t have model releases. All the comps I had created to that point showed faces. We also couldn’t show any nudity. After some trial and error, we were given some clear-cut rules. You can have a bit of boob, but no nipple. Not even the hint of a nipple. Don’t even think about the grassy knoll. No face and no nipple, but a little boob. Not ideal, but we were going to have to work with that. We decided that the songs had to be on the cover again. I wanted it to sit, side-by-side with the self-titled, and have the two of them be able to go to the same party together if they wanted. It was also important to stay raw. There’s something too phony about slick productions. The outside of the packaging has a dark quality similar to the self-titled, but we added some pink. For the inside we wanted a creamy tone and introduced an interesting crop of a nude woman that lined up with the cd tray. This one was sexy, semi-dangerous, and we were pretty sure it was going to stand out on the shelf. It also fits the music. The guys record everything themselves on old-school equipment. They have a vintage approach to a new sound. That’s the look of that EP. I’m pretty sure Atlantic was happy how that EP turned out. It looks pretty good.
Ideas  Helmut Newton Photo Atlantic wasn’t keen on the clothes being on and off idea for two reasons: nudity and extra cost for the sleeve. I was a bit stressed out with the whole situation. Jason and I had been able to cruise along pretty smooth for the last 7 years. Do whatever we wanted. Now we had rules and such. I got a call from an art director with Atlantic. Rob wanted to know if we had any ideas and how could he help and so on. He wanted to know if we had any photographers in mind. Not really. I started doing some photographer research and started looking at illustrators as well. Sometimes illustration is a very cool route. I loved the cover of the last Blur album, Think Tank. That had been sitting on my desk for a while and I’d love to do a cover that cool. I sent Rob a list of photographers. “Cool? Have you ever heard of Phil Mucci? We use him a lot and he’s good with bands.” He sent me a link to his portfolio. Some big stars and a funky collage style that was very interesting. I was jazzed. I chatted with Jason and we thought it could work. He trusted me. Rob checked with Phil on a schedule and such, and before I knew it, we had a date for a photo shoot in a couple weeks. Both Jason and I had conversations with Phil about what we were thinking. We didn’t have any solid ideas. Just a feeling about style and that it should be sexy. Phil sent us some covers and artwork that he thought had the vibe of what we were looking for. They were LP covers from the ‘70s and some vintage porn posters. They were right on. We were really into a photo by Helmut Newton of a girl on a couch looking back at two single beds side by side. It was very odd, but sexy in a weird way. Shortly after, Phil sent us an unbelievable sketch. I was really blown away. The people in the sketch actually looked like the band. The cover would be a girl sitting on a couch half nude. There would be a closed circuit camera up in the corner. The inside art would be of the band sitting around a television watching the video of the girl. Jason had second thoughts. Phil’s work all had a digitally manipulated quality that made him feel uneasy. The idea seemed too planned. It was original, but it was just too polished. We didn’t really want Phil to design the art, just take the photos. The idea was too slick. I spoke with Phil about our concerns and he wasn’t all that
excited. I’m pretty sure he was sick of us already. He wanted
out. He was used to coming up with concepts and having people jump
on board. We were going to be difficult. Luckily, we were able to
hold onto Phil and decided that we’d go to Los Angeles with
a vague idea of what we wanted and see where that took us. I don’t
think he liked to work without a plan, but we did. He would be doing
publicity shots of the band as well, so there would be plenty of
work to be done. We did know that we’d need a model and that
there would be a chance that she would be nude in one way or another.
Atlantic wasn’t especially excited about having a model there.
That would be more money. It’s not that they didn’t
have the money budgeted to spend, but you could tell they would
rather have spent it in other places.
