Ten More AWFUL ALBUM COVERS | Anthrax, Billy Joel, Miles Davis 

I like to think they found Rick in these weird positions after he drank a ton of alcohol and made the covers out of how they found him. The inside gatefold of the alps picture, for instance, was Rick's local trying to throw him out after last orders, he's holding onto the bar and security have his feet trying to separate Rick from the bar. Rick, being a pianist, has an exceptionally strong grip which coupled with the prospect of having to stop boozing for the night means security probably lost that battle!

Terrific (and terrifying) video, Andy. There's a sleepless night ahead. For the record, Aphrodite's Child was a Greek band but Demis Roussos (who seems to be holding his breath [gut?] on the album cover) was born in Egypt. Riot's mascot is an early marketing mistake that the band got stuck with. Their album NARITA takes 'awful' to the next level. The head of the seal (named "The Mighty Tior") is stuck on a (red) sumo wrestler's body squatting over a bed of skulls. He/It is holding a big axe. Apparently the Narita Airport was built on top of an ancient Japanese graveyard. Unsurprisingly, there's an airplane coming in for a landing just behind Tior. The sky is blue, the clouds are pink and I think that's Mt. Fuji in the background. For all that, the music is pretty great hard rock.

“It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.” David St. Hubbins

"It's as thought it's saying, Rick's so great that he can actually play the keyboards with both his hands and his feet at the same time whilst floating in a mountain range." Are you saying he isn't? :) Seriously though, I think this art was actually a good idea, just poorly executed. I rather like the Angel Witch cover, too, apart from the lettering. I love how when you're discussing the symbolism of the snakes on the Joe Perry cover, you're obviously fighting the urge to make a Taylor Swift reference. That got a chuckle out of me. You almost had me splitting my sides with the Demis Roussos cover commentary. Your wit is wonderful.

Demise answer : Lymph Glands / system

I thought MSG were called the McAuley Schenker Group at that time. I think I saw them supporting Whitesnake. Even Michael had multi-coloured hair extensions. The photo-archives of Kerrang and Metal Hammer would be a gold mine for some sort of feature like this.

Oh my God, you had me laughing so hard right from the start! love this

The last album shown was Penetration - An Aquarian Symphony which was the seventh of at least a dozen albums by Ya Ho Wah 13 ( nine original private pressed albums from 1973-1975), known pretty much for spontaneous psychedelic jams and Father Yods kettle drum , some albums better than others and all highly collectable. The band also featured on occasion Sky Saxon of The Seeds fame. Cheers.

Andy, when are you touring the states with this comedy act? You alone on stage with a drum kit, giving it a wack after every joke would be brilliant 👏

"Demis is just pushing hair out of his body" 😂 My mom loved him. Demis played frequently during my formative years.

Demis should have named the album "Pushing Out Hair" and "A black hairy mushroom cloud!" Haha! Joe Perry pic looks like what my wife did over here in the states called, Glamour Shots. Too funny!

I literally got cramp in my cheeks laughing at your Demis Roussos comments! I love the way you deconstructed his attire and stance in such detail. English humour is the greatest!

Manfred Mann also posed for the cover image of the Will Self novel "Great Apes." This is true!

I want to say thank you you now going to make me toss and turn on all night what visions of horrible album covers

That Angel Witch album is actually pretty cool, I liked it. I could think of a dozen other heavy metal albums with much more immature and ridiculous covers , like most HM lps. Lmao regarding the Demi’s Roussos album and his horrendous pink shirt. Who would have been responsible for that heinous piece of clothing. That outfit could not be more garishly inappropriate. I believe his mother knit him that sweater under his pink shirt.

I would like to put forward the inner gatefold of Moontan by Golden Earring, but given Andy's fascination with Patrick Moraz's rear....he might like it....😂 I love the actual music on it....'Are You Receiving Me' is almost a jazz/rock tune.....simple, but effective, and of course the brilliant 'Radar Love' is on it!! Shame about the artwork tho!!!! You could also do a whole video on Gino Vannelli album covers...but that would be low hanging fruit!!! Excellent and very funny video Andy!!

"Any chance for Sting to show off, he'll take." Off the cuff brilliance!

Regarding Riot and Fire down below, around that time there was quite a bit of attention given to the practice in Canada of "clubbing baby seals." I'm not sure why it was done but it was done a lot and it was, as you can imagine, quite controversial. Thinking it had something to do with thinning out the population. Not sure, but search up "clubbing baby seals" and Canada and I would imagine you will get your explanation. I assumed that the baby seal album covers were trying to be edgy and suggesting that the band was so heavy that they would crush your scull like a baby seal being exterminated. I remember laughing out loud at how tasteless it was at the time. LOL

yes sir Andy! a rather fun video indeed!

