This was a strange project to work on for several reasons. I got into Deep Purple as a kid at school and someone sold me a copy of the band’s Concerto For Group & Orchestra as he’d been expecting a full on heavy rock LP like In Rock! I loved some of it, and was impressed when the group got to recreate the concert in 1999 at the Albert Hall. Along the way I has been asked to package a reissue of the 1969 film for Connoisseur Records which I tried to take away from the original album sleeve to give people the idea this was a new format (see below – it had come out on VHS through the BBC many years before).
The 1999 show was also recorded but came out in what I would probably add to my top 20 list of worst album covers of all time. So when Jon was able to realise a dream and rework his Concerto for the first time as a studio recording, I was more than pleased to be able to do the packaging for this and was determined to produce a top job. For me this meant something which was not particularly trendy in any way, but rather put the emphasis on nice typography and page composition. This was important as the main format was to be a high quality hard back package around A5 size. As well as the outer and inner sleeve for this, the idea was to bind in a nice 80 page book with the discs either side.
The cover idea came from the producer who found the abstract painting somewhere and thought it had the basis for a cover, and it was good. I took one of the several photographs of Jon taken around that time and faded it in to the painting in a way which hopefully suggested he was looking down on the work. There was a reason for this, although only a limited number of people knew, Jon himself was seriously ill. As one of my musical heroes, I wanted to ensure as far as I could that everything was spot on.
So each individual page went through various tweaks and changes so it all harmonised from start to finish, and I enjoyed working with a great collection of photographs taken during the studio sessions. It wasn’t always an easy run because the German label was not used to handing work to outside designers and kept niggling for various changes but despite some exasperating moments it came together for their deadline. As a bonus the design was also rejigged to fit a vinyl sleeve and worked well at a proper LP size too. The releases came out in 2012 but Jon hadn’t made it to see the end results, although he had been able to hear the final mixes of the album. It actually charted in Germany too. Since then the work has been revived a number of times across Europe and further afield by younger orchestras who recognise the pioneering work of the piece.
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