To paraphrase an old adage, one cannot judge a record by its cover. But there's another adage that says every picture is worth a thousand words. Indeed, entire volumes have been devoted to album cover artwork. The stories behind the Smithereens' album covers are told here, for the first time, in words and pictures. (Click on album titles to view album covers.)

Girls About Town

The artist/manager illustrated the front cover with a road map and a simple array of items typically belonging to "girls about town." The back of the sleeve is in black and white, and features an arty design with cutout photos of each band member spelling out various letters of the band name. While the front of the cover is reproduced in the booklet for the CD Blown To Smithereens, the back cover is shown here.

Beauty And Sadness

In the liner notes for the 1992 CD reissue, Dennis Diken described the inspiration for the cover art:

"The unusual cover was designed by our friend Arthur Miller (from the Bleeker St. scene) with a concept from Pat. The striking figure 'staring' at you is a variation of an image found on a vintage Scotch reel-to-reel recording tape box while the red and black backdrop was inspired by the sleeve of Voices In Modern, the first album by the Four Freshmen."

However, artist Arthur K. Miller gave Dave's Smithereens Page a different story:

"Pat had the concept based on old LPs. He supplied me with a lot of materials to take off on. The strong 3 color jacket (two ink colors and the white sleeve) for Beauty And Sadness was a solution to the fact that the boys didn't have much money to put into it after producing the recordings. But it turned out real well I think, and it holds up even today. I remember going into a record store in midtown Manhattan right after it came out and seeing the jacket covering an entire wall in a tile pattern. The manager of the store said they loved it so much they couldn't resist. I wish I had taken photos of that."

One such LP cover that clearly inspired Pat DiNizio was Thelonious Monk's Work! Album, (re-issued as Thelonious Monk And Sonny Rollins). Pat once said in 1991, "I tend to listen more to things like Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk than rock and roll." The resemblance to the jazz artist's cover is quite remarkable.

Especially For You

DiNizio's interest in science fiction and horror films inspired the design for the band's first long-playing record. Arthur Miller makes it clear that there were actually two paintings, the first of which will probably never see the light of day. The second painting was the one used on the cover, but in the US, only a small piece of it was depicted. Again, from DSP's conversation with Miller:

"For Especially For You Pat wanted something of a Sci-Fi feel, based on old Sci-Fi paperbacks. The initial painting I produced was a little more detailed and a lot more gruesome. The record company, of course, went apesh*t. (Pat predicted this at a meeting we had during the recording at the Record Plant in NYC). Their problem was twofold: a) they were frightened to release something that extreme and un-mainstream and b) they had their own designers on staff and resented having to pay an outsider to do the artwork. There were compromises. I did a new toned-down, more ambiguous painting, which they only excerpted on the US release, but which they made into a picture-disc for Euro-release."

Dennis Diken agrees with Miller essentially, in his liner notes, and provides some additional background:

"We'd originally commissioned our friend Arthur Miller to create an original design based on an idea of Pat's to present the Hallmark-like banner Especially For You against a ghoulish painting. The contrast would give a good yuk, we thought. Not the powers that be'd at Enigma. 'Baby band' that we were, we were more or less forced to accept a substitute that the record company assured us would encourage 'impulse buying.' Maybe they were correct. Maybe not."

Smithereens Live

Green Thoughts

DiNizio conversed with Dave's Smithereens Page about the various album covers, and he said that the art for Green Thoughts was once again inspired by old records. "Dennis was involved in that as well," said Pat. "It was stolen from about three or four 1950's album covers. The cover is a collage of various existing ideas, really."

Pinning the graphics down to particular album covers is impossible, but certainly there is a feel in the design for older jazz cover artwork.

Smithereens 11 Tommy Steele was brought in as art director for the second of five occasions. The cover was designed by Mick Haggerty from a concept by Dennis Diken, and Dewey Nicks took the photos. Smithereens 11 is a play on the film Ocean's 11, and is a tribute to Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Dean Martin, all commonly known as members of the "Rat Pack." Pat DiNizio explained how he and Dennis were inspired by the Rat Pack to conceptualize the third Smithereens record design: "I'm visually oriented, and I try to exploit whatever hobbies I have for my work. I get a lot of imagery that winds up as musical ideas and lyrics in songs. So when Dennis and I walked into a used bookstore and found a paperback book tie-in for Ocean's 11, that sparked our imagination to call our record Smithereens 11 and re-create the image of the paperback cover on our album." It was more the imagery of the book cover than the movie poster, Pat said. In fact, the imagery is focused on the Rat Pack itself. "The Rat Pack was an era, a whole mood and a form of entertainment that we all revere and that we think is a dying breed," Dennis added. "The image that those guys represent is what we're paying homage to more than the movie itself." The cover artwork resembles the last classic shot on the old movie, Pat said. "Four proud men walking to their destiny." Dennis is particularly proud of the concept. "It was just one of those ideas that, I think, comes off really well in the graphics and everything. It really came together. A lot of people don't get the joke, but we didn't intend for them to. You have to name an album something, you know. (laughs.)"

