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MY JOURNEY INTO MUSIC BOOKS BEGINS

The One Book Every Music Lover Should Own

A history of recorded music in pictures.

Robert Gowty
7 min readJul 2, 2023

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BY THE AUTHOR

In 1977 Dragon’s World / Paper Tiger released The Album Cover Album.

Spanning across genres including classical, pop, folk and country, its greatest achievement is documenting the evolution of the album cover in rock and jazz.

The Album Cover Album is edited by two giants of album cover design.

Firstly, Roger Dean, artist and designer well known for his covers for bands such as Yes, Uriah Heep and Osibisa, among many other.

Secondly, Storm Thorgersen from the design studio Hipgnosis. Hipgnosis were responsible for a dizzying array of designs from the late sixties, onwards.

Most famously, they designed every Pink Floyd album cover from Piper at the Gates of Dawn to Animals, including perhaps the most iconic album cover of all, Dark Side of the Moon.

Their run was broken by Gerald Scarfe’s design for The Wall.

While not a prolific as their work with Pink Floyd, their covers for 10CC and Led Zeppelin are almost as iconic.

With any music book its greatest strength can also be its weakness. That is, being too opinionated.

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Robert Gowty
Robert Gowty

Written by Robert Gowty

Extemporal Explorer. Music, art, fiction, science fiction, culture and technology. Tasmanian Existentialism. Aficionado of the number seven.

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