The Return of . . . KISS (#1)

I’ve been waiting a few months to be able to talk about this—and I have talked about it to some degree in a few online interviews, but not really in any detail. Back in April of this year I received a telephone call from out of the blue—from somewhere in South America. At the other end of the line was KISS’ Paul Stanley. It’d been more years than I cared to remember since we last spoke. That was when I had done the cover art for “Rock and Roll Over”—KISS’ 5th album and their 2nd to go Platinum. So you can understand my surprise when Paul asked if I’d be interested in designing the cover art for KISS’ first studio album in 11 years—which Paul himself was producing.

That’s when I started remembering how exciting it was the first time around, to have been involved in that fast-paced world of entertainment and music. For me it had been a far cry from doing the corporate logos, magazine and book covers I had been working on at the time. An “edgy” job for me then was doing a spread for High Times (yep, they’ve been around for a while)! I’ve always enjoyed the fact that doing what I do has enabled me to straddle many different design worlds, from the fairly straight to the totally off-the-wall. I always tried to say “yes” to just about anyone who was adventurous enough, and had the vision to see how having me design for them could work to their advantage. At any rate I had said “yes”to KISS the first time around (even though I had no idea what I was doing), so of course I again said yes to Paul. We agreed to meet when he returned at the conclusion of their South American tour.

Much to my surprise the “Rock and Roll Over” cover had in recent years become one of the most—if not the most—talked about piece of art in my portfolio. It was a little bewildering to me how over the years that cover had become an icon for this iconic group. I’ve been contacted by more people about my KISS artwork in the past 6 or 7 years than in all the years prior, and more than any other piece I’ve ever done including the New York Knicks logo. So the expectations for this new art I was to work on were quite high.

Next: the new cover design revealed.

Letter Cult Interview

For those of you who are interested, an extensive interview with me can be found on Letter Cult.

Overspray

At the very beginning of my career I hooked up with airbrush wiz Charles White III. He rented me deskspace in his studio on Lexington & 26th Street in Manhattan, and helped give my career the push it needed. We did quite a bit of work together in those days—work that I’d like to think was groundbreaking illustration work. Rather than have typography slapped over an illustration, we tried to figure out new and inventive ways of integrating letter and image. This is evident in pieces like the Chubby Checker album cover where the title was part of the illustration—contained in the Checker Cab-like decal I created—or the Gentle Giant cover where I painstakingly figured out what dimensional lettering would look like as it wrapped around a glass jar. One of our first collaborations was the incredibly complex Screaming Yellow Zonkers poster which took a more traditional approach to the integration of letterforms and illustration.

Charlie is finally getting the recognition he deserves for that early work in the just released book Overspray by Norman Hathaway. The book features Charlie who, along with fellow artists Dave Willardson, Peter Lloyd and Peter Palombi, formed a quartet of California artists that transformed the illustration landscape in the ’70s. Charlie, Dave and Norman together with legendary designer and art director Mike Salisbury (who contributed an essay to the book) were all in attendance at a book signing at FAMILY in Los Angeles on 11/12/08. To see photos from the FAMILY booksigning (which includes the back of my head) and some discussion from Norman Hathaway about the process and problems he encountered putting together this book, check out his Overspray Blog. To see more of Charlie’s work from this period, I’ve put together a PDF of images (not currently available) culled from his website. Throughout his career Charles White III has been consistently one of the most interesting talents around. Visit his Olio website to see what he’s been up to.