Los Angeles I left Boston on Thursday afternoon. I’d be in California till Sunday morning. It was going to be a quick trip. I was a bit nervous about the whole thing. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I got off the plane in LA to find a well-dressed man holding a sign with my name on it: LIMO HOFSTETTER. At that point, I could have turned around and gone home and it would have been a successful trip. We were staying at the Hyatt on Sunset. I called Brian during the 30-minute ride to the hotel and he sounded jazzed that I was town. He mentioned that the hotel was known as the Riot on Sunset and that we were gonna get shitty. It’s a long flat drive over to Sunset Blvd from the airport. As you finally begin to ascend the Hollywood Hills it gets a bit more glitzy and big. Everything feels Hollywood. Bright lights, fake city. I got out at the entrance to the hotel and found Vince Vaughn in front of me looking disheveled and having an animated conversation on his cell phone. My wife was going to be pissed and my parents were going to say “Vince who?”.  The hotel wasn’t glamorous or expensive looking. It was a nice hotel, but there was a “don’t ask, don’t tell” feel about it. It had the vibe of a place where TVs got thrown out of third story windows on a regular basis. Jason showed up and we figured out that Atlantic hadn’t booked me a room. I was going to have to share a room with Jason. We went up to the room and Mark, Brian, and Jimmy came along soon after. They had a copy of the Illegal Tender CD with them. It was the first time I had seen it. It looked great. The cover was really solid looking. We had gotten that one right, and it felt good. I guess everyone at Atlantic was excited about the way it came out as well. That made me feel better about the weekend and calmed my nerves a bit. There was a lot of budget and talent converging in LA and I wanted to hold up my end of the bargain. That was the first time I had met Jimmy. It’s James, actually. He pointed out that I had gotten his name wrong in the packaging. He sounded a little bitter. Damn. We drank a six-pack that Mark had brought over from his room and watched one of the late shows. Trail of the Dead was the musical guest. We debated the pros and cons of the dual drummer thing they had going for them. Mark said that he could tell that one of the drummers was far more talented than the other because he was playing all the hard parts. They looked like they were playing the same parts to me, but I’m pretty sure Mark knows what he’s talking about. We listened to a newly mixed version of Hey Teacher that had just been finished. It was cool. Much bigger than the version I had been listening to on my Ipod. Jason wasn’t sure about the song being on the album. He thought that maybe it didn’t go well with the rest of the album. He thought maybe it was too cheap or childish. We talked about the song order for the album. It hadn’t been finalized yet. They also hadn’t decided on the title yet. The latest idea was “The Changing of the Guard”. Not sure about that one. Jimmy took off to meet his girlfriend who had just come into town and the rest of us went down to the hotel bar. You had to either be a guest or someone special to get into the bar and I hoped that I qualified as a guest because I sure wasn’t going to qualify as special in this place. Everyone looked like they were in the cast of 90210. I mentioned to the guys that I had seen Vince Vaughn earlier in the night. They weren’t all that impressed. They see celebrities all the time. I got the feeling that they were on the verge of being celebrities themselves and they knew it. On the way down to the bar a group of 3 guys had seen us walking down the hall and said “hey, aren’t you guys Louis XIV? We saw you with the Killers in Vegas. You guys were sick.” We sat at a booth and did some catching up. It was a “let’s look cool” scene and I wasn’t feeling all that cool. I went up to bed earlier than you’d think. I woke up on East Coast time. 3 hours earlier than I would in New Hampshire. Add to that the fact that Jason wakes up around 11 and I’d have to find something to do for the next 4 hours. I grabbed my camera and walked a couple of miles to the left on Sunset and then back a couple of miles in the other direction. I had some coffee and decided to go back and get Jason up earlier than he’d probably like. The front desk woke Jason up to confirm that I was actually staying with him and he had them make me an extra key.
