ALBUM COVER SPOTLIGHT
8/5/16
GREEN DAY - DOOKIE
1994
Cover by Richie Bucher.
Whether you like it or not, you know what 'dookie' means. We all indulge in defecation-related humor- it's just a fact of life. So is it really a problem that the boys over at Green Day thought they'd name their album over it? Not really. The band often suffered from diarrhea whilst on tour, often from spoiled food. The name seems more apt now, does it not?
Armstrong and the gang approached San Francisco Bay-area artist Richie Bucher with a proposition of making the album cover for their album, with intention to make it unique to the Bay area's music scene. The band had connections to Bucher through their first drummer, John Kiffmeyer (who appeared on the band's debut, 39/Smooth). Bucher was given the name of the album, and that's it. Creatively, everything was in his hands. What the album turned out to be was an apocalyptic scene in the East Coast setting, with bombs dropping from the sky (bet you can guess how people liked that touch) onto a clustered crowd of in-jokes. Bucher included a plethora of music-related references, the more recognizable being:
Angus Young's pose on the cover of Let There Be Rock's alternate cover art
A reference to Ramones' album Rocket to Russia
and the eerie woman featured on the cover of Black Sabbath's debut, Black Sabbath, with text reading "What is this that stands before me?", which is the first line of the album's title track.
Green Day's Dookie is an album of a generation, and (in my opinion) one of the greatest punk records out there, but this cover really puts it in the books. If you haven't checked it out yet, I highly suggest that you do- it's a classic!
Reference clippings provided Willamette Week. View their interview with Richie Bucher interview here for more info: http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-22020-where%E2%80%99s_angu.html
2016 - The Frying Pan and Thatcher
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