Gary Burden Receives Grammy Nomination for NYA Design

Gary Burden

Gary Burden's design of the Neil Young Archives, Volume 1 has been nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package category.

Lead art director and designer Gary Burden, R. Twerk & Co., says he had "no idea 'the archives' were entered into the awards, so it was a huge surprise when we received a phone call and learned we were nominated. This is just so cool and I am really happy for Neil, too."

Burden designed Crosby, Stills and Nash's first album cover (Porch), Joni Mitchell's "Blue", The Doors' "Morrison Hotel", four album covers for the Eagles including "Desperado," several for Jackson Browne, and many other renowned artists.

From Gary Burden's website -- which has a wealth of details on the making of NYA -- here are a few snippets:

"It may have been 20 years in the making but it was one of the most enjoyable and collaborative projects I've ever worked on.

I have been working with Neil on album covers since his release of After the Gold Rush in 1970. I would listen in on Neil's recording sessions, I mean really listen to the music, and most of the time the music will tell me what the design wants to be. I'd present my ideas to Neil, and he'd give me his own ideas and feedback, and we would incorporate both into the album design.

Neil is a prolific writer and a has great vision. It's nice to collaborate with someone that doesn't do design, they see beyond the boundaries we put on ourselves and push us further. Neil doesn't understand the concept of "we can't do that," and his ideas almost always end up being right.

Neil had the idea for the Archives 20 years ago, back in 1989. At first, the Archive was going to be all of his work up until 1989, but as we worked with our archivist and gathered more and more material, we realized we would have to break it down into periods. We just had too rich a volume of visual material and music. When we started to think about how to present it, we quickly realized there just wasn't the kind of technology back then to fully implement Neil's vision.

We waited for CD's to come out, and then we realized that they wouldn't be what we needed. When DVD's were first introduced, we thought for sure we hit the jackpot, but even that wasn't enough. When Blu-Ray was launched we knew we had what we needed technologically to tell this story."

There are many other fascinating insights into the designing of NYA on Gary Burden's website including details on the box graphic art, the poster, the stash box, and book. Also, see YouTube video of Gary & photographer Henry Diltz discussing their work together.

In addition to recognizing Burden, his wife Jenice Heo created the box top art.


Neil Face With Hand
by Jenice Heo

Congratulations Gary & Jenice! Hope 4th time is the charm!

(Thanks Purple Words on a Gray Background!)

More on the Making of The Neil Young Archives and
Art Influenced by Neil Young: Jenice Heo.

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