 Jason had driven his dad’s car up from San Diego. It was more like a boat. We drove down Sunset to a ‘50s style diner for breakfast. They had valet parking. It was a diner for God’s sake. LA is weird and I don’t think they know it. We came up with a strategy for the day. We were going to meet Phil in a couple hours. He was going to show us photos of models he had taken on Thursday. We talked about the vibe we were looking for in the design. We always seem to come up with key words and phrases when we’re working on something new. The more times the same thought comes up in a conversation the more it sticks. We draw from the same visual well. When he says something about the design for Beggar’s Banquet, I know he’s talking about the cursive writing. When he says Roxy Music, I know it’s not so much the music, but the feeling of the covers. There’s a sexy girl on the cover, but there’s always something odd about it. It’s sexy but also strange. There’s a girl and she’s wearing a tight dress that looks like it’s wet and maybe it’s ripped and maybe she’s lying on the grass somewhere and there’s always an odd set of circumstances suggested by the photo. That, for the most part, was what we were looking for. It would be nice if there was some relevance to the circumstances we were going to suggest, but I don’t really feel it’s necessary. If it feels right, then it is right. There was a billboard for the Scissor Sisters across the street. We definitely didn’t want to be there. What the hell are they wearing? As we were waiting for the valet to bring us the car we were standing next to a good-looking girl. After she left, Jason kicked himself for not asking her if she wanted to be on the cover of his record. We had some time to spare before we were supposed to meet Phil. We drove down to a music shop that sold used guitars and equipment. Jason was looking for a vintage keyboard that they could use on the road. I recognized the guy working the shop. I had done a website for his band a few years earlier. They were called Big Elf. I remember that they were big in Scandinavia. Jason knew him too: they had the same manager at one point. This place specialized in reselling equipment that had been used by famous to semi-famous musicians. You could buy a beat-up old guitar that was maybe used by Bryan Adams or a kick drum used by the Cramps. Jason checked out a variety of old keyboards. Most seemed simple and ‘80s and not unlike something we had in our house when keyboards first got popular for the masses. He was also looking for a box that could be used as a mobile recording studio. It had to be something that could hold soundboards and maybe a laptop. He knew the band was going to be on the road semi-permanent once the album was released and the prospect of being away from the studio so long was making him nervous. He wanted to record in all the hotels they stayed in along the way and make an album based on the recordings. He didn’t find the box, but we did walk away with an old keyboard.
Phil, Liz, Rob and the rest of the band met us back at the hotel and we made our way up to the room. Liz and Rob were from Atlantic’s art department and had come out from New York. The truth is that if the band hadn’t brought me in as the designer, they’d have been working on the design. Phil had taken pictures of about 7 girls. Since we were most likely going to photograph this girl from the back, he had taken pictures of the girls from behind. We all sat and debated the qualities of the girls’ hair or backs or asses or heights. As wrong as it felt, it was all very necessary. I can’t even explain why because it would just come out wrong, I’m sure. Just believe me that it was a process that we were going to have to go through. It quickly became apparent that probably none of these girls was going to work. They were either too skinny or their hair wasn’t right or something. Jason had an idea of what he wanted the model to look like and it was going to be a challenge to find a perfect match. I could see the frustration in everyone. These girls had been chosen with a certain budget range in mind. There were models who might work better, but they were in a price range that Atlantic hadn’t planned on. They didn’t even really want a girl in the process, let alone a girl in the next price range. Phil had also taken some photos earlier in the day at the location. The hotel had a few large ballrooms and halls, as well as a series of rooms with ornate fixtures, wallpaper and such. We were afraid they were maybe trying to be a little too Louis XIV era with the location, but at the same time there was an interesting quality that we could make work. Phil talked about where all the props were going to be staged and stuff like that. He’s a pro. He was doing his best to organize a situation that wasn’t meant to be organized. I was impressed. We decided to meet back at Phil’s hotel and see what we could come up with for a model. The photo shoot was the next day and we didn’t have a model lined up. We were quickly running out of time. Phil’s hotel was quite a step up from where we were