The Javelins

Not all jobs go as well as one hopes and the first CD package for this retro release by The Javelins sort of missed the mark for me when I first did the cover.  The CD was pretty unique, Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan met up with the musicians from his very first professional band who gigged in the early Sixties. They had never cut a disc, so the idea was hatched to do a one off album and record their set of rock and roll classics, and Ian would arrange the studio time (it was done in Liverpool, I recall driving over to take some group photographs).  I knew very little about the band but it turned out their name came from a British made sporty saloon car of the late 1940s, so I went zooming up to Northumberland to photograph one of these courtesy of a car collector.  The car badge off the boot then formed the logo for the sleeve.

As a sleeve it ended up a bit dark, and looked like I’d tried too hard. The band photo on the front probably wasn’t necessary, the car radiator alone would have been enough. The rest of the package was pretty thorough, with lots of memorabilia and notes, and did the job it needed to.  This was back in 1994, but about five years later I was able to revisit the project as it was reissued on another label and I decided to go with something more poppy.  I was much happier with the end result, which used some background patterns and rules taken off Sixties adverts, and an old transistor radio likewise scanned from one of many music papers of the time I’d collected.  The band’s heads I cut round, another popular effect of the time, and the typeface was much cleaner with a bounced effect (achieved by changed the horizontal spacing for each letter individually). It also ensured the CD was racked with Ian Gillan’s other titles instead of being lost under “J”! With the popular song titles arranged round the tuning dial, it made for a much snappier cover overall. The inside needed very little work so was just updated.  This version then lapsed after a couple of years and the title disappeared into the world of collectors and Russian pirate copies.

Then in 2018 Ian Gillan decided what the world needed was that never-recorded-second-Javelins album, and this came out on a German label with a much more modern sleeve, a take on a sort of mod design using new photos of the group which to me ended up looking a bit too Joe Jackson.  The singer also licensed that original first album to the same label, who decided to stick with my second design which was quite flattering (and at least had the decency to ask). But for some reason they decided just to scan this off an existing CD, so they got a bit of fading (their copy had clearly been in the sun) and other flaws – but it sort of worked in their favour as it added to the retro feel.  What was strange was to see them also (fittingly) issue it as a vinyl album as well. Happily I think the design stood up to this treatment quite well and I did get a couple of samples sent over. I would have felt better if I’d had time to dig out the old art files (I had all the negatives of the band which could have been scanned) and try to improve the quality and tweak it but they’d already set a release date so there just wasn’t the time for this (although how such an old release becomes quite that critical 25 years later I’m not so sure – I prefer to make sure everything is right regardless of release dates, though I accept this does frustrate people at times!)