EMI’s contributions to Record Store Day were varied, and when I heard they were going to be doing a Deep Purple 7″ single in 2011, I offered to do the artwork so it wouldn’t end up being a bog standard cover. To me Record Store Day should be about the collectors, and offering them something a bit special rather than just copying something which had gone before or grabbing the first photo which shows up on a web search. If you collect pic sleeves, then it needed to honour the genre. Anyway they let me have a go, albeit needing the artwork in a couple of days. The tracks were to be two rare BBC sessions by the group from a CD collection then in the works. Both dated from 1969 so I wanted to come up with a sleeve which suited the period. My inspiration was a rare Dutch sleeve by the group, so I decided to use that as a basis and adapt it. I scanned the old sleeve and then cleaned it up and recreated any out of square bits from scratch in Photoshop so it would look pristine. I did think to later add some wear and tear when it was finished but in the end I quite liked it looking all new. The original cover had been influenced by the fabulous Harvest Records logo and as the single would be on the Harvest label, this worked perfectly (and given the label’s status with collectors, I certainly didn’t want to add anything sub-standard to the canon). The two tracks were by different line-ups, so I got a photo of these and treated these to age them a little and add the appropriate green colouring to match the rest of the art. I added bits of type from the era in the small print on what was the back cover (EMIs old address, the 45 RPM speed bit, etc), which was only let down by EMI insisting on having the barcode on a white background. Oh and the BBC whinging like anything when I asked if I could use the proper BBC logo of the time (I really disliked the square one they use today when it was introduced). If it had been me I would have done it anyway, they would never have known, but EMI were more cautious! Lastly the HAR prefix catalogue number, which I first saw as a kid on a single back in 1970.
They pressed 1,400 copies for the release and I still have my sample copy on the wall! It’s just nice to see a Harvest single sleeve and your own artwork logo in the corner…
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