Originally published in Rock Candy magazine 08 · June 2018
Classic Album Sleeve: Dream Theater – ‘Images And Words’
Article4 min read
Art Director Larry Freemantle opens the door on a truly memorable cover...
Interview by John Nicholson
Dateline: 7 July 1992
“Before I got to work on the design of ‘Images And Words’ I sat down with the band and found that they had a whole list of things they wanted on the cover, all of which related to the lyrics. An image of the words, I guess. They were a bright group of guys and had a really clear idea about the cover concept, so my job was pretty much to take their information on board and deliver their vision. When you ask some groups what they want for a cover, they can be vague or totally unsure until they see something. The Dream Theater guys weren’t like that at all. They were much more decisive.
“As far as I recall, the record company didn’t have any influence or input into what the album would look like. It was all the band’s ideas, but it wasn’t like there was going to be anything controversial on it, so there weren’t going to be any fights.
“My overall aim was to give the cover the composition of a classical painting, something you might see in a museum. I may have done a thumbnail sketch of what it would be like and how all the various elements would be arranged. These were the days when we were all just changing from analogue to digital, so the overall image was created as a collage; very mixed media.
“There was a place I knew of called Access Images that did digital photographic composites. They shot all the elements, scanned them and then built the composition digitally. It was just before Photoshop went mainstream, so we were still doing things the old school way to an extent, and ‘Images And Words’ was kind of both analogue and digital. Although I ended up with a transparency, the image was actually created digitally. All in all it took about a month to create the cover.
“I’m a commercial artist and commercial artists are basically cooks. Your job is to put all the ingredients together and hope the band like what you make. You have to be a bit of a chameleon. It’s about what the client wants, not so much what you want. I believe Dream Theater were happy with the results. I certainly enjoyed working with them and went on to do the cover for their next album, 1994’s ‘Awake’, the cover for ‘The Silent Man’ single from the same album, and the ‘A Change Of Seasons’ EP in 1995.
• “One thing I’m really glad I did was bring in a calligrapher to create the Dream Theater logo. It looks like a font, but it isn’t. It was hand-lettered by a guy named John Stevens and is very strong and eloquent. The band have used it on all of their subsequent albums and I’m really proud of that.”
• “The flaming Sacred Heart with the crown of barbed wire thorns wrapped around it was created as a physical object and then photographed, and this symbol became a kind of trademark for Dream Theater. The heart was the inspiration for the original cover of the ‘Live Scenes From New York’ album, which featured a flaming apple with a silhouette of the Twin Towers visible in the flames. It was a terrible coincidence ;the album was first released on 11 September 2001] and of course the band pulled the sleeve and replaced the apple with the Dream Theater Majesty symbol.”
• “The idea we were trying to get across with the sky/cloud ceiling was that it was supposed to be daytime in the room itself, but night-time outside. That was a nod to the surrealist painter René Magritte.”
• “It was the band’s idea to have the girl on the cover as the primary focus. The photographer for this project was a guy called Dan Muro. He took all of the photos for the cover, including the little girl. I don’t know who she was, but I think Dan just cast her for it. I don’t believe she was related to the band.”
• The four poster bed, walls, window, and floor are all taken from vintage books of engravings. They formed the background onto which all of the other elements were placed. I suppose the end result looks a bit ‘of its time’ compared to how we do things today, but I like the way everything works as part of a collage.”
• “The band were involved with the creation of the artwork from A to Z. They were the ones who said there had to be a vase of flowers featured. I wish all my clients were so clear about what they want!”
• “I seem to remember that there were lots of references to night and day, and the sun and the moon in the songs on the album. So that must have been why they asked for a full moon, yet with the sun seen to be coming up as well.”