Tom Wilkes: 1939 - 2009 - Harvest Album Cover Designer

Harvest Cover designed by Tom Wilkes

Tom Wilkes, a Grammy Award-winning art director and the album cover designer for Neil Young's Harvest, died last week. He was 69.

Wilkes design work included album covers for the Rolling Stones' "Beggars Banquet," Eric Clapton's "Eric Clapton," Joe Cocker's "Mad Dogs & Englishmen" and George Harrison's "Concert for Bangladesh" and "All things Must Pass." Wilkes photographed the cover photo of Janice Joplin's 1971 "Pearl" album. Their photo session was the night Joplin overdosed.

From Los Angeles Times, David Fricke, a senior writer at Rolling Stone magazine said of Wilkes work that:

"He was able to capture a certain essence of what was on the record and the person who made it.

"You look at something like Neil Young's 'Harvest,' the texture of the cover and that very simple, almost antique lettering, and you get a feel of what Neil was trying to do in that record, the honesty and the grit and the deep Americana of what that record represents now."

Tom Wilkes: 1939 - 2009

R.I.P. Tom. We've always admired your work.

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