Wade Beauchamp

In the previous two installments of MOAHMACAJ, I highlighted photography. For the next couple of entries I’d like to talk about some of my favorite illustrators to create metal album covers. Ken Kelly is a name unfamiliar to even most hard rock and metal fans. Ken’s collaborations with KISS produced two of the most iconic images of late ‘70s hard rock: the covers for Destroyer and Love Gun. (I know what you're thinking, and you're right: KISS isn’t metal, hair or otherwise. But you can't deny the band’s influence, both musically and visually, on the genre.) Ken Kelly was a sword-and-sorcery fantasy artist as well as the nephew of Ellie Frazetta, wife of Frank Frazetta, who is THE sword-and-sorcery fantasy artist. Uncle Frank suggested to Ken that he try to break into horror comics and in the ‘70s Ken did covers for Creepy and Eerie magazines in addition to working with characters like Conan the Barbarian and Tarzan. Ken’s work caught the eye of Gene Simmons and the two met to come up with a concept for KISS’s seminal 1976 release, Destroyer. Despite being “an Eagles, Elton John, Bob Seger guy”, Ken attended a KISS show to gain a better understanding of the band and what they were looking for in an album cover and in his own words was “blown away”. Ken’s original concept art was rejected by the band’s label, Casablanca, for being too “violent”. In addition to the band being shown in their then-outdated Alive! costumes, the record execs felt like showing KISS leaving a destroyed city in its wake was too much, so Ken reworked the art and created what became the final cover. Now the band marched over a pile of rubble with only a smattering of flame-engulfed ruins in the background wasteland. Because that’s clearly less violent. Regardless, it’s an instantly recognizable image. KISS’s case as larger-than-life superheroes would never be better stated than on that album. “Detroit Rock City”, “God of Thunder”, “Shout It Out Loud”, “Flaming Youth”, it’s all here. Easily their best, in my opinion. And if you don’t believe me about the band’s impact, just google “Tom Morello KISS induction speech”. I dare you not to stand up and throw the horns while watching it. After Destroyer, Ken Kelly was enlisted once more (KISS Army pun) to provide artwork for the follow-up, 1977’s Love Gun. His first stab showed the band in a backstage alley with adoring women at their feet. Per Ken, the band said, “This is good, but we’re bigger than this now. We are astronomically large.” I can’t imagine anyone in the band but Gene saying that, but in 1977 he was right. Ken went back to the drawing board and created the image that was finally accepted of the band holding court among marble pillars and smoke, with a harem of catsuit-wearing women in white facepaint writhing before them. Ken’s work with the Hottest Band in the World™ would lead to projects with Manowar and Richie Blackmore’s Rainbow and eventually reuniting him with Ace Frehley to create to cover for 2014’s Space Invader.

This time we have the first two full-length albums from Ratt, 1984's Out of the Cellar and their 1985 sophomore effort, Invasion of Your Privacy, presented here in honored glory on Compact Cassette. Oh yeah. If we're talking strictly L.A. glam metal, Ratt is my pick for the best of the bunch. Out of the Cellar was huge, barging through the mainstream door that Quiet Riot's chart-topping Metal Health had kicked in just a few months earlier when it became the first #1 album in Billboard chart history. Those two albums, along with Mötley Crüe's Shout at the Devil, ushered in the age of Sunset Strip hair metal. Halcyon days, indeed. Out of the Cellar went triple-platinum on the strength of songs like "Back For More", "Wanted Man", "Lack of Communication", and the instant classic, "Round and Round". Besides the murderers' row of tunes, Out of the Cellar was probably best remembered for the video for "Round and Round" (which featured the band's manager's uncle, Milton Berle) and its album cover. The model on the cover is Tawny Kitaen, a name familiar to any child of the Eighties. Tawny had been the on-again, off-again high school sweetheart of Ratt guitarist Robbin Crosby (RIP King). For the cover of Ratt's debut album, Tawny, in a meticulously shredded dress, posed as if crawling toward a glowing, open cellar door, like you do. That same year she would appear in the band's music video for “Back For More” and co-star with Tom Hanks in Bachelor Party. '84 was big for Tawny. Things would get even bigger when she achieved MTV immortality cavorting on David Coverdale’s Jaguars (not a euphemism) in the videos for "Here I Go Again" and "Is This Love" from Whitesnake’s 1987 self-titled magnum opus. Tawny and Coverdale would later be married for a short time. Coverdale would go on to look like someone’s grandma and Tawny would go on to get charged with domestic violence for kicking then-husband, MLB pitcher Chuck Finley, in the face with her high heels while the couple was driving home from dinner one night. He probably deserved it. Out of the Cellar's follow-up, Invasion of Your Privacy, cracked Billboard’s Top 10 and eventually went double-platinum thanks to MTV staples “You’re in Love” and “Lay It Down”. The model on the cover the time is 1983 Playboy Playmate of the Year, Marianne Gravatte. After coming to the attention of Ratt lead singer Stephen Pearcy in the pages of the October ’82 issue of Playboy, Marianne was recruited for Invasion's album cover. She also appeared in the video for “Lay It Down”, in which a young Pearcy has his birthday wish granted by a creepy-ass clown and receives of vision of his own future where he wears a puffy pirate shirt and lip-synchs to an oddly passive Marianne while the rest of band rock out behind him. The young Stephen Pearcy in the video was played by a boy named Whit Hertford, who would later achieve fame in my household as Walter “Duckface” Berman on Full House, one of my daughter’s many sitcom obsessions. The cover photo for Invasion of Your Privacy was shot by Nels Isrealson, who also did album covers for the Stray Cats, Richard Marx, and Blur. Invasion’s cover is notable for a couple of reasons. It was one of the first examples of a hair band featuring a scantily-clad model on the cover, a move later copped by Warrant, Great White, and MOAHMACAJ alums, Slaughter, whose cover model for Stick It To Ya would marry Robbin Crosby. Also of note is that Invasion of Your Privacy, while not represented in Tipper Gore’s “Filthy Fifteen”, was one of the records that drew early attention from the PMRC due to its voyeuristic imagery and title. The album, however, did not get the coveted “Parental Advisory” sticker and the sales-boost that invariably accompanied it. Marianne Gravatte would also appear in videos by Zebra and Ric Ocasek before becoming a mom and co-owner of an L.A.-area sports bar. Fans will forever be grateful for her and Ms. Kitaen's contributions to the hair metal album cover canon. Thanks, Tawny and Marianne.

