Of the Weird

Of the Weird

March 2015, Issue 1 | From the Ground Up

Of the Weird

FROM US TO YOU

Of the Weird is a unisex publication that features coverage about motorcycle, tattoo, and music culture. Our publication unites these closely related ideas in a cohesive and reminiscent fashion.

Of the Weird is a visual manifestation of what a concoction of Black Flag and Neil Young would sound like. We’re a brew of moody folk punk that speaks to spirit and individuality. We explore the advents of travel, adventure, and risk-taking through the lenses of people who drive crosscountry on DIY motorbikes and leap off wooden stages into crowds of longhaired misfits. Life’s spontaneity and go-getters shape our content through interviews, articles, photographs, and other unique material.

Of the World, Of the Wild, Of the Weird.

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Danny Clinch interview and photostory

Hell’s Angels article and photostory

City Guide: Amsterdam’s Top Tattoo Parlors

The Cycle Zombies of California, Chapter 1

The Cycle Zombies of California, Chapter 2

Kat Von D’s Tattoo Portraits

Album Artwork

Of the Weird

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DANNY

Danny Clinch loves music. He listens to it, plays it, photographs it, and films it. Danny has established himself as one of the premiere photographers of the popular music scene. He has photographed and filmed a wide range of artists, from Johnny Cash to Tupac Shakur, from Bjork to Bruce Springsteen.

His work has appeared in publications such as Vanity Fair, Spin, Rolling Stone, GQ, Esquire, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine, and his photographs have appeared on hundreds of album covers.

Clinch has presented his work in numerous galleries and published three books: Discovery Inn (1998) When the Iron Bird Flies (2000), and Still Moving (2014). His advertising clients include John Varvatos, American Express, Absolut, and more.

As a director, Clinch has received 3 Grammy Award nominations: in 2005 for Bruce Springsteen’s “Devils and Dust” and in 2009 for John Mayer’s “Where The Light Is “ , and the short film “Get Up’’ with Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite . He has also directed music videos for Willie Nelson, Tom Waits, Pearl Jam, John Legend, Avett Brothers, Foo Fighters and Dave Matthews, among others.

Other music documentaries and concert films directed by Clinch include 2007s “Immagine in Cornice,” following Pearl Jam through their Italy tour, 2006s “Skin & Bones” featuring the Foo Fighters, and several films from the Bonnaroo music festival.

Danny Plays harmonica in the Tangiers Blues Band and will occasionally put down his harp in the middle of a set, and pick up his Leica and begin photographing his band members. At that point, Danny Clinch is a very happy man.

Clinch began his career as an intern for Annie Leibovitz, and went on to photograph the likes of Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, Tupac Shakur, The Smashing Pumpkins, Blind Melon, Dave Matthews Band, Phish, Nicole Atkins, and Björk. His “unobtrusive” style, according to his bio, is one of the features that Clinch’s photographic subjects enjoy.

CLINCH 6

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I’m With the Band Behind the lens: legendary photographer Danny Clinch on how to befriend your music idols Talking about your upcoming book, what are some of your favorite images from that?

I like the pairing of things. There’s a pairing that has Jay Z on one side and Tony Bennett on the other and why would those two be together?

Because they’re both super interesting people who are owning it. There’s a new image of Tupac that I have in there—if it has been published, it hasn’t been published a bunch—so I’m excited about that. There’s some great photos of Tom Waits in there. There are some Neil Young photos that I love. Bruce Springsteen wrote the foreword to the book which is super exciting for me. There’s some good Springsteen photos in there as well. The way it’s broken up, it’s not only live concert stuff, it’s backstage stuff, hanging out, relationships that have taken me ten years to build that I love. Being on the road with Radiohead on the back of a ferry going over to Liberty State park are things you can’t really get unless you have spent a lot of time and invested in a lot of time in a good relationship with people so that they trust you.

There’s an old superstition that says when you’re photographed, your soul is stolen. If you buy into that, Danny Clinch is in the business of stealing souls. He captures his subjects with remarkable honesty; souls are bared.

For the past 25 years, Clinch has navigated the world of music’s biggest stars through a camera lens.

Intimate shots are his specialty with Clinch finding the beauty in quiet backstage scenes. It can be jarring to see photos of so many big names—Jay Z, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith—casually wandering streets or waiting to appear onstage but that’s Clinch’s gift: presenting musical greats as almost-normal people.

