Latest posts by Ed Park (see all)
- Bring on the Lucie by Hallelujah the Hills - October 9, 2015
- Experiment: Two Words - July 27, 2013
- POV - July 19, 2013
During this period he met Paul McCartney, who hired him to design the cover for the Beatles’ next album. Surprisingly, Mr. Hamilton proposed an all-white jacket.
“To avoid the issue of competing with the lavish design treatments of most jackets, I suggested a plain white cover so pure and reticent that it would seem to place it in the context of the most esoteric art publications,” Mr. Hamilton told Rolling Stone in 1991.
—NYT obit for Richard Hamilton
Can someone tell me when it started being referred to as The White Album? Was this immediate? Did a rock journalist coin the term?
Another question: Has anyone here enjoyed the mashup with the Black Album? Here is a link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JRVY6O9oyo
And now, I’ll finish with a brief, pointless anecdote about my own perception of age: I was about ten years old when the album first came out. I remember looking at the album poster, at all the photos of the Beatles from various times of their lives, and specifically there’s one of Ringo. He’s wearing a blazer and a ruffled shirt, and he’s in profile. And I remember thinking “gee, Ringo looks old now.” And now, at my advanced age, I realize that Ringo was only 28. But he looked like an old man to my ten-year-old self.
I read an interesting article that described how closely Paul worked with Richard Hamilton, who also created the White Album collage. Apparently Paul collected all the photos for Hamilton and spent every afternoon at Hamilton’s studio having tea together and watching the artist work, before heading over to Abbey Road to mix the White album. … It’s kind of amazing to realize how much Paul was involved in EVERY detail of the band’s work. Did he steamroll the other Beatles about these things? Or were they just a bit lazy, content to sit back while Paul ran around like a maniac making sure things got done properly? Bit of both?
Anyway, the other thing I found interesting from the article I read (from Bloomberg News, I think) was that Richard Hamilton and Paul started a correspondence over the years. They would mail postcards addressed to each other but with a different crazy address on the card each time — just to see if the postcard would arrive. Apparently a lot of them did arrive. Hamilton said he expected the collection of postcards would someday wind up in some museum.
— Louise