Cover story

Anyone who knows me, either now or at any point in my creative career, will know that music is important to me. I would even boldly dare say it could be equal to design – I just managed to make a full-time career from the latter. When I was a student, it was the design of record sleeves that motivated me to explore the cutting edges of what design could do. Looking back, it was probably highly inappropriate that I would have channelled XL’s graphic aesthetics for the ZTT record label into a brief for British Airways, or even considered Malcolm Garrett‘s arrestingly angular sleeve art for a poster for Picasso.

Record sleeves were so often my starting points, and from the beginning, music would soundtrack creativity. In this context, it’s perhaps not so surprising to see that I’m now more than fifty articles into this subject for Classic Pop magazine and there’s plenty more to come.

I always had a personal cassette player; it provided the sonic wallpaper for my world when I wasn’t in the classroom or my bedroom/design den. With the right song in one’s ears, a trip into the city could be an imaginary pop video voyage. I would spend lots of time in record shops; these places with their ever-changing resource libraries were my archives.

Abridging this story considerably, I eventually got a job in design, but it was far from the glamorous pop world I’d optimistically hoped to inhabit. I continued to work with what inspired me and remember clumsily trying to imbue some of my first public health information on HIV/AIDS with the constructivist sensibilities of Neville Brody‘s work for Cabaret Voltaire and the style magazine The Face. Meanwhile, in my little office in a big grey hospital, the music played, as it does to this day.

How is this glance back into my formative years relevant to what I’m up to today? It’s peculiar how, without planning, possibilities can pan out, and there may be something in the saying by the English poet Lady Mary Montgomerie Currie (1843-1905), in her poem ‘Tout vient a qui sait attendre’ that – all things come to those who wait.

ALL hoped-for things will come to you who have the strength to watch and wait.
Our longings spur the steeds of fate. This has been said by one who knew.
Ah, all things come to those who wait, (I say these words to make me glad). 
But something answers soft and sad, they come, but often come too late.

Lots of pop groups have emerged from Liverpool, and I got used to seeing people on the pages of Smash Hits magazine one day and in a city centre café the next. Over the years, in such a small city, it was inevitable that I would have almost literally bumped into Elvis Costello, Pete Burns, Andy McCluskey, Thomas Lang, Gary Christian, Ian McCulloch, Ian Broudie, Pete Wylie and Paul Rutherford. Noteworthy for its surreal mundanity, I once also had lunch sitting next to Earth Kitt, who wore a white turban, tracksuit and large sunglasses while she tucked into a legendary baked potato in the even more legendary (and long lost) Everyman Bistro.

Peter Coyle was another such character whose band, The Lotus Eaters, had a European hit with ‘The first picture of you’ in the eighties, and I would occasionally see him around town. Moving into the 2000s, Peter and I would end up working together when he took the lead on a men’s mental health initiative called CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably), and I helped out with some design work for the project. After Peter moved to France, he and I collaborated on a song, appropriately titled ‘You and I’, for which I offered the music and he the words. It’s on Spotify, if you’re interested.

Peter remains a prolific writer, still recording and performing live, and this year he’s headed into fresh electronic territory with a series of singles that were crying out for a coherent approach to their presentation. The five (for now) digital sleeves each feature Peter’s own art, forming a cohesive package that reflect the synthetic songs’ stylings. It only took me four decades, but I eventually got to design some record sleeves. You can see the designs at the head of this post and attached to each release across Peter’s official streaming channels. You can also find out about how the tracks came together in a lovely new interview with Peter and electricityclub.co.uk

electricityclub.co.uk/peter-coyle-interview

You might also enjoy episode 13 of my ‘Art on your sleeve’ podcast where Peter and I talked about the design of The Lotus Eaters’ record sleeves.

softoctopus.co.uk/episode-13-peter-coyle-and-the-lotus-eaters

All of Peter Coyle’s media links can be found on Linktree.

linktr.ee/petercoylefractal

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