This September, Clinch is immortalizing his portfolio in print. His book Danny Clinch: Still Moving is a collection of album and magazine covers, shots taken from the middle of concert crowds and behind the scenes, and plenty of never before seen material.

After two plus decades of photographing stars, he’s obviously got some good stories to tell. Here, we talked to him about befriending Radiohead, shooting Ringo Starr for John Varvatos, and how to get backstage.

How did your relationship with Radiohead start?

I met Radiohead when they first came to America with the “Creep” single. We were going to do a shoot together and they were really happy with the photos. So when they were coming to town, they would call me and we would hang out and I would shoot photos, whether it was social or I had an assignment. I think it’s important that you’re choosy about what photos you publish, that you make sure everybody’s comfortable. Some people enjoy trying to get the scandalous photos out there and putting people in compromising positions but that’s just not my style.

Have you ever convinced an artist to do something that they would have not normally done?

I don’t really try to push people to do something that they’re not interested in doing but I like to instigate them to get excited about what we’re doing, start to throw ideas around and then it becomes a collaboration, Like the photo of Radiohead I took back in the day. We were doing a shoot for a magazine and everybody was sitting on this bench on the side of the street on 6th Avenue and Thom Yorke stood up. I asked him to stand on the bench and I shot a couple of frames. He said, ‘How ‘bout this?,’ leaped into the air and did a big karate kick and so I shot that frame and he only did it once. He’s hanging in the air above the rest of the band and it was a spontaneous moment. I buried Redman up to his neck for the Dare Iz A Darkside record but that was something that we had planned together. It’s cool that people are willing to collaborate and go the extra mile to create something cool.

What would you say your style is?

It’s photograph as a document, on the more artistic side of things. A portrait can be really powerful but I also like to pull back and show atmosphere, capture a moment that makes it real. It’s not flashy, it’s soulful and authentic. You hear those words all the time but it feels right to me.

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Danny Clinch

Recently you shot Ringo for John Varvatos.

Can you talk a little about that experience?

This is my twentieth campaign with him. John is a huge lover of music. Rock ‘n’ roll has certainly influenced his brand. We had shot Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, Green Day, Jimmy Paige, Gary Clark Jr. and then KISS—where do you go from there? This year we went to the Grammys and John reconnected with Ringo. I think he was wearing something of John’s and we were like, ‘Man, we got to try for Ringo.’We reached out to his manager and publicist and they were onboard. We built the campaign around Ring’s charity, Peace Rocks. Certainly Ringo doesn’t need the money, he wanted to be able to help support his charity and bring attention to it. He’s super psyched to be on board. He was quoted as saying that he’s always wanted to be a male model.

The cool thing about the John Varvatos stuff is that it’s one of those things that’s helped me transition into filmmaking. I’ve been making films since the early 90s like that documentary on Ben Harper, but I decided to venture into filmmaking and when I started the John Varvatos campaign.

I started to bring my Bolex camera. I said to John, ‘If you don’t mind, I’m just going to shoot some b-roll stuff that I can put up on my website,’ and he was like, ‘Yeah, sure.’ It turned into now that we really think about the campaign not only from a still aspect but also from a film standpoint for me as a director.

MILKT is the production company that I’m involved with and I’ve known Linda who’s the executive producer since she was 15 years old.

She’s a little younger than me but we’ve been working together for a really long time and she’s helped me cultivate my career on the film side of things. To do things like this John Varvatos campaign with Ringo is super cool because not only am I able to do the still photography but I’m able to create the moving image part of it and this way there’s a cohesion to the campaign.

If you were going to give any tips to aspiring photographers what would they be?

Last night when I was at Action Bronson’s show, there was a photographer there and he had given somebody a gift frame. When I started shooting, you met people all the time who are letting you in going, ‘Oh yeah, you can come behind here where nobody else is and shoot a picture.’ Or you’d get a publicist who said, ‘I’m going to let you shoot the whole set instead of the first three songs.’ There are people who help you out along the way and I feel like it’s always nice to gift them a print. Sure the artist is going to get a print of themself but there are also people who help you down the road and they will really appreciate one too. Give them a gift frame, they appreciate it, and when they see you the next time, they let you shoot the whole set again and it’s the start of the relationship.

