There was always a thin line between prog and psychedelia, especially on this early, 1972 Nektar disc but the cover for A Tab in the Ocean was full-on psych. Nektar – A Tab in the Ocean (1972, Illustrated by Helmut Wenske) The stormy seascapes would also come to reflect Oldfield’s state of mind, as the reflective shot in the cover of Incantations. On The Millennium Bell, they were literally the center of the universe.
It also gave Oldfield an image to return to for most of his career: The bells would reappear in his many sequel albums. Trevor Key’s cover shows the bells floating above a seascape, like the music itself, it calls for your imagination to add whatever it likes. The album cover for Mike Oldfield’s 1973 debut album Tubular Bells is one of those cases where the simplest image was the most iconic one. Mike Oldfield – Tubular Bells (1973, Illustrated by Trevor Key) The theme was carried over nicely on the band’s next album, Live at Carnegie Hall, where the sultan and Scheherazade are attending the show. Though the effect is pretty, there’s also a bit of stylized violence – she was marrying a bloodthirsty sultan after all. Renaissance’s classic 1975 album Scheherazade & Other Stories was given an appropriate storybook-like cover, showing some of the characters that sprang from its heroine’s imagination. The Hipgnosis team may have made its name with outlandish visions, but they could do something simple and lovely when an album called for it. Renaissance – Scheherazade & Other Stories (1975, Illustrated by Hipgnosis) In America, the album was renamed Expresso and given an alternate cover designed by John Thompson that was equally whimsical but lacked the colorful pop-art elements. The Seattle native Moitoret created similar surrealist designs for Helix, Seattle’s first “underground” newspaper in the 60s. It also tied in with the European title, which literally meant “fizzy!” but likely had a colloquial meaning as well (It’s a gas!). The new sound was steeped in hipster jazz, so in Europe, the 1975 album was given a lively, pop-art cover by artist Jacques Moitoret that harked back to the hippest corners of the early 60s. Gazeuse! was an important transitional album for Gong, who’d lost visionary leader Daevid Allen an album earlier and were now dispensing with vocals altogether. Gong – Gazeuse! (1975, Illustrated by Jacques Moitoret) Trouble was, not everyone in the band smoked, so when keyboardist Peter Bardens proposed a track called “Twenty Sticks of Cancer,” that was the end of that. They even suggested that the band rename some of its instrumentals to reinforce the connection. The European cigarette company loved the cover and released album-themed packs as a tie-in.
At home in the U.K., the response was quite different. label came up with a cartoon camel on the moon as a quick substitute.
Stateside, the cigarette folks threatened to sue, so the U.S. The album’s original jacket was designed after the Camel cigarettes package by artist Phil Smee (of Motörhead logo fame) but rendered out of focus, as to resemble a mirage. There was no way the original cover for Camel’s 1974 Mirage album was ever going to fly in America. Camel – Mirage (1974, Illustrated by Phil Smee) Here are the stories behind some of the greatest prog rock album covers.