Jamaicans Bob Marley and Grace Jones Made Rolling Stone’s 100 Best Album Covers
Bob Marley’s Rastaman Vibration and Island Life by Grace Jones
by Howard Campbell
SOUTH FLORIDA – Two Jamaicans have made Rolling Stone Magazine’s 100 Best Album Covers of All Time. Bob Marley’s Rastaman Vibration and Island Life by Grace Jones are on the list which was released August 7.
The Rolling Stone judges selected some of the most iconic jackets in pop music. They settled on The Velvet Underground And Nico’s self-titled 1967 album, as number one. In second is The Beatles’ Abbey Road, with Patti Smith’s Horses, The Notorious B.I.G.’s Ready to Die and Led Zeppelin by Led Zeppelin rounding out the top five.
Rastaman Vibration, released in 1976, and Island Life, which came out in 1985, were distributed by Island Records. They capture Marley and Jones at their creative best and the album covers complemented their progressive music.
Island Life
According to Rolling Stone, “Grace Jones and frequent collaborator Jean-Paul Goude (yes, the man who tried to “break the Internet” with a nude Kim Kardashian) partnered to create one of the decade’s most memorable covers for 1985’s Island Life. Featuring a nearly nude Jones in a seemingly superhuman pose, the art was actually a composite of the singer in a series of different poses, cut-and-pasted together for an unforgettable result.”
Island Life is driven by the hit singles, My Jamaican Guy and Pull up to The Bumper, which feature the legendary drum-and-bass team of Sly and Robbie.
Rastaman Vibration Designer Neville Garrick
Rolling Stone was just as complementary for Rastaman Vibration, considered by many critics to be Marley’s commercial breakthrough.
“You’d be hard-pressed to name the most definitive shot of an artist who has appeared on countless posters and t-shirts, but the Neville Garrick-designed cover to Rastaman Vibration is a strong contender. Garrick applied earthy watercolors to a Xeroxed photo of Marley – his hand raised thoughtfully to his chin as he looks off into the distance — and placed it against a burlap sack background. Emphasizing the idea of Marley as an everyman activist for Rastafarianism, images like this one went a long way toward establishing the iconography of Marley that continues to this day,” read the review.
Marley’s second studio album for Island Records, Rastaman Vibration contains classic songs such as the title, Roots Rock Reggae, Johnny Was, Who The Cap Fit, War and Crazy Baldhead.
A graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, Garrick designed 12 Marley album covers and was once head of the Bob Marley Foundation. He will receive the Order of Distinction, Jamaica’s sixth-highest honor, in October.
Other album covers making the Rolling Stone list are Carole King’s Tapestry at 90; Prince’s Dirty Mind at 84; The Dark Side of The Moon by Pink Floyd at number six and NWA’s Straight Outa Compton at number 10.