Radiohead

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Nas photographed for his album “Illmatic“ in his hometown of Queensbridge, New York

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Danny Clinch

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TrĂŠ Cool, Mike Dirnt, and Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day

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Danny Clinch

Eddie Veder of Pearl Jam

The Black Keys

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Of the Weird

HELL’S ANGELS In 1965, LIFE photographer Bill Ray spent weeks with the Hells Angels, but his amazing photos never ran in the magazine. Fifty years later, here they are…

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From Jesse James and Butch Cassidy to Scarface and Tony Soprano, outlaws have always held a singularly ambiguous place in America’s popular imagination: we fear and loathe the gangster’s appetite for violence; we envy and covet his radical freedom. In early 1965, LIFE photographer Bill Ray and writer Joe Bride spent several weeks with a gang that, to this day, serves as a living, brawling embodiment of our schizoid relationship with the rebel: Hells Angels.

Here, along with a gallery of remarkable photographs that were shot for LIFE but never ran in the magazine, Ray and Bride recall their days and nights spent with Buzzard, Hambone, Big D and other Angels (as well as their equally tough “old ladies”) at a time when the roar of Harleys and the sight of long-haired bikers was still new and — for the average, law-abiding citizen — utterly unfathomable. The day-to-day existence of these leather-clad hellions, after all, was as foreign to most of LIFE magazine’s millions of readers as the lives of, say, Borneo’s headhunters, or nomads of the Gobi Desert.

“This was a new breed of rebel,” Ray told LIFE. com, recalling his time with the Angels. “They didn’t have jobs. They absolutely despised everything that most Americans value and strive for —

stability, security. They rode their bikes, hung out in bars for days at a time, fought with anyone who messed with them. They were self-contained, with their own set of rules, their own code of behavior.

It was extraordinary to be around.”

Ray spent some of the time withthe Angels on a ride from San Bernardino (about 40 miles east of Los Angeles) to Bakersfield, Calif., for a major motorcycle rally. The Berdoo-Bakersfield run is a trip of only about 130 miles — but in 1965, it would offer enough moments (both placid and violent) for Ray to paint a rare, revelatory portrait of the world’s most legendary motorcycle club in its early days. The way in which the story came about, meanwhile, was as dramatic and unexpected as Bill Ray’s pictures.

“I’d done a story on Big Daddy Roth,” writer Joe Bride recalled, “a genuine L.A. phenomenon and legend in the Southern California car culture. He had a lucrative business designing hot rod-themed decals and cartoon figures. While I was wrapping up the story with Big Daddy, the Angels were in the news. They were accused of terrorizing a small central California town and being major growers and distributors of pot. Big Daddy said he knew a lot of Angels, did business with them and that they were more lost nomads than real criminals. After

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Of the Weird meeting them, by the way, my take on them was a little bit closer to the prevailing opinion than to Big Daddy’s…”

“I told Big Daddy Roth I’d like to meet the Angels, talk to them about doing a story,” Bride said. “It would be a chance for them to get some recognition, and explain why they did what they did. Not long after the story on Big Daddy ran, in late 1964, Roth called and said, ‘They’ll meet you — with conditions.’” Bride met two Angels at Big Daddy’s store. They blindfolded him, put him in a car and drove into the mountains. At a bar “with what looked like 100 bikes parked outside,” no longer blindfolded, Bride met a stocky, long-haired Angel who asked if he shot pool. They played some nine-ball, and Bride beat the guy two out of three games. Bride then negotiated, there in the bar, a relationship where the Hells Angels agreed to allow him and Bill Ray to shadow them. Bride sat back, had a few beers, and then they drove him back to L.A. Not long after that, Ray and Bride began reporting the story.

Ray and Bride spent more than a month with the Angels in the spring of ’65, “mostly on weekends,” Ray remembers, “but the Bakersfield run was around the clock, three days and nights.

In Bakersfield, I slept on the floor of the Blackboard Cafe — the bar that the Angels basically lived in while they were there.”

“I got along with the Angels,” Ray says today. “I got to like some of them very much, and I think they liked me. I accepted them as they were, and they accepted me. You know, by their standards, I looked pretty funny. Just look at that picture of me (right). That’s some kind of a plaid shirt I’ve got on,” he says, incredulity mixing with amusement, “but that was the best I could do to try to fit in!”

“One thing about the Angels that I found especially fascinating,” Ray says, “and something I’d never given much thought to before I started photographing them, was the role that the women played

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Hell’s Angels

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Of the Weird in the club. The girls weren’t there in chains, or against their will. They had to want that life if they were going to be accepted by the Angels.

These guys were kings of the road. I don’t think they ever felt they had to look around for girls.

Girls came, and they had their pick. Then they’d tell them where to sit and what to do.”

