Not solely is 1973’s Mind Salad Surgical procedure certainly one of Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s biggest albums (if not the best), however it is usually one of many band’s most immediately recognisable. A lot of that is to do with the putting art work that adorns the album, the work of Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor, movie director and set designer Hans Ruedi Giger, finest recognized for his distinctive work on the Alien sequence of movies.
The unique album got here housed in an elaborate design. The outer sleeve featured a chunk of Giger’s monochromatic bio-mechanical art work that boasted a human cranium inside an industrial mechanism. Nonetheless within the centre was a circle depicting the flesh-and-blood face that may have lined the skeleton. The unique sleeve was cut up down the center, each side opening outwards, revealing beneath a human feminine face (generally rumoured to be the face of Giger’s then-wife, actress Li Tobler) with alien-like hair and varied facial markings – assumed to be scars.
Reading: Work nr 217 elp ii brain salad surgery
The entire impact maintains the complexity, depth and great thing about the music that’s contained inside. The items, entitled Work #217ELPI and Work #218ELPII have been chosen by ELP having visited Giger at his house in Zurich in 1973. On the time Giger had been busy on his Passage sequence of works and was additionally concerned in creating his Landscapes triptych, which might be comprised of infants, skulls and phalluses – the latter portray would trigger a furore in 1986 when, used as a poster within the Lifeless Kennedy’s album Frankenchrist, it prompted the band and varied associates linked to be charged criminally with distribution of dangerous matter to minors after a teenage woman had bought the album.
With ELP on the look out for brand spanking new art work for his or her fourth studio album, their Swiss promoter, Gustav Zumsteg, instructed his buddy HR Giger.
“My promoter friend insisted on driving me to Giger’s house,” recollects Keith Emerson. “I remember it was a fairly modest bungalow from the outside – until you went in. The interior décor was overpowering, gothic to the extreme. From floor to ceiling his unique airbrush technique had transformed a simple room into a cathedral. Giger had gone three-dimensional – his toilet had arms coming out, almost engulfing the sitter. I noted the arms had drip-feeds going into them. Other décor consisted of gas masks!”
As is broadly recognized today, the working title for the LP was Whip Some Cranium On Ya, a euphemism for fellatio. For sure, this appealed to Giger.
“The obvious thing was to combine lips, penis and skulls,” he defined again in 1991. “Those elements flowed into the picture. Nevertheless, Keith suddenly informed me that the title of the album was going to be Brain Salad Surgery. I was dismayed until he explained to me that this expression, likewise, connoted fellatio.”
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The unique album art work featured a strong phallus, beneath the chin of the woman’s face on the outer sleeve, located simply above the brand new rounded ELP brand that Giger had additionally created. Though this was not replicated on the woman’s face on the inside sleeve (the one tastefully utilized by Prog for this subject’s journal cowl), it however triggered issues for the band with their document firm.
“After much deliberation we reluctantly had to appeal to HR Giger to tone down the phallic object in front of the subject’s mouth until it looked like a shaft of light,” says Emerson.
Mind Salad Surgical procedure reached Quantity 2 on the UK album charts in December 1973 and spent an preliminary 17 weeks on the charts. Not solely does it rank as one of many biggest of all prog rock data, its particular person art work helps map it out, alongside King Crimson’s In The Courtroom Of The Crimson King, Pink Floyd’s The Darkish Aspect Of The Moon and Sure’ Fragile as probably the most immediately recognisable emblems of progressive music.
ELP would go on to higher success with their Mind Salad Surgical procedure world tour, and the resultant Welcome Again My Associates… reside triple album.
Giger’s status would go from energy to energy. In 1977 he revealed his first e-book, Necronomicon, and it was this that was given to movie director Ridley Scott throughout pre-production on the primary Alien movie, prompting him to rent Giger to provide the art work and designs for his celebrated 1979 movie, and for which the Swiss artist would win an Oscar in 1980.
Giger’s work within the area of music continued unabated too. He labored on Magma’s 1978 album Attahk, Debbie Harry’s Koo Koo album, Danzig’s Danzig III: How The Gods Kill, and Stevie Steven’s Atomic Playboys, in addition to designing microphone stands for Korn’s Jonathan Davis. He additionally shaped a powerful working relationship with Thomas Gabriel Fischer, designing the quilt for Celtic Frost’s 1985 album To Mega Therion, in addition to this yr’s Triptykon launch Eparistera Daimones.
There are two Giger-themed bars in Switzerland, each modelled by the artist and based mostly on the biomechanical model of his Alien. There may be one within the artist’s birthplace, Chur, and one within the Giger Museum in Gruyeres (opens in new tab). And Giger’s artwork is at all times in demand for exhibitions around the globe.
Which brings us again to Work #217ELPI and …ELPII. Sadly, the unique items of artwork went lacking following a retrospective of Giger’s work in 2005 on the Nationwide Technical Museum of Prague. Each items, measuring 34x34cm and not using a body, had been housed on the Giger Museum. Work #217ELPI was owned by Giger’s spouse Carmen, who initially had a poster of the work hanging in her bed room as an adolescent, while …ELPII was owned by one of many artist’s finest mates. Each have been on mortgage to the museum.
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The exhibition, Giger In Prague, ran from April 14 to August 31. Following the exhibition’s shut it was packed up for a return journey to Switzerland and locked on the museum over the weekend. The work arrived again in Zurich, at Giger’s home, on Tuesday September 6, and was transferred to a different truck by two of Giger’s assistants who drove it to the museum in Gruyeres, the place it was found the 2 influential items have been lacking.
“At first we were certain the two paintings were taken from the locked storeroom over the weekend after the show was taken down,” Giger’s supervisor Les Barany informed Prog. “The posters put up around Prague hinted as much, but now, five years later, we can’t be certain of that and keep open the possibility that it could have happened at any point between the time the paintings were taken off the wall and the transport was checked against the list at the Giger Museum.”
So then, a contemporary prog rock whodunnit? Needed posters for the art work have, as Barany factors out, been on present all through Europe within the hope that it would shed some mild on the work’ whereabouts. A reward of $5,000 per portray in addition to an all-expenses paid weekend on the Giger Museum is being provided for any data that results in the profitable restoration of the work (opens in new tab).
[2020 note: According to Giger’s website the ELP artwork remains unfound].
Giger himself determined that, till Work #217ELPI and …ELPII are discovered, he would cling precise duplicate copies up on the Giger Museum.
“I hope that Giger feels as proud as I on that landmark of an album cover,” Emerson says of Mind Salad Surgical procedure. “To this day HR Giger’s work remains distinctive in every sense. He’s frighteningly unique.”
This function initially appeared within the Might 2010 subject of Prog.
Go to HR Giger’s web site (opens in new tab).
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