As a child, photographs of musicians terrified me. The front cover of Peter Gabriel’s third album, Peter Gabriel (1980), with half of the artist’s face melting like wax, was so upsetting that, for years, my father dutifully kept his copy of the album hidden. The visages of Klaus Nomi and Nina Hagen were disquieting, too, and I once tore apart the sleeve of Lou Reed’s Transformer (1972), in a fit of terror. I first remembered musicians not by their names (which I could not decipher) or their music, but by the sheer enigma of their album covers.
It’s only later that faces on album covers began to acquire the opposite (and more expected) effect of drawing me into musical worlds. I would stare at PJ Harvey’s disheveled head (Dry, 1992), revel in Lydon’s mocking grin (Public Image Ltd, First Issue, 1978), or stare at Dylan’s profile and cowboy hat (Desire, 1976). Images suddenly appeared enchanted, and as a teenager, I would daydream about otherworldly faces while listening to albums and endlessly marvel at the perfect complementarity of sound and vision.