I chose this album cover as I find it fascinating, and I love John Frusciante.
The images used are unclear on the front of the cover. Intentionally, it looks like lots of different images blended together, in a cut-out style fashion. The album cover is separated in to three distinct sections, each occupying roughly a third of the space. The top third looks like heaven and the bottom like hell, the middle section is slightly more unclear.
In the top third, we see lots of clouds and a bright blue sky, as well as some sort of castle above the clouds; presumably the kingdom of heaven. It does help understand the cover by knowing the album; (tracks include ‘Heaven’ ‘God’ ‘Light / Dark’), but I think this would still be obvious to someone looking at the album for the first time. To the left, there is a distorted angel leaning down from heaven. The body of the angel is that of John Frusciante, although the face is not visible. He appears to have wings, and there are bandages all around his arms. Snowy mountains and some trees are also visible.
The central third of the album shows darkness in contrast to the bright colours of heaven. It is a deep blue with some ‘drips’ of the white cloud sliding down. There is a twisted staircase connecting heaven and hell. This section could represent purgatory, or the sea; which would explain the water colours used and the dripping effect.
The bottom third of the album is dominated by shades of brown, and is presumably hell. We see soil and roots, and a man lying down, either sleeping or dead in the ground. The man is Josh Klinghoffer, John’s best friend and major contributor to the album. He is naked and covered in earth. Once again, it is distorted, with several sections of his body layered multiple times in the same ‘cut-out’ style as the rest of the cover.
The back of the album is simple, a sea blue colour with the track listing in a grey font going vertically down. No track numbers, no other images used. A strong juxtaposition to the flurry of images and colours on the front of the cover.
Interestingly, there is no text whatsoever on the front cover; not his name or the album title. His name is only visible on the back sleeve in a smaller font underneath the track listing; ‘Produced by John Frusciante’, and even that would not make it clear that it is his album- people who did not know may assume he is just the producer and someone else wrote the album.
The images used are typically John Frusciante; psychedelic and widely open for interpretation. His other album covers are not dissimilar, and it fits with the strange style of his music; a mix of experimental and psychedelic rock infused with his famously haunting guitar playing. The cover includes some of the themes of the album (heaven and hell, the existence of god). It also fits in with his humble nature in that his name is hardly visible at all on the cover. This album cover would mean nothing to people who do not know who he is beforehand; indicating it is about as far from mainstream as you get and is not exactly inviting to first time listeners. It also shows he is an already established artist; he doesn’t need to have his name big and obvious for it to sell. We can see the target audience is a niche one, mostly pre existing fans of the artist.
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