staying. He had a suite with a living room and bedroom. He had a balcony that overlooked the swishy little side street the hotel was on. Phil had a talent agency organizing images of models and compiling a section of their site with photos for us to look through. We looked through photos and pared our choices down. The problem was that we didn’t have images of any of the girls from the back. We had put so much critical thinking into every nuance you could imagine with the initial set of girls. It was hard to do that kind of critique with smiling head shots. We ended up choosing about 4 girls who might work. Phil made a call to the agency to see if we could meet with the girls that day. Before you knew it, the doorbell rang and a girl came through the door. Phil brought her to the bedroom and took similar pictures as the ones he had of the earlier girls. I felt bad for the girl. We were all sitting on the couch just staring at her when she came out. Phil loaded the images on his laptop. Better, but not quite perfect. I really wasn’t sure what perfect was at that point. A little while later, the bell rang and in came another girl. Turns out she was a Playboy centerfold in the ‘90s. She might work, but she might be too short. I was afraid our criteria was getting so narrow that we could have sat there and figured out a reason why Angelina Jolie wouldn’t work if she had shown up. At this point, we were late for an appointment with the stylist. The guy had called a few times already and was getting impatient. We left Phil to the model quest and headed out. Phil had lined up the stylist to outfit the band. We had requested mod-style clothes. Brian wanted a white suit. The guys had brought their own clothes along to be tailored. I could tell that Jason was feeling overwhelmed. He had the feeling of too many cooks in the kitchen. We had never needed a stylist, or staging areas, or locations, or anything like that before. We had pulled together some very successful designs without all that. There were a lot of people involved at this point and it was unclear how much control we were really going to have at the photo shoot. By the time we got to the stylist, we were very late. They didn’t seem all that annoyed, but they also didn’t seem all that interested either. They had pulled together a rack of clothes that would fit each guy. The guys gravitated to a rack in the back of the room and were told that it was for Audioslave. At this point, I felt more like a personal assistant than a designer. I’ve always taken on more than just design with the band, but this was a far more official experience. I was taking phone calls from Atlantic about timing, and the model search. Phil called and said a girl had just been by and he was convinced that she was the one. She was a southern girl with a “rock-and-roll” style about her. I was nervous to just have him hire her. I knew that after the way the day had gone that the band would have to see the girl before we officially signed off. It was late and Phil wanted to just be done with the quest. I said he’d have to just wait till we got back. Meanwhile, the guys were still trying on various suits and such. There was a tailor on site fixing clothes the guys had brought along. Brian was annoyed that there wasn’t a white suit that fit him. There were some cool shoes though. There’s nothing better than cool, vintage shoes. We made our way back to Phil’s a bit exhausted by all the stress of the day. As we were making our way into the elevator, Shug Knight made his way out. Brian mentioned that he had killed someone. In the room, Phil showed us photos of the girl. The band fell in love. Phil made a quick phone call and it was official. She’d be at the downtown location bright and shinny in the morning. It felt good to have that decision finalized. It had been a trying process, but once again, it felt like the frustration had been worth it. We all had room service dinner and beer on Phil’s tab. Brian fulfilled his promise and got me shitty. I was quickly outmatched. We went to the bar in this hotel. It seemed even more exclusive than the other one. I felt extremely out of place and decided I should stumble back down Sunset and crash in the hotel room. A little while later Jason woke me up and wanted me to go down to the Hyatt bar and meet their A&R guy and the production manager with Atlantic. I wasn’t feeling up to it, but I gradually regained composure and we went down to the bar. We sat at a table in the middle of the bar. I was feeling pretty shitty and was bummed that this was how I’d meet these guys for the first time. John Rubeli (A&R) had brought the final mix of the album with him. He gave the CD to David Burrier (Production Manager) in a ceremonial, “it’s official”, kind of way. No more changes. This is it. I think they knew the importance of the ceremonial staging. Jason would probably still be undecided on that album to this day if he didn’t have people putting an end to it around him. There was a fire going in the middle of the bar. We were all in t-shirts. It was very bizarre. I needed sleep. click here for PART 2 |
