THE BLACK PANTHER
It is fun to look back at those wild times and remember just how good they were, despite the fact that virtually every hour of my life, then and now, was spent working non-stop.
But what work! Any artist worthy of the name would have killed to work with the people I was hanging out with, working with, and having such a laugh while creating artwork that I wanted to rank up there with the very best in the UK. A Thin Lizzy album cover was a huge opportunity and I grabbed it.
UP IN THE ATTIC
Right now I’m busy sorting out all my Lizzy archive and turning up little gems like this series of rough sketches for Nightlife including my very first little Black Panther head, whiskers, and all.
These little sketches which are long buried in my attic in old standard black plastic photo paper bags are well preserved and as good as the day they were drawn.
There are a couple of things going on, on this little scrap of trace paper which is pretty typical of my way of thinking out loud, pen in hand.
The Black Panther head obviously led to the creation of the full-sized panther for the Nightlife cover but this is my very first thought put to paper.
The letter style for the cover title is already more than embryonic, it has the form I followed directly for the final artwork.
The other ‘Beat On The Street’ lettering shows what I was also working on at that same time as thin Lizzy and Nightlife.
This was for another album cover for Chris Blackwell’s Island Records who were taking a real interest in my work, for a band called Sutherland Bros and Quiver and as the rough for this album shows it too was gritty street storytelling stuff in the same vein as Nightlife.
One of the ideas I had was for the panther to be shown hiding in an alleyway covered with graffiti like the ‘PIGS OUT’ scribble. Nope that was a non-runner so no graffiti for the cover. Probably just as well because I was on a political roll anyway by now.
FOLLOWING UP ON SUCCESS
Thin Lizzy’s ‘Nightlife’ followed ‘Vagabonds of the Western World’ and was the first Lizzy offering from Vertigo Records. Philip called me and told me not to worry about the Vertigo art dept ‘these guys are good and want the band to be huge, they like your artwork and want to use you so let’s get going’.
I have no idea if that was the case but Philip gave me the album title ‘Nightlife’ early on and told me to work away until I had something to show: ‘Something moody and dangerous’, said Philip.
BIG BLACK CAT
I had a couple of ideas but had not heard the demos so I just pressed ahead and ran a few of them with Philip over the phone. Remember in those days there was no Zoom, no email, no WhatsApp, just the regular postal service and a landline dialup phone.
In the course of our discussions I remember we talked about the idea of Philip as ‘a big black cat’, which of course he was and he loved it too, strutting his stuff on Grafton Street every time he was back home in Dublin, soaking up the attention whenever he was home. It mattered not whether he was a nobody or a rock star, in the end he was always Philip, a big black cat on the prowl.
I did a couple of rough sketches and then moved on to a more finished version of my idea. I did a paste-up of negative photographic paper cutouts and created a montage American cityscape, looming behind the city was an enormous moon and in the foreground was the ‘big, black cat’ aka Philip Lynott.
I ran with this idea and added a political element:
I was a huge admirer of Martin Luther King, the Civil Rights movement in the USA and the newer, more radical Black Power movement and it’s political wing, the Black Panther Party.
The image of the rather forbidding Black Panther on the cover was my own silent tribute to the American Black Panthers who had weighed in heavily in defence of basic black Civil rights.
I also think it is worth noting that my work on Nightlife was also inspired by that magnificent show of defiance and Black Power at the 1968 Olympics.
The Black Power salute of Bobby Smith and John Carlos on the Olympics winners podium stayed in my mind also as I prepared a few ideas for Philip so the ‘big, black cat’ idea was a natural follow-on to these diverse influences.
As a radical and activist myself I wanted to say something about the oppression of black America at that time, which was both brutal and severe with frequent assassinations and cold-blooded murders culminating in the killing of the charismatic colossus that was Martin Luther King.
Finally, in the foreground was the cat, a very fierce big, black cat. I lifted the idea from the Black Panther Party poster symbol.
I turned the cat away, towards the city lights and rendered it roughly in marker on tracing paper in near silhouette and pasted it onto the photomontage. To show the image better I did this pen and ink rendition.
What is really strange and unusual from this period is this ad for the album prepared by the record album as a teaser using a staff artist as my work was not to be shown until the actual launch. .
Weird lettering and yep, guess what? A pretty good version of the real, actual Black Panther party logo.
Mad stuff too when you consider how secretive myself and Philip were about the relevance and meaning of this big black cat on our cover in case the BBC took exception to it as a political issue -and here’s the record company artist going one step further.
SECRET MEANINGS
Anyway Philip absolutely loved my approach, with himself as this cool black cat stalking the city and we got the go-ahead immediately.
It was only much later I told him about the Black Panther Party symbolism.
He went mental at first, then cracked up. He thought I was mad, knew if that got into the press all hell would break loose and Lizzy needed goodwill in the USA so we kept schtum about this political stuff for all those years until it faded away with the passing of the years and the political angle was forgotten, the meaning lost in time.
One thing was happening to Philip around this time and that was certain; he was discovering his own pride of his colour, not that he was ever anything less than proud of it, but now people of colour all over the world were asserting their right to equality and myself and Philip discussed this many times over the years right up to the very end.
He was a proud black man and a very proud Irishman too but his colour was of major importance to him, he felt, as I did, that it gave him a cultural edge.
Together we really did some cool stuff, work that has stood the test of time and like his music and Thin Lizzy, his band, his work, both music and lyrics, still resonate with a younger generation today.
Next. Part Three:
The Creation of the artwork for Nightlife.