Rock album cover master Gary Burden has died. The longtime artist for Neil Young and other California stars was 84.
Burden’s covers included Young’s “After the Goldrush” and “On the Beach,” the Doors’ “Morrison Hotel,” Joni Mitchell’s “Blue,” David Crosby’s “If Only I Could Remember My Name” and the first two Steppenwolf albums.
Young said on his web site that he and Burden enjoyed “a life-time of making album covers, laughing, loving acoustic music and so many other things. My heart is heavy.”
“I have so many memories of Gary and I doing these album covers,” Young wrote. “He was a great man and a true artist.”
Burden grew up in California and studied architectural design at UC Berkeley. He designed a house for folk rocker Mama Cass Elliot, who suggested he apply his visual skills to album covers. His earliest cover was for the Mamas and Papas’ final album.
He moved on to rockers Steppenwolf and the the hot new band Crosby, Stills & Nash. His first cover for Young was “After the Gold Rush.”
At a time when record labels often restricted album covers to posed photos of the artists, Burden used that as a starting point. In some of his early works, he took the artist photos and manipulated them, as with the solarization of “Gold Rush” or the lush wash of “Blue” or the high-contrast psychedelic colorization of “Steppenwolf the Second,” right.
Other key works in the 1960s and ’70s employed a California western/cowboy aesthetic, such as the Eagles’ “Desperado,” Poco’s self-titled LP and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Deja Vu.”
Other memorable album covers by Burden include Young’s “Time Fades Away” and “Mirrorball,” Jackson Browne’s “The Pretender,” America’s “Hat Trick” and the Eagles’ “On the Border.”
The Eagles wrote on their web site: “We join with many others in mourning the passing of our friend and collaborator, Gary Burden. Gary designed the covers of our first four albums. He was a unique and talented man, a big-hearted adventurous spirit, a Marine, a fluent Spanish speaker, a masterly raconteur, and a true artist. He made an exceptional and lasting contribution to the art of the vinyl LP album cover and he will be missed. RIP, old friend.”
Burden’s photographer of choice was Henry Diltz, with whom he made the documentary “California Rock: Under the Covers.”
In recent years, Burden worked with My Morning Jacket and Conor Oberst.
“I live and breathe the music and I am an old dog continuously searching for new tricks to do,” he wrote on his company’s web site.
Burden was nominated for numerous Grammys and won for the packaging for Young’s “The Archives Vol. 1 1963-1972” box set.
Burden conceptualized and co-produced “The Atlantic Records’ 40th Anniversary Special,” drawn from a 13-hour concert at Madison Square Garden that aired on HBO and ABC.
No cause of death was reported.
Hello. I am Julio from Spain. I loved the third álbum “hat trick” from América. I don’t know where was taken the awesome photo of both covers. Do you know perhaps the answer, please???