No. 3 “Heartattack and Vine” by Tom Waits
On the face of it, this album cover doesn't look that special, but when you take a closer look the genius behind it becomes evident. Made to look like the front page of a newspaper, it's a clever idea in itself. The title is Waits' name, done in that font they used for newspaper banner headers some years ago, then there's a picture of Waits looking suitably drunk and out of it, with a caption below reading
“Shortly before dawn Sunday this South Central Los Angeles man was seen leaving the corner of Western and 110th Street in a burnt sienna Chrysler Imperial and heading in the direction of the San Bernardino Mts.” (There is no punctuation: I've reproduced it exactly as it's printed on the sleeve).
Examine the cover in a bit more detail. The main headline is the name of the album, “Heartattack and Vine”. In fact, each of the smaller headlines corresponds to a track on the album, so you can see “Jersey girl”, “Mr. Siegal”, “Savin' all my love for you”, “Downtown” and “On the nickle”, while half-seen (and completed, mostly, on the reverse) can be seen “Stay with you baby till the money runs out” and “Ruby's arms”. The former of those is the only one that doesn't exactly conform to a song title: the track is actually called “Till the money runs out”, though the rest of it comes up in the lyric. Also, “On the nickle” is misspelt, as the song is actually spelt “On the nickel”. The only track actually not represented on the cover is the instrumental “In shades”.
But not only that: the actual articles under each headline are the lyrics --- in some cases, all, in others parts --- of the songs they refer to. So under, for instance, the headline “Jersey girl”, you can read
”Got no time for the corner boys/ Down in the street makin' all that noise”, and the same with each headline. And each headline is followed by a city the story is supposed to take place in, but more than that, it's a city that either the song is set in, or is about. Like “Mr Siegal” (written about the legendary gangster Buggsy Siegal, who essentially created the gambling mecca of Las Vegas), which is shown as taking place in, you guessed it, Las Vegas! “Jersey girl” of course is in New York, while “Downtown” is credited to Little Tokyo. And so on.
Then there's the names of the contributors. While they generally have nothing to do with the songs, some of them are puns, like under “Savin' all my love for you” the author is Preston Glass, while “Heartattack and Vine” is credited to Tragic O'Hara, and just over the CD spine you can see that “Stay with you till the money runs out” has been written by Tulane Bowler. Very clever. There are other names there that don't mean too much to me, but they could be American in-jokes or something, like Charles Slater, or Clancy Church, though I'm unsure what he's trying to say with the correspondent for “Downtown” being Ah Fong? I reckon Belmont Rivera, who is credited for “Mr. Siegal”, is a hotel.
The album cover is stained with marks that make it look like this is an old newspaper, or one that has seen some use at any rate. If you turn the CD upside down, up in the top right-hand corner (which, with the disc reversed, becomes the bottom left-hand corner) someone has scribbled a name --- David “Der” Fuehrer --- and a (probably fictitous) New York phone number on the edge, as people sometimes do if there's nothing else to hand to write on. In addition, the date of the paper is July 4 --- Independence Day, of course.
This is an album cover I used to look at in the local record shop on the way home from school or work and think “Wow, that guy looks wasted! Bet the music is crap!” Little did I know that a scant ten years or so later this album would be in my collection, and I would be an avid fan of Tom Waits. On the inlay of the CD it credits the cover design to Ron Coro and Norm Ung --- odd names, and they could very well be either pseudonyms or some sort of in-joke, but whoever came up with and executed the concept, top marks on a job well done!