We’re having to lavish much care and attention on some of the precious items contributed to the show.

Here,  Barney Bubbles’ artwork for Dave Edmunds’ 1981 album Twangin… is checked over by Chelsea Space director Donald Smith. The poster paint-on-card cover is held by long-gone/yellowed Sellotape to a 14″ x 28″sheet with pencil instructions for the back of the sleeve and a couple of sketched options in thumbnail boxes.

The Iitala window display is shipping out on Monday. It’s been great to work amid such beautifully crafted objects.

"Shiva Jones and the Quintessence": Sketch by Barney Bubbles (top, bearded) with group members outside 307 Portobello Road, May, 1969.

One of the more abstruse credits for Barney Bubbles appeared just as he was embarking on his career in music design.

In the sixth and final issue of underground magazine Gandalf’s Garden, Bubbles was credited with “topiary”, in keeping with the horticultural lexicon employed at the offshoot of the Chelsea head shop/restaurant of the same name.

Front cover, Gandalf's Garden 6, 1969.

Exterior Gandalf's Garden, World's End, London SW10, 1969.

Issue 6 of Gandalf’s Garden was published in late 1969, and included a feature on Quintessence. The flute-led jazz/raga/rock ensemble’s recently released debut album In Blissful Company was Bubbles’ first 12in sleeve design (with his Teenburger Designs assistant John Muggeridge, or ‘J. Moonman’ as he was styled on the cover).

Pages 9-10, Gandalf's Garden 6.

Page 2, Gandalf's Garden 6.

The feature was enlivened by a pink duotone image of the group, and an Island Records advert for the new album appeared in the same issue. Bubbles received the credit for supplying both of these.

“Since he’s listed among those responsible for ‘topiary’ (i.e. artwork) in the issue, all I can say is that he did SOMETHING!” said Rosemary Pardoe, who is responsible for Gandalf’s online presence.

Gandalf’s mainman Muz Murray does not believe Bubbles ever provided layouts. “However, he  kindly offered his Barney Bubbles’ Light Show for the benefit concerts we did with Marc Bolan, David Bowie and Quintessence,” added Murray.

Concert posters, 1969.

Bubbles, whose basement at 307 Portobello Road was used as rehearsal space by Quintessence, also regularly provided lights for their performances at the Sunday Implosion events at London’s The Roundhouse.

The GG6 Quintessence image and advert share the design approach Bubbles adopted for the black-and-white 12-page booklet he placed inside the Blissful Company gatefold (the front and back covers were paintings by ‘Gopala’, a member of the group’s posse, and the inner a photograph of the group and their circle).

Pages 6-7, In Blissful Company booklet, 1969.

Pages 9-10, In Blissful Company booklet, 1969.

The 12in sq booklet presented italicised song lyrics and credits with images of the band-members amid coarse dot patterns, shimmering elipses and die-cut apertures leading to an op-art quadrant.

This complementary and juxtaposed use of the square, triangle and circle were repeated by Bubbles throughout his career, denoting his understanding of the power of primary shapes (defining features of art movements he investigated, such as the Bauhaus).

Profiled in the BBC doc New Horizons: The Alternative Society, Quintessence took part in the 1971 Glastonbury Fayre (which led to the  fund-raising album of the following year housed in Bubbles’ tri-fold sleeve).

A version of the group is still led by founder Shiva Jones. You can catch up with their latest news here.

Vic Fieger's favourite faces.

Physiognomy was a preoccupation  of Barney Bubbles and a recurring theme; he worried at the representation of the human face and tackled it from many angles. There are hundreds littered across his work, rendered in unusual arrangements and assembled from unlikely elements.

Here, in the first of a series of blogs by guests, the US designer Vic Fieger selects his Top Ten Barney Bubbles Faces:

Armed Forces: there he is, Barney himself,  in the best place to hide: where everybody can see you. He seemed never to back away from portraying his big nose (see also Fast Women & Slow Horses), which makes up 70% of this self-portrait. The presentation of the eye utilises one of  Barney’s favourite tricks: the repositioning of an oval shape. Most of  his ovals have the same dimension ratio, and were likely cut or drawn with the use of a drafter’s stencil for isometric circles.