One of Ray’s photos, in particular — slide 14, featuring a group of women (including one with what appears to be a bandaged, broken nose) hanging out in a bar while the bikers gather in a separate room — is especially illuminating.

“The men were having a business meeting,” Bill Ray recalls, “and the women were definitely not invited there. When those guys were busy, the women just sat and waited. They’d smoke, drink beer, gossip, but they were pretty much just on ice until the meeting broke up. I remember, too, that many of them were surprisingly young: teenagers, or in their early twenties. They didn’t look young, though. Riding around on the back of a Harley at a hundred miles an hour in all sorts of weather will age you, I guess.”

Nowadays, when a hugely popular TV show like Sons of Anarchy brings the violence and twisted moral code of the outlaw-biker aesthetic into living rooms every week, it’s easy to forget how thoroughly (and willfully) the Angels shocked and frightened “polite” society five decades ago.

“Some of them are pure animals,” Birney Jarvis, a one-time Hells Angel who later became a newspaper police reporter, once said. “They’d be animals in any society. These guys . . . should have been born a hundred years ago, then they would have been gunfighters.”

One of the images in this gallery — slide 8, featuring two Angels locked in what appears a passionate kiss — is a graphic, surprising example of something that Bill Ray says struck him forcefully at the time: namely, the Angels’ apparent need to shock people. “That’s outside the Blackboard Cafe,” Ray remembers. “That’s the sort of thing they would do all the time, just to freak people out. As if to say, What’re you looking at? You got a problem with this?”

“It was exhilarating being around them, no question about it,” Ray says. “You just never knew what they were going to do. You’re always kind of on edge, because — think about it — these people have a lot of time to waste. They don’t punch a

clock, so they fill the time drinking beer, smoking pot, screwing around. There was always a sense that anything could happen at any minute. Things could go from lighthearted to tense to really scary pretty goddamn quick.”

Why wasn’t the Angels story published in LIFE, after Ray and Bride spent so much time not merely reporting the story, but putting themselves at serious risk inside this notoriously insular, die-hard gang? According to Bride, “George Hunt [LIFE’s managing editor] said he didn’t want to run a piece on ‘those smelly bastards.’” Bill Ray, meanwhile, recalls that “a lot of stories were killed back then because of one remark by an editor who didn’t like the idea. George said we weren’t going to run it, and that was that. I wasn’t in the meeting,” he adds with a laugh. “Editors went to great lengths to keep photographers out of discussions like that. They knew the argument would never end.”

Ray vividly remembers the moment he truly felt accepted, or as accepted as he was ever going to be, by the Angels. In a confrontation reminiscent of a famous scene in Hunter S. Thompson’s classic 1966 book, Hell’s Angels, when Thompson was almost stomped to death by bikers, Ray says that “he got in a bit of trouble one day, in a bar. Some bikers — guys who weren’t Angels — saw me taking pictures. They didn’t like it, but they didn’t realize that I was a sort of mascot of the real tough guys. I’d been shooting the Angels for maybe a week at this point. I was about to be attacked by one of these guys when a Hells Angel standing next to me made it clear that if a hair on my head was touched, the other guy was a dead man. From that point on, I felt . . . well, not safe, because I never felt safe with those guys, but as if I’d passed a test, somehow.”

Ray stresses that while the Angels he spent time with smoked pot, and he once saw them “beat the holy hell” out of some other bikers behind a bar, he “never saw these guys involved in anything deeply illegal. Then again, they always had plenty of money for gas and beer. They lived on their bikes — that is, when they weren’t hanging out in bars. Their money had to come from somewhere, but none of them ever worked.”

(Today the FBI contends that the Angels and other gangs — specifically, the Pagans, Outlaws MC and Bandidos — are deeply involved in extor-

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Hell’s Angels

“I was about to be attacked by one of these guys when a Hells Angel standing next to me made it clear that if a hair on my head was touched, the other guy was a dead man.”

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Hells Angel “Hambone� poses during a ride from San Bernardino to Bakersfield, Calif., 1965.

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Hell’s Angels

Rider pulls a wheelie on a street while the rest of the Angel’s look on.

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Of the Weird tion, drug dealing, trafficking stolen goods and other criminal activities.)

“There’s a romance to the idea of the biker on the open road,” Ray says. “It’s similar to the romance that people attach to cowboys and the West — which, of course, is totally out of proportion to the reality of riding fences and punching cows. But there’s something impressive about these Harley-Davidsons and bikers heading down

the highway. You see the myth played out in movies, like Easy Rider, which came out a few years after I photographed the Angels. You know, the trail never ends for the cowboy, and the open road never ends for the Angels. They just ride. Where they’re going hardly matters. It’s not an easy life, but it’s what they choose. It’s theirs. And everyone else can get out of the way or go to hell.”

