‘Elvis’s deliberate look stood out from the punk fraternity’
Art director Steve Averill talks to Barry Egan about creating the Elvis Costello album cover
‘My dad was a pilot for Aer Lingus,” says Steve Averill, who was born in 1950 in Dublin. “My Mum kept everything else together.”
He was educated at Mount Temple in Clontarf. It was his idea that school band The Hype change their name to U2, and he designed the cover for their debut album Boy in 1980. Prior to that, as Steve Rapid he was the singer in Ireland’s first punk band, The Radiators from Space in 1976.
He went on to design the covers for U2 albums War in 1983, Under a Blood Red Sky, also in 1983, The Unforgettable Fire in 1984, The Joshua Tree in 1987 and Achtung Baby in 1991.
Averill also worked with international acts including Depeche Mode and Elvis Costello.
He developed a lasting working relationship with the latter, designing the covers for many of his albums, most notably on 2002’s tour de force, When
I was Cruel.
What were your early impressions of Elvis Costello?
I was aware of Elvis early on as he was on Stiff Records and we [The Radiators from Space] were on Chiswick. So there was a certain amount of rivalry between the two independents [labels] and you checked out who was releasing what. Elvis had a very deliberate look back then which stood out from the punk fraternity. It was when he formed the Attractions as his backing band and upped the energy that I really listened to what he was doing. He also worked with one of my all-time favourite designers, the late great Barney Bubbles. His work was, and still is, superlative in its humour and execution.
When did your artistic relationship with him begin?
I was introduced to him by my very good friend and renowned photographer, Amelia Stein.
The first album cover was The Juliet Letters in 1993, working with Amelia. The other covers designed or art-directed by me were Kojak Variety, All This Useless Beauty, Extreme Honey, Painted from Memory and Costello & Nieve.
That’s a lot of sleeves. Did he ever reject an idea?
No, but he was very hands-on in his approach to the graphics for his releases. It was more a case of coming up with options and finding out which one suited the music best and appealed to him and then pursuing that direction.
What were the conversations like leading up to the cover of ‘When I was Cruel’?
My working relationship with Elvis grew from the fact that he was living in Dublin at the time and was keen to work directly with a designer. He was one of the few artists who would come in to the studio to discuss ideas and objectives and we would stay in close contact and meet often so that he could see firsthand how an idea was developing. That was likely to be sometime in 2001 that the process started.
Did he send you the songs? Elvis was recording in Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin. He invited me down, so we spent an afternoon listening to many of the tracks that were close to completion – this was to immerse me in the overall context of the album. I’m not sure of the exact tracks we listened to, but it was a great way to get that into your head. Elvis said he didn’t want his picture on the cover but an image that summed up what he felt might represent a suitable cover. Perhaps as crucial to that thinking was the possible title, When I Was Cruel.
How did that idea develop?
At that time, in the studio we had a number of books of creative and abstract photography that were used for inspiration. One of the best of these was a company called Photonica. I went through hundreds of images in these books, something that doesn’t exist now in an online capacity as if you were to search ‘artistic photography’, the definition would be too wide.
Anyway I picked six images that to me would suit the title and music. I had these colour photocopied and brought them down to the studio and said to Elvis there were some options there that I thought would suit and there was one that stood out to me as the most suitable.
I would not tell him which one until he had seen them all for himself, to see if we were in the same visual track. He went through them and picked one. I said turn it over and it was marked as my choice – that is the image by Melissa Hayden that became the cover.
I think, if memory serves, it was of a fairground in a London suburb. It was grainy image that might have been a Polaroid transfer, a photographic process that was popular around the then. However we only had a scan and never the original image.
You’ve done a lot of famous covers. Why does this stand out among your personal best?
It was one I really enjoyed working on with Elvis and the fact that it may have gone in a different direction if he had chosen a different image makes it a memorable one.
How would you describe your style as a designer?
I would describe it as serving the artist as best you can. No matter the area of music they’re in, you have to deliver the best cover you can. Working in a smaller world like Dublin, there was also a financial need to keep a design team going and that may mean at times you might be less than satisfied with the end result which was often heavily dictated by a label’s marketing team.
There are designers who I admire greatly, like the late Vaughn Oliver who had a very distinctive look that worked in a large market that was highly distinctive and recognisable, but would not have worked in the smaller world of Dublin entertainment design.
Some of those ideas are part of the touring talk I do, ‘My Life in 12 Sleeves’. I choose some of the sleeves that I’ve designed or art directed, along with some favourites of mine that were influential on my thinking and processes.
He was one of the few artists who would come in to the studio to discuss ideas and we would stay in close contact