Thursday, April 07, 2011

John Cale's Warholian LP Sleeve


Andy Warhol, famously, designed the first two iconic Velvet Underground album covers. One of his lesser known record designs, however, was for John Cale’s proggy The Academy in Peril (1972) LP. Obviously the two knew each other from their Velvet Underground associations so they came to an arrangement over the sleeve. Warhol would design the album cover in exchange for being able to use one of the album tracks, Days of Steam, for the soundtrack of his film, Heat. The sleeve turned out to be characteristically Warholian with its use of Kodachrome transparencies in series. The actual photographs were taken by Ed Thrasher. The back of the album bears Warhol’s studio signature (see pic).