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Amsterdam’s Top Tattoo Parlors

Hanky Panky Oudezijds Voorburgwal 141 1012 ES Amsterdam The Netherlands +31 20 627 4848 www.hankypankytattoo.nl His studio in Amsterdam is just one of the contributions Henk Schiffmacher, also known as “Hanky Panky,” has made to the world of tattoo art. Henk has also been an advisor for exhibitions covering the history of tattooing at The Museum of Natural History in New York and the Museé de la Civilisation in Canada. His clientele has included members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Pearl Jam, as well as Kurt Cobain.

Blue Blood Studios Kinkerstraat 14H 1053 DV Amsterdam The Netherlands +31 20 3586083 www.thebluebloodstudios.com New tattooshop in Amsterdam featuring an amazingly skilled crew of internationally established artists mixed with fresh new talent. Where the passion for tattooing meets the enthusiasm for drawing and painting.

CITY GUIDE

Admiraal Tattoo Marnixstraat 151 1015 VM Amsterdam The Netherlands +31 20 6223218 www.admiraaltattoo.com Rob Admiraal (1960, the Netherlands) has worked as an illustrator, typographer and portraitist (oil).

Tattooing since 1993. Currently operates a private tattoo studio in Amsterdam and makes “archetypical” oil paintings.

The Preacher’s Son Utrechtsestraat 23 1017 VH Amsterdam The Netherlands +31 20 8946177 www.thepreachersson.nl In our shop is work by various tattoo artists from all over the world as well as original art and prints skate, punk rock, graffiti to underground. In the field of tattooing we specialize in custom tattoos and improving and customizing your idea to you your ultimate, one of a kind, giving original tattoo.

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The

CYCLE ZOMBIES of California

Of the Weird

Cycle Zombies 1: Lifestyles of the Rough & Dangerous Cycle Zombies is a family that was born and raised in Orange County, CA. It was never founded, it just happened. Surfing, skateboarding, building and riding motorcycles, is a lifestyle that they live and breath everyday, as opposed to what so many other companies try to copy. They’re not a club or a gang, but a brotherhood of family and friends who ride together and care for eachother.

They dig up old bikes and bring them back to life with a new look without trying to re-invent the wheel, but only make them turn again. Surfing, skating, and riding choppers give you all the same feelings of freedom. The second you fire a bike up, step on a skateboard, or catch a wave, you forget about everything...

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Cycle Zombies 1: Lifestyles of the Rough & Dangerous

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Cycle Zombies 1: Lifestyles of the Rough & Dangerous

“There was no where to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars” —Jack Kerouac 28

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Cycle Zombies 2: Custom Build These old unusual parts stood no chance against the Cycle Zombies.

It’s all in the details from the devil tail back support to the unpolished flame-drenched gas tank. Another Frankenstein creation straight out of the depths of Hell.

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Cycle Zombies 2: Custom Build

1957 FL 30

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Cycle Zombies 2: Custom Build

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Kat Von D

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KAT VON D’S TATTOO PORTRAITS Kat Von D is a Latin American tattoo artist based out of L.A where she works with her crew at High Voltage

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D noV taK

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Of the Weird One of the most common remarks I hear from people when they see one of my sketches or tattoos is: “I wish I could draw.”

It’s flattering, but a part of me cringes at that comment simply because it isn’t true that they can’t learn to draw. There’s nothing special about what I do. Technically speaking, anybody can do what I do, maybe with the exception of those who have certain physical disabilities, and even then, there are people who are able to draw, regardless of physical challenges. Drawing well only requires practice, devotion and dedication, will and drive, and practice and more practice.

The simplest of tasks can become a platform for creativity if you have the right mind-set. Just because you can’t paint the Sistine Chapel like Michelangelo or compose a symphony like Beethoven does not mean that the power of creativity cannot flow through you. Some of the most creatively inspired people I’ve met were far from “accomplished” artists. They are bus-boys at bars, waiters and waitresses, puppet-makers, and mothers and fathers.

When you acknowledge that there is a deeper sense of creativity inside of you, you can become in tune with it. And when you do that, you can bring that awareness to everything you do—and a greater awareness to everything you make.