Blow Up

Bass was known for setting the tone in Hollywood films with his animated film credit sequences. This work attracted him to the Smithereens. "We're all film buffs and great fans of his work," Dennis said, in 1991. "That's why we convinced him to accept this project."

Bass, who was famous for his use of jagged-print objects and broken type, had previously designed only one album cover, and that was for Frank Sinatra's Trilogy. Pat explained the events that led to the band commissioning the services of the filmmaker:

"Traditionally, we've designed our own album covers and had the people at Capitol, our label, execute the final artwork. We were so involved with the recording process this time out that toward the deadline of when Capitol needed the final artwork we had no ideas. We had been fans of a gentleman named Saul Bass, who we know from his work with Alfred Hitchcock. He designed the movie posters and the sequences for North By Northwest, Vertigo, he directed the shower sequence for Psycho, as well as doing the poster artwork for Spartacus..."

In all, Bass designed the sequences and poster art for more than 40 feature films, including The Man With The Golden Arm, West Side Story, Goodfellas, and Cape Fear. Given the Smithereens love of film, the only thing surprising is that they didn't approach the film graphics pioneer for their earlier efforts.

A Date With The Smithereens The Smithereens' only album to appear on the RCA label featured art direction from Jackie Murphy and the band itself. The cover was designed by Sean Smith and the pictures were shot by photographer Michael Halsband. Halsband is notable in that he also did the cover for INXS' album X. The record's title was inspired by an old Elvis Presley album, according to DiNizio. "The title A Date With The Smithereens is another one of those stupid jokes we do every so often that no one seems to get. It's a tribute to an album called A Date With Elvis that had cheesy glamour shots of the artist on the cover. Our cover is four thugs standing on Mulberry Street in New York City." The "four thugs" shot, Pat told Dave's Smithereens Page, is a "recreation of an old photo from a book Dennis had of a street gang." As for the lettering used on the cover, Pat added, "the type was taken from the 'Ben Casey' TV show soundtrack LP sleeve." The fonts are not exactly the same, of course. (The actual font is called Harting, and is available for free by clicking here. The "Living Stereo" and "Nipper the Dog" logos are throwbacks to old RCA albums, as well. The solarized cover photo appears in red on the standard cassette and compact disc fortmats, but the special box set of vinyl discs features the same cover photo overlayed in blue. The booklet features a photo of DiNizio, who said he was trying to re-create a 1930s photo of Boris Karloff in a scene from the film "The Mummy."

Blown To Smithereens

When DSP asked Pat for his thoughts on the packaging, he replied "No comment... except it's not my favorite cover. The inside is great, though." Of course, the inside of the booklet consists of liner notes by music critic and Smithereens fan, Brett Milano. There are also some nice photos on those pages.

We agree with Pat -- it isn't our favorite cover, either.

Attack Of The Smithereens Tommy Steele of the Capitol art department was brought in one last time, and the cover was illustrated by Duckman creator Everett Peck. Anyone familiar with Peck's work in Duckman will recognize his style in the cover art immediately. DiNizio spoke more favorably of this artwork, when he told us that the record featured "an excellent sleeve cover and great work inside." Naturally, he "supplied the photos (mostly) and wrote the notes (mostly)," with Dennis Diken supplying the balance of the booklet contents. An early version of Peck's cover painting was marked with the exclamation "Alive" but was replaced with the familiar "Rare!" on the released cover.

Songs And Sounds

The entire package is designed to look and feel like a vintage jazz record. (A special LP edition was even pressed on extra-thick vinyl.) The cover photo of Pat is positively bohemian, the band is called "The Pat DiNizio Foursome," and even the tongue-in-cheek liner notes are classic.

Actually, the cover design is ahem, "borrowed" directly from the 1960 self-titled album by jazz pianist Lennie Tristano. DiNizio admitted to Dave's Smithereens Page that the cover is "a bit too much of a steal of the original for my taste. It works best in the 12" LP version."

Paying tribute, and having a bit of fun at the same time, the album's liner notes are lifted from old jazz albums, as well. In fact, the second paragraph of text is nearly word for word the same as the introductory Tristano liner notes that were penned by Barry Ulanov. Other notes "were actually stolen from 12 Thelonious Monk albums," Pat said.

Pat wanted to title the record after a song written by Charles Mingus, but he said that Velvel had other ideas.

"The original title I came up with was 'Myself When I Am Real.' The title Songs And Sounds was taken from a Capitol/Stan Kenton Presents" label release from the '50s by the Al Belleto Septet. The label preferred that title. I didn't."