Inner panel, 12in sq. Armed Forces, Elvis Costello And The Attractions, Radar, 1979.

The Blockhead logo for Ian Dury and crew is of course one of his best-known. Everything is as clear as can be: eye/nose/eye/mouth. The letters are unaltered and of uniform size, save for the elongated L, and the arrangement of them is all it took to makes this word into a bona fide blockhead. Is it just serendipity that the letter-forms seem to present a mouth of misaligned and rotten teeth, framed by the round C and D?

There is similarity to the back of the 1981 re-issue of Dury’s What A Waste. In the  square, white this time, the (still perfectly horizontal) mouth is the negative space of a double-edged razor which has wandered from the front cover. And is that another Eye Of Horus, gazing at the title of the B-side, perhaps just waking up to it?

Label, What A Waste/Wake Up! , Ian Dury & The Blockheads, Stiff, 1978.

Back, 7in sleeve, What A Waste/Wake Up & Make Love To Me, Ian Dury, Stiff, 1981.

The fellow who adorns the sleeve of Nick Lowe’s I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass is made of metal; his mouth is a utility knife, his nose a pair of tweezers, and he sheds a pop pull-tab tear. A circular saw frames the face, the negative space this time providing the outline of head and neck.

The opposite end of the spectrum is represented by the sleeve for  The Inmates’ seven-inch Me And The Boys. Here Barney subtracts rather than adds, removing different lengths of teeth of a plastic comb for the chiseled profiles of the titular mates. Stray hairs left in the combs provide – what else? – their hairstyles. This theme is extended to the rear of the sleeve, where Betty Lou (the B-side) is a long-haired beauty. There’s no paper wrapping (like for each of the Boys), so we have a female comb posing nude.

Ingrid Mansfield-Allman’s Stop Wasting Your Time has a thick stripe taking up half of the front cover, which consists of a grid  with a black dot at each eighth intersect. The portion above is black, below is white. A precise calligraphic swash eases down the left side. Together, these elements present the veiled visage of woman as  funeral attendee, her lips formed from the dense, compact letter forms of Haettenschweiler. They spell the record’s title, as if this character is saying: “He’s gone now, so what are you waiting for?”

Front, 7in sleeve. I love The Sound Of Breaking Glass/They Called It Rock, Nick Lowe, Radar, 1978.

Front, 7in sleeve. Me And The Boys/Betty Lou, The Inmates, WEA, 1981.

Front, 7in sleeve. Stop Wasting Your Time/Sister Slow, Ingrid Mansfield-Allman, Polydor, 1981.

Haettenschweiler is also used  in Barney’s letterhead for Elvis Costello. While the O’s are big, bold and circular, the rest of Costello is pushed together in this typeface – type face? – to complete his trademark horn-rims. The capital  “E” is stretched down  for the outline of his head and the coif is made up of the “LVIS”.

Letterhead, Elvis Costello Ltd, 1980.

Another letterhead, for F-Beat, presents the face of a clown  from the most primitive of shapes. The lowercase “B” is represented as a mostly filled-in circle for one eye and the other eye is the clown’s painted cross from a lowercase “t”. The “A” is a red triangular nose,  the “E ” a square formed by identical and equally-spaced parallel rectangles (another of Barney’s recurring devices) and the longer portion below the horizontal line of the T suggests face-paint running down a harlequin’s face: the tears of a clown, maybe?

Howard Werth’s 4D Man sleeve is particularly smart: an eight-pointed star and a bold pink numeral 4  which rotates at intervals of 90deg to form the part of the star, but also, in its upright form, is  an angular profile. The rest of the star forms a spiked mohawk hairstyle, and the placement of “MAN” can be seen as a shorn scalp. Whether the D is an eye or an ear isn’t clear.

Another drawn up from geometric sources is the test-pattern man of Roger Chapman’s Mango Crazy album. It’s  quite hard to tell exactly what’s going on here; for instance, which direction is he facing? His mouth and chin seem to be in opposite directions; his eyebrows can be discerned, but which are his eyes: the red dots or the white? Does each eye have two dots, one of each color? Is he shown in the action of casting his gaze aside? Just pondering all of the possibilities here is enough to make a man, er, go crazy.

