Utility: in real life every Glerm holder receives their own Glermas, and every Glermas holder receives their own Glerm with the same square chin
And now for the tragic part.
In the Court of the Crimson King was released in October 1969.
Just a few months later, in February 1970, Barry Godber died of a heart attack.
He was only 24 years old.
THIS IS ABSOLUTELY BLOWS MY MIND!
A man who didn’t consider himself a professional artist created one of the most recognizable images in rock music history
An image that, more than 50 years later, is still being reissued, referenced, and featured in lists of the greatest album covers ever made
And Godber was gone far too soon to see what his one painting would eventually become...
3/5
The second painting depicts the Crimson King and appears on the inside of the gatefold cover
And Fripp noticed an VERY INTERESTING detail:
if you cover the Crimson King’s mouth, his eyes suddenly look incredibly sad
According to Fripp, it reflected the music of the album surprisingly well!
(I’m actually writing this while listening to Moonchild, and he was damn right)
2/5
The artist behind this iconic cover was Barry Godber
What’s fascinating is that he didn’t even consider himself a professional artist! At the time, he worked as a programmer, and he was connected to the band through Peter Sinfield
The task was simple: create something that would stand out on a record store shelf
Godber was given demos of the upcoming album, listened to the material, and created two paintings.
For the first one, he used his own reflection in a mirror essentially creating an distorted self portrait
Robert Fripp later said that the screaming figure almost immediately became associated with 21st Century Schizoid Man in the band’s minds
I’m starting a new series where I’ll be sharing some of the artworks that I really like
Feel free to come up with a name for the series and drop your ideas in the comments!)
Lately, whenever I have some free time away from @ZlorksAdventure and studying, I’ve been getting more and more into art. I’m also a huge fan of ROCK and METAL music, so today I want to tell you a little about the cover of King Crimson’s debut album and the tragic story of its creator
