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Abandon all hope ye
An outfit called Hypergallery has posters of Abandon artwork for sale. They are said to be limited edition (50 copies) prints “meticulously reconstructed from the original source material by artist Ioannis”.
The band had just completed Abandon and were late getting the cover art together. I sat in their manager Bruce Payne’s office along with Roger Glover who, as well as being the bass player and producer, was the art director for the band whenever I worked with them. We discussed a series of ideas and about a week later I brought them several concepts – the cover that eventually became Abandon was one of them.After that I worked with Roger on a tour book, and designed merchandise for the Abandon tour.There had been a huge rush to get the album art finished, approved, and off to the printers. Because of this, although it is one of my favourite images, I always regretted the fact that I did not have the time to work on it as I would have liked. In the creation of this edition of prints I had the chance to revisit the original source material and painstakingly recreate the artwork with all the depth and detail that I had always seen in my mind’s eye. I think what we have made, Hypergallery and myself together with the talented printers at Visual Impact, is very striking.
The prints are signed by Ioannis, and are not cheap, at £324 + shipping.
Poking further around the site, one can stumble upon another poster that might be of interest in this heck of the woods — Rainbow Difficult to Cure artwork signed by its designer Storm Thorgerson.
This Rainbow album cover design is one of a collection of archival inkjet prints that we released in 2014, celebrating previously unpublished album cover art from the Hipgnosis archives. Originally put forward as a cover for Black Sabbath’s 1978 album, Never Say Die!, the surgeons are posed in a mock rock’n’roll manner, parodying a similar narcissism which we found faintly ludicrous. Po’s friend George Galatzon took the lead role whilst the backup surgeons were played by Peter, Storm, John Blake, Hipgnosis assistant George and his mate. The supporting surgeons are set back slightly from the lead surgeon, an effect achieved by spraying a thin layer of white paint, like a mist, over the entire photo after laying a carefully cut, clear, sticky mask over the image of the lead character so that it would not receive the spray. Richard Manning added hand colouring to enhance the green outfits and the yellow of the gloves.
This one can be yours for £720.
Thanks to BraveWords for the heads-up.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Both covers were great. I found ‘Down To Earth’s cover banal + naive, ‘Straight Between The Eyes’s garish and lurid (those eyes looked terribly cheap live), but “Difficult To Cure”, especially the back cover with that “Oops, this didn’t work out as expected …”-gaze of the surgeon and the look of terror of the nurse, just perfect.
‘Bent Out Of Shape’ with that lingerie model exiting a door turning into a vulva shape was very expressive too. 😋 I know real art when I see it.
April 18th, 2024 at 21:01I would be happier if they just release “Abandon” on vinyl. The only Deep Purple studio album not on vinyl.
April 19th, 2024 at 08:47I’ve never understood why they never play songs from Abandon. I find this album like a real hard rock, perhaps the best rock with Bananas and Pupendicular in the Morse Era.
April 19th, 2024 at 11:44“This heck of the woods” is a wonderful typo! You should find a way to monetise it!
April 19th, 2024 at 18:08@4:
April 20th, 2024 at 00:11who says it was a typo? ;^)
They played quite a bit of the album at the time, five or six songs, I seem to remember Any Fule Know That. Bloodsucker, Seventh Heaven, Fingers to the Bone, ‘69 and that blues number, Don’t Make Me Happy I think it was called, it took the place of WABMC.And they started the gig with Steve playing Thin Lizzy’s The Boys Are Back In Town and Big Ian even singing the chorus!
April 20th, 2024 at 09:39I agree with AndreA. Abandon is an excellent album and the tour in support was outstanding!! Jon’s solo on Almost Human was one of the many highlites!!
April 21st, 2024 at 07:41Oh yeah, they played Almost Human too, that was a high point in the set at the time.
April 21st, 2024 at 20:00Karlsruhe 1998 saw the band play a rather adventurous set … with 7 to 8 numbers from the current album, kicking off with Hust and enjoying themselves a lot obviously. ABandOnTour is a nice bootleg of that night, worth tracking down.
April 24th, 2024 at 09:15I never thought Abandon a bad album, it was just comparatively dark and brooding compared to the very bright and joyous Purpendicular. And the follow-up Bananas was upbeat again as well.
April 24th, 2024 at 13:00The 1990’s was the only DP touring that supported a fair amount of new material if my understanding of set lists is correct, I could be wrong though. Something changed after the 2000’s, Jon Lord departed to pursue his music & to perform it live. Cheers.
April 24th, 2024 at 23:33In my opinion Abandon was the best album in the Morse era, and the best since perfect strangers!…
April 27th, 2024 at 23:19there isn’t even a weak song in it, all of them a high-magic-level never reached again!
To be fair, the Purpendicular Tour contained loads of new stuff too – I saw them in Hanau in 1996 and they played no less than seven songs from the new album. And they went down a storm, possibly the best Purple with Morse gig ever for me and I saw a few.
April 28th, 2024 at 00:12I’m so desperate that I’m already thinking about buying an unofficial version of vinyl for the collection and never listening to it, although for the money that these records cost ($135) on discogs you could buy an official magnificent box set that I would listen to with pleasure and more money would have stayed. Release ABandOn on vinyl, this album will sell better than the 100th version of Machine Head.
April 28th, 2024 at 03:52Would be inclined to agree with Fla-italy- ‘s ranking of “Abandon”. Based on its well-ordered first half – six good tunes in a row.
Would question the sentiment that there are no weak songs though. Much of the second half – including the pointless remake of “Bloodsucker” – is considerably less than outstanding.
And the production is… not great. “Dark” as Uwe has charitably described it; “muddy” as one might also say.
One of their most monochromatic-sounding records, too, along with the far-superior “Machine Head” and the somewhat better “Perfect Strangers”.
Yet those first half-dozen tunes make “Abandon” one of the best of their 1984-and-later catalogue.
April 28th, 2024 at 19:32