Letterhead, F-Beat Records, 1980.

Front, 7in sleeve. 4D Man/What's Hoppin', Howard Werth, Metabop, 1982.

Front, 12in sleeve. Mango Crazy, Roger Chapman & WHO, LABEL, 1983.

Come to think of it, are any of these faces at all? They’re grids, bits of metal, letters of the alphabet, combs, and so forth. It’s part of human nature to see faces where they don’t actually exist, but Barney Bubbles envisioned them like nobody else I have ever come across.

Vic Fieger – website ttp://www.vicfieger.com and  blog.

Barney Bubbles positions wire lettering, west London, 1980. Photo: A. Sales.

Here we have Barney Bubbles setting about creating of the wall-mounted electrical flex and wire construction which adorns the sleeve of Carlene Carter’s 1980 album Musical Shapes.

Quaver and jukebox selector, 1980. Photo: A. Sales.

Quaver with 7" single, 1980. Photo: A Sales.

The arrival of the photos from Antoinette Sales couldn’t be more timely as we prepare for our forthcoming exhibition Process: The working practices of Barney Bubbles.

Tony collaborated with Barney on the design, providing the lettering and layout, as well as styling Carter (for whom she also designed stage wear).

With Chalkie Davies behind the lens, the cover shoot took place in the west London house Tony shared with her then-husband (and Barney’s friend and patron/F-Beat label boss) Jake Riviera.

“Barney set it up in our dining room in Oxford Road,” says Tony in Reasons To Be Cheerful. “I designed and set the graphics on the back. Barney had taught me how to lay down Letraset and make the placement and spacing impeccable. I had fun with the “N” for Notes, “S” for Selections and “P” for Personnel. In the self-effacing Bubbles tradition, there was no artwork credit.”

12in album. Front cover with sticker, Musical Shapes, Carlene Carter, F-Beat. 1980.

12in album. Back cover, Musical Shapes, Carlene Carter, Warner Bros. 1980.

12in inner sleeve, Musical Shapes.

12in album. Front cover, Around Midnight, Julie London, Liberty, 1960.

Winding away from the three-legged Dansette, the five flexes (all ending with upturned plugs) feature the album title picked out in wire and blue and red balls. These also appear to be notation; can anyone interpret what they convey musically?

One of Tony’s photographs shows that there was a try-out with a diner jukebox selector. On the back cover,  a bread bin replaced the Dansette.

Tipping a wink to the Pate/Francis & Associates 1960 design for Julie London’s Liberty album Around Midnight, the inner showed Carter reclining on a rug bearing the design of an F-Beat single (by the label’s most prominent act, Elvis Costello And The Attractions).

The sleeve was decorated with many references to the newly-launched label: on the front, Carter stood on a floor strewn with promo copies of the single version of one of her father Johnny Cash’s most popular songs Ring Of Fire (with a label incorporating Barney’s symbol of three interlocked rings and also his encircled copyright “C” familiar from designs for others such as the album’s producer Nick Lowe and Johnny Moped).

The Musical Shapes sleeve drove home the F-Beat identity by featuring the variants of the house singles bags Barney produced for Riviera.

These 7″ paper designs, based around insignia and decorations from Riviera’s office jukebox, utilised the stark colour overlays and contrasts noted across Barney’s work by such contemporary practitioners as Art Chantry.

7in house sleeve. Ring Of Fire/That Very First Kiss, Carlene Carter, F-Beat. 1980.

7in house sleeve. Ring Of Fire/That Very First Kiss, Carlene Carter, F-Beat. 1980.

7in house sleeve. Splash (A Tear Goes Rolling Down)/Hello, Clive Langer & The Boxes, F-Beat. 1980.

7in house sleeve. Good Year For The Roses/Your Angel Steps Out Of Heaven, Elvis Costello & The Attractions, F-Beat. 1981.

7in house sleeve. Head To Toe/The World Of Broken Hearts, Elvis Costello & The Attractions, F-Beat. 1982.