I can't believe I'm seeing Gerhard Polt "Leberkäs' Hawaii" (1981) on this channel. 🤣

Billy Joel looks like the French knight (he's already got one) in The Holy Grail.

I've only got as far as Manfred Mann and I can't see for the tears of laughter........thank you, I really needed a good laugh. Hilarious!

In 1985 I was leading an A.A. meeting in West Hollywood and halfway into the meeting Joe and Steve walked in, giggling and snorting. They sat in the back row, nest to my friend Kimberly. Steve would flirt with her throughout the rest of the meeting. At the end of most meetings the group would hold hands in a circle and quote the Lord's Prayer, corny and surprisingly powerful. Steve held Kimberly's hand and he diddled her palm with his middle finger, guess what that implies. I liked Toys in the Attic. I don't like Steve and Joe.

It's such a shame about the Miles Davis cover. If you look at other pictures from the photo shoot, in one he has a perfectly respectable chrome revolver. Would've been much better than the plastic toy he ended up with.

Great lesson in Graphic Arts. Really enjoyed the video.

I saw your pick for #1 and screamed "omg that's Father Yod!" He was the "spiritual" leader of The Source, a commune in late 60s/early 70s L.A. that had a popular vegetarian restaurant that was actually satirized in "Annie Hall". Also had a resident band called Ya Ho Wha 13 led by yours truly. Check out the documentary "The Source Family" for some California guru craziness.

Fun video! I have the Attila stuff on cassette with a different cover but I like it. It's heavy and interesting beginning to Billy Joel's career. That Miles cover is kind of weird too.

Sorry to be contrary, but as a young lad in his teens, I loved the Miles gatefold album for Under Arrest and remember being amazed at his own strange artwork on the inside cover. The strange figures, dark themes and colours gave another insight into Miles' mind and amazing music.

That last one starts a mind riot I've never seen any of those before, and they are definitely hideous

Great video....Keep on ranting Manford Man's Angel's Station album is a lost gem. His best IMHO. On the cassette, there's a reprise of a funeral theme that's sync'ed on the reverse side. You can center on one note as you flip from side to side. What great fun we had before the internet and the end to bordom. It seems unlikely it was on purpose, since it only worked on the cassette, but who knows.

OMG Demis Roussos you bring me PTSD from my childhood in Québec

For a second there I thought I had visions when I noticed the Gerhard Polt cover in the background, upper right. Where the hell did you find that?

That is so cool you did graphics work before, I graduated with graphic design! 🔥

My suggestion to a spot in the awful album covers list (or the best album covers?) would be High Noon by Kalle Kalima. He is an excellent guitarist by the way, so don't let the cover scare you.

Great stuff. Everyone knows that the cover of SABOTAGE by Black Sabbath is the worst cover known to man or woman .. or .. drummers 🥁 wearing their mothers old white tights Bill Ward .. you know it’s you!😀 The worst part is that they are in front of a mirror 🪞 which they forgot to check themselves out on .. before the camera clicked.

Too much! I'm going to make the Superman pose in hopes my morning bowel movement comes on line a little sooner today.

39:45 Its singer ROBIN McAULEY with an ABSOLUTELY DISASTROUS Silvikrin Hairdo. With a perm that could kill cows at 50 paces. ...GOOD singer though. Gusto....... Michael was & is a genius......Some of Spinal Tap's covers were no more crazy than some of the REAL HM covers in the 1980s ....'Smell the Glove' ....'Intravenus de Milo' ...lol (Paul) .

Hilarious, loved it. When it comes to bad taste covers, The Scorpions take the win, closely followed by Blind Faith. Deep Purple - Bananas is an awful, bland cover for one of the best rock bands ever, and allied to that, that Rainbow album with the guitar bursting through a guys forehead, can't remember the title, never owned it. That Judas Priest live album that isn't Unleashed in the East, like somebody drew it in felt pen on a cardboard box. AC/DC - Fly on the Wall, has to be their worst cover. The cover I find really boring is Iggy Pop - Lust for Life, I want an Iggy like on the front of Raw Power, not a smiley, happy normal Iggy. Here's an interesting subject, Hipgnosis worst covers. For the company that produced the most iconic cover ever, DSOTM, they have produced some truly awful shit, Def Leppard - Pyromania springs to mind.

there are lots of seals in the south. I live in New Zealand and we get them on some of our beaches sometimes.

Seal pup. Huge in the eighties as eco-victims. Down under - Aussie theme? It's a polar seal pup. Blofeld held the cat. Fire is irony. Pretentiousness and complicated ruled the upper classes and rockers in the eighties and Punk Rock was still kicking ass.

Good idea for “The List” episode. Knew the Attila cover. A friend had it back in the day and we used to laugh at the “let’s put every metal trope we can think of” cover. It actually is not as bad an album as the cover suggests.

