cover designer
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-me-tom-wilkes11-2009jul11,0,1170616.story
Wilkes designed album covers for the Rolling Stones, Neil Young,
Janis Joplin and other legendary musicians.
By Dennis McLellan
July 11, 2009
Tom Wilkes, a Grammy Award-winning art director and album cover
designer whose work included albums for the Rolling Stones, Janis
Joplin, Neil Young and other music legends, has died. He was 69.
Wilkes, who was diagnosed with a form of amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease) in 1999, died of a heart attack June
28 at his home in Pioneertown, Calif., said his daughter, Katherine
Wilkes Fotch.
Wilkes was partner in a Long Beach advertising firm when he became
art director for the 1967 Monterey International Pop Music Festival
for which he created all of the graphics and print materials,
including the festival's psychedelic posterthat was printed on foil stock.
"In fact, he won an award from Reynolds aluminum for the most
creative use of aluminum foil," Fotch said. "He was always very proud of that."
Music producer Lou Adler, who produced the landmark music festival
with singer John Phillips, said Wilkes "caught the spirit of the
time" with his festival graphics.
"Most of the artwork in that particular culture was coming out of San
Francisco, and what Tom did was he took a San Francisco look, or
niche, and made it international," Adler said. "You can see a lot of
the posters from that period and say, 'Oh, that's the '60s.' With
Tom, it isn't dated. There's a very special look to it."
The Monterey pop festival "catapulted" Wilkes' career into the music
industry, his daughter said, beginning as art director at A&M Records.
During his heyday, Wilkes designed or provided the art direction or
graphic design for scores of album covers, including designing the
covers for the Rolling Stones' "Beggars Banquet," Neil Young's
"Harvest," Eric Clapton's "Eric Clapton," Joe Cocker's "Mad Dogs &
Englishmen" and George Harrison's "Concert for Bangladesh" and "All
things Must Pass."
As he did with many of the albums, Wilkes also shot the cover photo
of Joplin for her 1971 "Pearl" album, which shows the flamboyant
singer lounging on a settee.
"Their photo session was the night she overdosed," Fotch said.
In 1973, Wilkes won a Grammy Award for best recording package for the
Who's rock opera "Tommy," as performed by the London Symphony
Orchestra and Chamber Choir.
David Fricke, a senior writer at Rolling Stone magazine and an
admirer of Wilkes' work, said that "the magic and the sort of
importance of album design was to be able to catch the eye, to try
and get a sense of what the music and the personalities were inside
and also make you want to buy it."
Wilkes, Fricke said, "was able to capture a certain essence of what
was on the record and the person who made it.
"You look at something like Neil Young's 'Harvest,' the texture of
the cover and that very simple, almost antique lettering, and you get
a feel of what Neil was trying to do in that record, the honesty and
the grit and the deep Americana of what that record represents now."
And the cover for "Mad Dogs & Englishmen," Fricke said, "with that
pose of [a muscle-flexing] Cocker almost like a circus strongman
captures the carnival atmosphere of what those shows were like."
Adler, for whom Wilkes designed the "Tommy" album as well as a number
of Cheech and Chong albums for his Ode Records label, described him
as "very creative" and "very volatile."
"He was very, very independent and sometimes difficult to deal with
because of his strong convictions on what he was doing," he said.
But the end product, Adler said, "would be very unique and special,
as evident by his artwork when you look at it."
Born in Long Beach on July 30, 1939, Wilkes graduated from Woodrow
Wilson High School in 1957. He attended Long Beach City College and
graduated from what was then known as Art Center School in Los
Angeles (now Art Center College of Design in Pasadena).
After two years as art director at A&M Records, Wilkes was a partner
in Camouflage Productions, a partner in Wilkes & Braun Inc. and art
director of ABC Records. Then, in 1978, he launched Tom Wilkes
Productions and also became president of Project Interspeak, a
nonprofit environmental and human rights organization.
A longtime Topanga Canyon resident, Wilkes moved to Pioneertown in
1992 but continued designing album covers and working with Project
Interspeak, among other things.
"He loved the high desert, and he always had a place out here since I
was a child," Fotch said by cellphone this week while driving to her
father's home. "We'd come out here to race motorcycles."
Wilkes recently completed writing a memoir, which would include his
artwork, and was seeking a publisher before he died.
"It's called 'Tommy Geeked the Chicken,' " said Fotch, who is unsure
of the meaning of the title reference. "I haven't read the manuscript
yet. I'm almost afraid to find out."
Wilkes was married and divorced three times. In addition to his
daughter from his first marriage, he is survived by his brother,
Dennis Wilkes, and three grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. today at First Presbyterian
Church of Orange, 191 N. Orange St., Orange.
Instead of flowers, the family asks that donations in Wilkes' memory
be made to fund ALS research and sent to the ALS Assn. Development
Department, 27001 Agoura Road, Suite 250, Calabasas, CA 91301.
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