In line with the treatment he received from other American record companies,  Carter’s US  label Warner Bros tamed Barney’s design for fear of illegibility; the full-bleed front cover was given a white border for the artist credit and album title. In addition, the inner was dispensed with altogether.

Meanwhile, the US press kit included a standard 8″x1o” b&w shot of Carter from the Oxford Road session, and posters were given away with both the American and British versions of the release.

8"x10" glossy press photo. 1980.

Exciting news – the Barney Bubbles exhibition opens in London this autumn.

PROCESS: The working practices of Barney Bubbles will run from September 14 to October 23 at leading London gallery Chelsea Space.

PROCESS will present many fascinating exhibits  – some displayed for the first time in public – to pinpoint Barney Bubbles’ approach to the body of design work which has cemented his reputation as one of the greats in his field.

By examining  Bubbles’ activities from leaving art school in the early 60s to his death in 1983, PROCESS also traces an important strand in the development of the practice of graphic design.

Situated as it is within the grounds of Chelsea College Of Art & Design in the shadow of Tate Britain, Chelsea Space’s hosting of PROCESS will provide students of design and the visual arts and other creative disciplines – as well as the visitors to the home of British art – with vital insights into pre-digital working methods across the range of media.

Delineating the stages of production, PROCESS will also investigate the ways in which Bubbles conjured brilliance by his unique conflation of references and influences.

PROCESS will be complemented by a series of events, including an opening party, talks, q&as and performances from musicians, designers, photographers and others who worked with Bubbles.

We’ll be unveiling details of that programme over the coming weeks, so keep your eyes peeled. Already we’ve agreed participation with quite a few people, some of whom will be speaking publicly for the first time about their association with, and appreciation for, the work of this intriguing and elusive figure.

Chelsea Space is the place where The Clash, B.A.D., Carbon Silicon and Gorillaz mainman Mick Jones launched his installation The Rock & Roll Public Library, which has evolved as it has toured other spaces.

Similarly we’re looking for PROCESS to be the first manifestation in a rolling series of  Barney Bubbles shows over the coming years.

For more info on the exhibition keep in touch by subscribing here and contacting us at info@barneybubbles.com

In June 1978, the British graphic artist David Allen was introduced to Barney Bubbles backstage after a gig at LA’s celebrated Sunset Strip club Whisky a Go Go.

12in sq sleeve. Front cover, Kill City, Iggy Pop & James Williamson, Radar, 1978.

“It was most likely some punk rock-a-thon; The GoGos, Devo, The Dickies?” says David, who has been based in New York since the mid-80s and recalls that Barney’s friend and label boss Jake Riviera was present, as was local  music champion and Bomp! owner, the late Greg Shaw.

Back cover, Kill City.

“I had been an avid reader of Friends and NME, grew up in north-west London when seeing Hawkwind was no big deal, and was at the first Glastonbury Fayre, so could critique the pyramid fold-out blindfold in a box,” says David.

24in x 36in paperboard. Unfolded outer of Revelations - A Musical Anthology For Glastonbury Fayre, Revelation, 1972.

“Like many, I was exposed to Barney’s work from an early age without being aware of who was responsible,” says David. “It was Greg Shaw who identified that the anonymity he aspired to was high art, Duchamp-esque for the mid-70s. Around that time, if a clever record cover had no credits, you assumed it was a Barney Bubbles.”

Poster 20in x 30in. Freedom Of Choice, Devo, 1980.

At The Whisky, the fellow artists compared notes. “Barney was dressed like an eye test, black-and-white striped shirt and trousers, not quite matching,” recalls David. “We were both sober enough to make sociable conversation and had some common ground.”

7sq in. Front cover, Kill City/I Got Nothin', Radar, 1978.

A connection was Kill City. This collection of Iggy Pop and James Williamson demos (with contributions from David Bowie) had been released earlier in 1978 by Bomp! in the US and Radar in England, housed in David’s first album sleeve.

Back cover, Kill City/I Got Nothin'.

As explained here, when the lead track was issued as a UK single, Barney created a Warholesque sleeve and gritty promotional campaign.