Very entertaining and your points of reference match mine :-)

Please do take a deeper dive into Atilla. It got terrible reviews back in the day but it really is a narcissistic powerhouse of an album. Joel also had a few albums before that with a band called the Hassles. Also, love 666! The Four Horseman song is killer!

Have you come across the comedy singer ‘Wilfredo’? He’s based on Demis, Julio Inglasias (excuse spelling) and a bunch of other hairy Latin heartthrob singers of that era. Very entertaining. Not sure if he is on RU-vid

This is a most execellent video, however. I have to say that the only thing keeping it from being perfect is that Andy didn't recreate Tino's pose for the thumbnail. Maybe for part 3?

Brutal Andy, Brutal. (If I had my record collection from Alaska here, I'd enter the competition.)

You might want to check out Billy Joel's band "The Hassles" who put out two records. The first record is pure rock and roll but the second is a prog-rock concept album called HOUR OF THE WOLF that will make you laugh out loud - eerie haunted house organ (but also almost jazzy piano) and wild fuzz guitar leads with the sounds of a wolf pack chasing after you in the night. What a trip. Billy would probably pay me to never mention it again.

"Hostile Miles" yes!! i'll buy that album!

I would add Rush's album "Hemispheres", surely a cheap cut and paste job, you can even see the outline where the brain has been cut round.

I'm not sure whether I laughed more at this or the Spinal Tap video. I can't wait for a proper analysis of the (musically brilliant) Pet Sounds album cover. So many hungry goats...

❤

Andy, I think you failed to see-in any case you didn't mention it-that the two snakes on the shield of the Joe Perry album form the letters "JP." When I saw the Manfred Mann album cover I immediately thought that he looked like one of the characters from the movie "The Planet of the Apes." Not to be a nabob of negativism, but may I say that the video overlay technology you're using, where you are in front and graphics appear behind you, doesn't work right? It's rather annoying. All throughout this video-and it's not just this one, but every one where you use the overlay thingee-parts of your hair would disappear, the right lens of your glasses would disappear, parts of your shirt would disappear, and then reappear. So, yeah, that's NFG. But the video itself was, as usual, fun and entertaining, if not, in this case, particularly information-filled. But then we don't need that all the time, do we?

Lost count of how many times I pissed my pants, maybe once or twice per cover, thanks Andy!!!

Love this series. Thank you.

Manfred was obviously having a very bad day😂

"Is that Patrick Moraz again?!" LMAO!!!

Manfred Mann-A young Bingham Young with John Lennon type glasses. He should have cleaned up the whiskers near his Adam's Apple!

That "Demis Roussos segment was pure genius. His arms are akimbo as Peter Hammill would say. And Lymph nodes...When you first showed this cover, I was repulsed- than slightly interested-interested-very interested than suddenly I lost interest. Then I was depressed then-suicidal.... slightly interested-interested.... Ha! Ha!

Silly, stupid and downright ugly album covers far, far exceed the beautiful ones. This is a series that could go on forever. 🙂 It was great to see Demis again though. Man, that guy was popular in the seventies.

Check "Seriously Bad Album Covers! by Nick DiFonzo" It's a scream.

The lymphatic system Andy - the lymphatic system !!

As a belgian guy, the Demis Roussos cover brought childhood trauma back to the surface. I can't thank you for that, Andy, you psychopath. There was a fat Demis Roussos joke back then around the playgrounds. "Demis Roussos lost 40 kilos you know?" "Oh yeah?" "Yeah, he shaved."

Couldn't resist giving the Penetration a quick listen. It was OK if you like a bit of home brewed psychedelia. Kept flashing back to the old Paul Newman movie 'Harper' where he visits cult leader Strother Martin at 'The Temple In The Clouds'. As albums made by cult leaders go it beats the hell out of 'Space Jazz'!

This is really the last, I've had a few, England won lol. I'm not suggesting you weren't pitch perfect on Tit-Willow but I'd love to hear it put through one of these controversial software things that everybody's currently arguing about. I'm sure obviously it will just come out identical but might be a laugh.

The shirt your wearing could easily fit onto the cover of ELP's Love Beach.😂

What about Herbie Mann - Push Push? 🙂

Maybe the baby seal (that's about to be clubbed) is in hell (i.e. down below). A corny metal cliché but there was a lot of that at the time.

Someone else may already have mentioned this but the MSG LP cover features Robin McAuley - I think if you look closely enough it is actually titled the McAuley Schenker Group. He was a previously a member of Grand Prix (their LP was kind of proggy pomp - a bit Styx etc) and also The Far Corporation which you will remember was the brainchild of the Boney M guy and they had the balls to do a glossily produced version of Stairway to Heaven.

