No. 4: “Face the music” by Electric Light Orchestra
Been a while since we deconstructed an album cover, so let's do that now. Taking as our subject the 1975 album from the Electric Light Orchestra, “Face the music”, the first thing that strikes you is the sombre, even macabre nature of the sleeve. Your eye is drawn immediately to the figure in the centre of the picture, “Old Sparky” hisself, the electric chair (Fig. 1). Brrr! From there your gaze wanders upwards, and it's directed thus, because the album cover is mostly in darkness, the only thing relieving the blackness of the top half of the picture being three huge metal structures which hang down, as if from the roof, and are spaced across the top of the album cover (Fig. 5). Each is carved into a letter: an “E”, an “L” and an “O”, to spell out the acronym of the band, and also each letter has the full word carved into it, so that the “E” has “electric” carved down its side, the “L” “light” and the “O” “orchestra”. The huge metal letters look very imposing, and heighten the sense of dread of the cover.
That's about as much as you can see clearly without looking more closely, but if we zoom in on the electric chair, a few things become apparent about it. First, in Fig. 2, we see that there is a cushion placed on the seat. Now, generally the comfort of those about to be executed is not uppermost in the minds of the prison staff, so why is there a cushion there? If not for comfort, is it to raise the condemned man (or woman, but let's assume it's a man) to the proper height? Is he short, or indeed is he a young man, perhaps even a child? The mind boggles.
Then in Fig. 3 we can see what appears to be a pair of headphones. This, of course, links to the double-entendre title of the album. Beside the chair is a long stand of some sort, looking a little like a microphone stand (Fig. 10), yet on top of it looks to be a pipe (Fig. 4)! Who would go to “the Chair” smoking a pipe, unless of course it was their last request? But even so, would it be allowed? I mean, actually IN the chair?
Near the top of the chair, to one side there appears to be a hole burned in the wall, though on closer inspection it could be interpreted as a dark figure (the shadow of Death?) leaning over the condemned man (Fig 6), while on the floor on either side of the chair, shadows of its frame do indeed look like cowled and hooded figures awaiting the passing of sentence (Fig. 7).
Finally, there are a few places where the letter “E” seems to have formed, indeed in the way it is used in ELO's logo. Once along the wall at the left of the chair (as we look at it), in the coils of the wires that lead up to it (Fig. 8) and again in the arching rheostats that run along the top of the back of the chair, carrying the current, though in this case it's on its side (Fig. 9). Oh yes, and even the pedestal of the microphone stand bears more than a passing resemblance to the ELO logo (Fig. 11)!
All of which makes for a pretty macabre album sleeve. Whether all that's noted above was intended, or whether that's just my ghoulish imagination seeing things that are not there, I don't know, but it's certainly an interesting, provocative and unsettling album sleeve, from a band not noted for such displays.