Here we have Stick It To Ya, the 1990 debut from Slaughter, along with the follow-up EP, Stick It Live, both on glorious cassette. The band was formed by singer Mark Slaughter and bassist Dana Strumafter leaving former KISS guitarist Vinnie Vincent’s band, Vinnie Vincent Invasion. Slaughter’s debut release was one of the biggest of the year, selling over 2 million copies and spawning such MTV hits as “Up All Night” and “Fly To The Angels”. By the time they released their second studio album, 1992’s The Wild Life, Nirvana had effectively stabbed hair metal right in its spandexed and hairsprayed heart, a crime that can never be forgiven. The Wild Life produced no Top 40 hits and thus began the band’s decade-long wait for hair metal to become a viable source of nostalgia package tours. But we’re here to talk about the album cover art, and this is one of my all-time favorites. It has a distinguished provenance, too, having been conceived by photographer Glen Wexler and graphic artist Hugh Syme. Syme was known for his work with Saga, Dream Theater, Styx, Queensrÿche, and most famously, Rush, for whom he has designed every album since Caress of Steel, in addition to creating the band’s iconic Starman logo. Wexler’s photograph here is notable here for being the last project on which he would use traditional compositing and darkroom techniques. The model was December 1986’s Playmate of the Month, Laurie Carr, who would be briefly married to Ratt guitarist Robbin Crosby (subject of the third-best episode of VH1’s Behind the Music, behind only Mötley Crüe and the almighty Go-Go’s.) Carr was photographed on a “wheel of death” prop against a painted backdrop of a cloudy night sky. The carnival in the background, with its model Ferris wheel and big top, was a miniature set piece that was positioned in forced perspective and also part of the main shot. The foreground surface, emulating a gravel lot with windblown litter, was a miniature as well but was photographed separately. The two images were then composited in the darkroom through double-exposure. That’s all really cool but the main thing to note about these two album covers is the sheer teddy Ms. Carr is wearing. Hot, right? And obviously a thong. Even though Laurie’s back is flat against the wheel of death, her teddy is cut so dizzyingly high on the hip that the back can’t possibly be anything but a thong. This is not open for debate. Now, later that same year, perhaps realizing that hair metal’s reign was in its twilight, the band looked to capitalize on its sudden success and quickly released Stick It Live, a five-song EP featuring live versions of the most popular cuts from their double-platinum debut. Whatever. Look at the album cover. All the key players, save for Syme, would return. Wexler was back behind the camera and Laurie was in front of it again. Continuing the theme, our heroine has been freed from the wheel of the death and is being escorted into the carnival by an epically mulletted, leather vest-wearing, dwarf-biker-carnie. Or maybe they’re leaving the carnival? The placement of the wheel would indicate as much. But then, why is the wheel outside of the ticket booth? And why is he carrying the knife? Maybe this is a prequel of sorts and he’s escorting her to the wheel, where he’ll strap her in? It’s all very unclear. What is clear, though, is that this is not the same teddy. That original teddy, which had been cut so high on the hip, has inexplicably gone from thong to something more akin to what the swimsuit catalogs of the day might call a Brazilian cut. It’s a nice enough shot, sure. But it’s a copout. The bottom line is that the promise that was made by the cover of Stick It To Ya was broken on Stick It Live. It’s a lie. A betrayal. One neither 18-year-old me nor 45-year-old me can forgive.