Poor Manfred, he looks like he'd rather be anywhere than that record cover.

Demis bit was funniest. I know it's low, and I do have a bald chest... Then Wakeman's inlay is soooo bizarre. I'd frame it and put on a wall. If only I'd find a matching bizarre interior...

The London Underground should hire butch men to stand on platforms at every station, in the Superman pose, to free up the tubes. Guaranteed to make the system work efficiently and the trains to run on time.

lymph nodes... seal pup - Andy you are a very very funny man! thank you !

The Michael Schenker Group was actually called the McAuley Schenker Group at that time. Hard to tell because type is very small and hard to read, but very easy to see is the band logo which did not change since the band still had the MSG initials. The "bloke" on the right is Robin McAuley, the singer. Really good album btw.

Last comment thanks for reminding me of flex-able. I bought it when I was 13 and into Whitesnake. I travelled on a train with my mates and bought it and was not only confused and disappointed I was ridiculed for ages by the same so-called friends. It became a pre-internet meme lol. Anyway I really love it now so I had to re-buy it, it's bonkers and really awesome. Not on the level of Tit Willow but he's trying! Cheers Andy.

Jan Hammer Trio Make Love 1968, the one with the butterfly on woman's posterior

andy should get a purple rinse to go with the shirt

Manfred does look deeply troubled. Miles Davis in general just gives me the creeps, even though I like his music. If I made this video I would just pick 10 random metal album covers from the 80s.

I recently bought album by band called Steam I got it for the cover , it cost $2 It also has original version of Na Na Hey Hey ( Kiss Him Goodbye ) By the cover !!! It is Hot

Did Andy have the " Fill your head with Rock" comp. There's an inappropriate picture on that cover that poses questions lol.

I feared you’d say “Smell the Glove”. Relieved to know you kept off that masterpiece.

Squarepusher - Ultravisitor has to be in the next one

Rick “snowballs” Wakeman.

Its Robin McAuley on the Schenker cover, who is still touring with Michael

43:00 I feel bad for the seal. It looks so sad!

Riot-Fire Down Under...I actually understand the meaning of this Album Title...Well back in 1997 at 27 years I went to a Merle Haggard Concert at Konocti Harbor Resort in Lake County CA. Well, I ended up in bed with a 40-year-old local redhead. God help me. Needless to say, I woke up the next morning with a fire down below...Three cycles of Penicillin later...I haven't listened to BCO's-I'm burning for you the same way again. Razor blades...

2:55 "Who in their right minds though that was a good idea". from the idea itself, it's highly probable that Ricks mind was the one behind it. My theory, supported by evidence, is that older generation rock stars can be divided into two categories: those before psychotherapy (mostly no longer with us) and those after. Rick Wakeman, a lovely guy, possibly didn’t reach his current state without some help.

The concept behind the Anthrax cover was a fist punching a face from the front, but it wasn't quite executed correctly.

Your description of Demis Roussos made me feel all funny inside.

The Angel Witch cover’s not bad at all! A bold graphic with nice colours - I’d wear that on a t-shirt for sure.

The genius of so many punk albums art was manipulating existing media in that they weren’t claiming ownership of it they were just re-presenting it….but yes bwahahaa soooo many metal acts artwork was really having a go at tying to actually be art /use the rules of art….and were so laughable the intended offensiveness is lost in unintended comedy….

All very deserving, although the MSG cover without the hair man (Robin McAuley, who does have a decent voice) does have a decent design. I never did like the Riot Seal mascot and the way that it was portrayed. They should have asked Derek Riggs to do something. The Narita cover was just as bad.

On the Demis Roussos album cover, until Andy mentioned the chest hair bursting out of the blouse opening, I thought that was a tattoo of a barren tree peeking out.

Discharge is a British punk hardcore band not there's a great black and white 12 in single cover of Margaret Thatcher with a meat cleaver and a mirror behind her with the grim reaper. Excellent and actually pretty damn good music too.

Rick is a in his own mind an ailing comedian. He used to and may still do a column in the magazine Prog each month and is actually quite funny. Red Planet from 2020 is growing on me and if you have not maybe give it a spin. Maybe you could do a video on the Strawbs quite a few good records. Black Sabbath Born Again what do you'll think a bit creepy

Lymphatic system.

That Anthrax album cover is definitely over the top. I'd say their best album cover is Persistence Of Time.

Anything to with the band Manowar is more Spinal Tap ,than Spinal Tap😊

The Pantera covers you’re thinking of were Metal Magic and Projects in the Jungle. And yeah, both were awful covers!

We need a Top 20 of bands with the worst covers. Omit Fleetwood Mac - their covers' terribleness has no competitor.

Demis superhero of sausage rolls and frilly shirts.