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Those of you sensible enough to have purchased our album “We Won’t Hurt You (But We Won’t Go Away)” will have no doubt spent ages staring at the incredible artwork on the poster inside. An awful lot of time was spent on the artwork, so I thought it would be quite cool to talk you through the thinking behind it. I also thought you might like to know the secret behind the art, ie who the hell are those characters running away in terror from us!
When I was thinking about the artwork, I had the idea of us (the band) looming large over the streets of London, like we were some invading force. Originally, I pictured us destroying things but then remembered the album title: “We Won’t Hurt You…” so realised that we should be benevolent, not malevolent! Of course, if a 100 foot rock band did really loom large over the streets of London, whatever their intentions might be, people would most certainly run away from them - so we had our excuse to put the crowd in.
I remembered a book I had as a kid, a Doctor Who book, that had Daleks crossing Westminster Bridge. I always thought that was such a cool image so wanted to make sure that the crowd would be running away from us across the bridge. I also wanted iconic buildings in the picture so there was no doubt as to where we were.
At an early stage, artist Ed Moriniuk, asked me if there was any particular time I wanted the clock to display. I decided on 18 minutes past 10 as a nod to when Vikki and I got together (18th October). We had copters flying around, shining lights on us and the finishing touch was having our skull logo shining in the sky, like a kind of Bat Signal.
What you might not know (but may have guessed) is that every person who appears in the image is someone that we know; friends and family. We sent out cryptic emails to all and asked them to send pictures of themselves, looking scared like they were running from something. We got some amazing photos back! Alas, we didn’t get photos back from everyone so not all families are represented. I have numbered everyone on the image, here is who they are:
1. Cyndi’s mum
2. Donna, one of our merch girls
3. Paul Tipler, the producer
4. Mike, our roadie
5. Louise, my sister-in-law
6. Ed, the artist
7. Sophie, our tattooist
8. Hayley, other merch girl
9. Bolly, mine and Vikki’s dog
10. Cyndi’s sister
11. Cyndi’s brother
12. Gary, my brother
13. My dad
14. My mum
Below are a couple of the photos Ed had to work from - a necessity as he lives thousands of miles away from us in New Jersey, USA!
Gilez in his album pose; took this in a down time at Tattoo Jam
Mike in his album pose; took this when he visited us in the studio one day
Hope you’ve enjoyed the reveal. We’re just thinking about album 2 right now, preparing to record it this summer, and I already have my head swimming with awesome artwork ideas to top this one!
Just a quickie - I’ve written a couple of successful blogs for a new rock website, uberrock.co.uk. Titled “A Life In Music”, they are my thoughts on aspects of the music industry from my perspective. I’m glad to say that they have been very popular and are currently sitting at #1 and #2 in the Most Read charts on uberrock.co.uk.
Anyway, check them out!
I’m not sure if any event in my life will be as funny as what happened last night. Sure, we all have funny moments and don’t feel the need to blog about them but, for those involved (well, apart from maybe one), this was truly, monumentally funny. And, best of all, completely spontanious and totally genius. This will make you proud to be human.
It was our guitarist, Cyndi’s, Birthday BBQ at SLT HQ last night. Nothing particularly funny about that and, to be honest, we thought it was just going to be a cool evening of friends hanging out. Apart from the band, we’d invited along our Crew as we’d not seen them in a bit either. One of the party had invited along his new girlfriend who, for the sake of story-telling, we shall call Gemma. Now, Vikki and I had met Gemma before and word had gotten back to us that she was a bit scared of me. Nothing new in that, but it would be a fear that I would use to my advantage a bit later on in the story.
Darkness was falling and the BBQ had been eaten so, as was customary at these things, we got out the tea-lights and set them about in the garden. Meanwhile, Gemma had popped indoors to change into something warmer. It was at this point that one of us - and I forget who - thought it would be funny if we pretended we were going to have some sort of ritual. This idea very quickly expanded between those of us in the garden and, before you know it, we had set the tea-lights in a circle on the lawn, moving everything to the outside of the circle, save a fire that we had quicky lit.
We then brought out the goat skull and the large sword and placed them in the middle of the circle, along with a chair. Gemma returned around about now and looked a bit confused by all of this. It was at this point I said to her: “Gemma, we have decided that we like you and want to make you part of our clan, but there is a small ritual that you must go through first”. She wasn’t entirely certain if I was joking or not so I added, “Don’t worry, we have all gone through this” and went inside again.
I put on Slayer’s “Seasons In The Abyss” and let it’s demonic tones filter into our make-shift altar and then remembered the finishing touch, my long, black hooded cape. Surely everyone has one?
Emerging into the garden wearing my cape, I was finding it very hard to keep a straight face. Fortunately, it was dark and I was wearing the hood and must have been looking like some kind of rock n’ roll Dark Lord Of The Sith as my new attire seemed to freak Gemma out a bit.
At this point in the story, I would like to remind you that none of this was pre-planned. If it was, we’d have thought about filming the bloody thing!
I placed the end of the sword in to the fire and instructions were given for us to all move outside of the “circle of lights”. Everyone dutifully did, except myself and I encouraged Gemma to enter the circle and sit on the chair. She declared that she would rather sit on her own chair near the edge but I simply informed her that no other chairs were allowed near the edge and reminded her again that we had all gone through this ritual.
So, she sat on the chair gazing at the sword getting red hot in the flames wondering what the fuck this bunch of freaks were up to. It was at this point I requested that she removed her trousers. We all turned away to spare her blushes but she’d not quite understood, so I told her once again. “For us to do this, you must remove your trousers. Everyone look away.”. This time, she did as she was told and removed her trousers. Giving her the goat skull to hold, I left the circle and asked what the time was. “One minute to nine”, was the response. “Perfect. In one minute, we shall begin.”. We all stood in silence, heads bowed. Mainly to try and stifle our giggles.
At 9pm, I re-entered the circle. “It is now time.”. I informed Gemma that what she will experience will be over quickly. I asked what cheek she preferred (right one, apparently) and then requested that she stand, face away from the fire and hold on to the back of the chair. I then gave her something to bite down on - “Some people find they need this” - and let her know that we were going to do a chant first. We later found out that this was the moment where her heart was in her mouth, wondering what on earth we were going to do to her after our strange chant began…
And then I began with my chant:
[scroll down for sacred chant]
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“Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday dear Cyndi
Happy Birthday to you”
Genius.
