THE SIMPSONS’ YELLOW ALBUM: When I Ripped Off THE BEATLES — Then Got Ripped Off to the Tune of $14.8 MILLION
MORRISON MONDAYS! By BILL MORRISON Today, I’m remembering a piece I drew a few decades ago, the cover to The Simpsons record titled The Yellow Album. Though its title is a nod to the Beatles “White Album,” the art is a parody of the Fab Four’s earlier release, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. In days past, I remember listening to the opening line of the Sgt. Pepper’s album, “It was twenty years ago today…” and thinking, wow, twenty years… an unimaginably long time. Now it seems like a blip, especially when you consider it’s been 59 years (tomorrow) since that groundbreaking collection of songs was released in the United States, and popular music, as well as album cover art, changed forever. The album’s songs were a catchy, experimental assortment that combined the usual rock/pop Beatles sound with a variety of other musical styles, including British music hall, avant-garde, circus music, vaudeville, and classical Indian music. This potpourri of sounds captivated the youth of the world and heralded 1967’s psychedelic “Summer of Love.” Likewise, the cover by pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth, which depicts the Beatles in candy-colored 19th century marching band uniforms posing in front of dozens of celebrities and historic figures, fascinated the record-buying public. This iconic image set a new standard for how rock records would be packaged and marketed. A design as striking and unique as the Sgt. Pepper cover is ripe for parody, and Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention were the first to lampoon it with an image on the inner sleeve of their 1968 album, We’re Only in It for the Money. The second such satire came only 30 years later when The Simpsons released its second comedy music collection, The Yellow Album. I had worked with Steve Vance and Cindy Vance to create the album art for the first Simpsons record, The Simpsons Sing the Blues in 1990, and the three of us were also hired to produce the artwork for the follow-up recording, which was to be released in 1993. Unfortunately, the recording was shelved for various reasons and didn’t see the light of day for five years. But in 1996, I got a call from The Simpsons’ production offices, asking if they could borrow my original album cover art to use as reference for a couch gag. The resulting sequence...
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