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Kat Von D’s Tattoo Portriats

“When you acknowledge that there is a deeper sense of creativity inside of you, you can become in tune with it.”

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ALBUM ARTWORK

Black Sabbath “Black Sabbath”

The Black Sabbath album cover features a depiction of Mapledurham Watermill, situated on the River Thames in Oxfordshire, England. Standing in front of the watermill is a figure dressed in black. The name of the woman pictured on the front cover is forgotten, though guitarist Iommi says that she once showed up backstage at a Black Sabbath show and introduced herself.

According to feelnumb.com, which featured an article on the album cover, ‘Not much is known about the eerie woman used in the photo other then she was a model/ actress hired for the day and her name was Louise.’

The inner gatefold sleeve of the original release was designed by Keith McMillan (credited as Marcus Keef) and featured an inverted cross with a poem written inside of it. Allegedly, the band were upset when they discovered this, as it fuelled allegations that they were Satanists or Occultists; however, in Osbourne’s memoir, he says that to the best of his knowledge nobody was upset with the inclusion. “Suddenly we had all these crazy people turning up at shows,” Iommi remembered in Mojo in 2013. “I think Alex Sanders (high priest of the Wiccan religion) turned up at a gig once. It was all quite strange, really.” The album was not packaged with a gatefold cover in the US. In the liner notes to Reunion, Phil Alexander states, “Unbeknownst to the

band, Black Sabbath was launched in the US with a party with the head of the Church of Satan, Anton Lavey, presiding over the proceedings...All of a sudden Sabbath were Satan’s Right Hand Men.” Released: February 13, 1970 Recorded: October 16, 1969 at Regent Sound Studios in London, England Genre: Heavy metal, blues rock Suggested song: Wasp/Behind the Wall of Sleep/ Bassically/N.I.B.

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Album Artwork

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ALBUM ARTWORK

The Smashing Pumpkins “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness”

It recently got a deluxe makeover, but Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was born grand. The Smashing Pumpkins’ 1995 opus, reissued this week as a massive collector’s box full of outtakes and new artwork, did everything at double scale — two hours of music on two CDs, whose themes of day and night hinted at greater statements about life and death. It was a commercial and creative peak for Billy Corgan and his bandmates: Built to be a classic, it turned out to be a monument.

There’s plenty of imagery associated with this period of the Pumpkins’ career: the Victorian-era costumes in the “Tonight, Tonight” video, Corgan’s own shaved head, his long-sleeved black “Zero” T-shirt. But unlike the real twins who adorned the cover of the band’s previous album, Siamese Dream, Mellon Collie’s figurehead is a girl who never really existed: a daydreaming star nymph with a split personality.

Her creator is John Craig, an illustrator from Pittsburgh who was living in Wisconsin when he began communicating with Corgan about what visual elements could bring the enormous ambition of Melon Collie to life. A collage artist, Craig had spent most of his career doing editorial commissions for magazines; here, he worked from Corgan’s scribbled notes and

crude sketches, most of which arrived via fax. Craig made other illustrations that appear throughout the album’s packaging — animals smoking pipes, celestial bodies with faces, wayward children walking eerie dreamscapes — all with a vaguely antique quality. But the cover image, of a girl adrift on a celestial raft, was the simplest and the most indelible.

She is assembled, like the rest of Craig’s creations, from scraps of paper ephemera, but she but doesn’t look like a collage. Craig gathered inspiration for the image out of implied eroticism and something that was more than the sum of its parts.

Released: October 24, 1995 Recorded: March – August 1995 at Pumpkinland, Sadlands, Bugg Studios, Chicago Recording Company; The Village Recorder Genre: Alternative rock Suggested song: Tonight, Tonight

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Album Artwork

Each of John Craig’s illustrations in the Mellon Collie booklet was based on rough directions from Billy Corgan, often sent via fax

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Of the Weird

Published by Blurb Fonts used are Charter and Rockwell Resources: Photos by Danny Clinch, Bill Ray, Cycle Zombies “Go Big or Go Home“ by Kat Von D ‘Mellon Collie’ Mystery Girl: The Story Behind an Iconic Album by Daoud Tyler-Ameen Wikipedia page, Black Sabbath (album) www.cyclezombies.com/blog “How to Befriend Your Music Idols” by Aliza Abarbanel “LIFE Rides with Hell’s Angels, 1965”

by Ben Cosgrove Designed and edited by Brianna Saba Parsons the New School for Design New York, New York

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Stay Wild.

Stay Weird.

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Of the Weird