David graduated from Harrow College Of Art in 1976 having studied graphic design with a “strong illustrative leaning”. A fan of Roxy Music, David Bowie, Kilburn & The High Roads, Dr Feelgood and Kokomo, he’d hung out at Biba’s Rainbow Room, Dingwalls, The Hope & Anchor and The Roundhouse, then high-tailed it to LA via a stop-over in Manhattan.

Poster celeebrating 30th birthday of The Masque, 1997.

“After a year I had found my way into the Hollywood punk scene  – see Live At The Masque: Nightmare In Punk Alley – doing graphics for bands and clubs,” says David, whose commissions included the logo and sleeves for singles by the great “Mexican Ramones” The Zeros, whose founding member Robert Lopez is over in Europe in his incarnation as the fabulous El Vez next week.

7sq in. Back and front cover, Wild Weekend/Beat Your Heart Out, The Zeros, Bomp! Records, 1978.

“I shared a rundown mansion with punks including Margo from The GoGos, John and Exene from X and Jonh Ingham,” says David. “X did their first ever show in my living room. Todd Rundgren was there, and Darby Crash started a spaghetti fight”

GoGos photosession art directed by David Allen. 1978.

By this time David was involved in the late Claude Bessey’s Slash magazine and was soon  hired as art director of Bomp! the label and magazine. When he  met photographer Jules Bates at The Masque one night, the pair launched design company Artrouble.

Late 70s: Jules Bates (left) and David Allen.

David recalls that the late 77 arrival of The Damned’s Music For Pleasure in it’s Barney-designed sleeve grabbed his attention.

Slash number 7, January 1978.

“I’d already been using abstracted typefaces for a while at Slash,” says David.  “But Music For Pleasure raised the bar on legibility vs illegibility. Like all of his work it is a great ‘design’, but with a sophisticated visual subtext delivered with sharp wit.”

In the wake of the encounter at The Whiskey, David returned to Britain and visited Riviera, who commissioned a logo and stationery for his company.

Logo/stationery header, Riviera Global, 1979.

“I met him in his tiny office and  got the idea to design a huge factory with it’s own nuclear reactor as the company logo,” says David.”For the font I chose Profil, as used for signage at London Airport in the 50s.”

During that visit, David also caught up with such Barney admirers as Malcolm Garret, Al McDowell’s company Rockin’ Russian and George Hardie, though by this time Barney was focusing on designing his furniture range so was unavailable.

12 sq in. Back and front, Freedom Of Choice, Devo, Warner Music, 1980.

Back in LA, Artrouble developed with illustrator/make-up designer  Phyllis Cohen, producing such work as Devo’s Freedom Of Choice, a number of sleeves for The Dickies, Kim Fowley’s Snake Document Masquerade and The Motels’ Four Square.

12sq in. Front cover, Snake Document Masquerade, Kim Fowley, Antilles, 1979.

“We designed for everyone from Shawn Cassidy to The Gap Band, Earth Wind & Fire to The Surf Punks, Chaka Khan to The Weirdos,” he adds.

Having moved to New York in the mid-80s, David worked at such publications as Soho News, East Village Eye and High Times, and has more recently painted and manages Sorceress.

“I still get the odd record cover and just returned from a six-week study of the Mayan empire in central America, so hope to be painting again soon,” says David.

6sq in. Front cover, Greg Shaw tribute CD, Bomp!, 2006.

David reserves particular affection for Greg Shaw,  a pivotal figure in American independent music who died aged 55 in 2004. “Greg was a soft-spoken Valley kid without whom very little of note would have occurred in the lives of many young people back then,” says David.

For the Artrouble archive, go here.

Tomorrow (April 30) I have the great pleasure to be DJing for Nick Lowe again.

The venue couldn’t be more different from the Albert Hall; this time Nick is playing for a couple of hundred people at St Paul’s in his stamping ground, Brentford. It’s in a good cause – the money from the sold-out gig will go to the church’s community drop-in centre.

Nick, second left, with the other members of Brinsley Schwarz from The Glastonbury Fayre, Revelation, 1972.

This is the first of a spate of live appearances by Nick this year. In a couple of months he will be in the acoustic tent at the Glastonbury Festival as the only performer to have played the very first Glastonbury Fayre in 1971.

On that occasion he was a member of Brinsley Schwarz, whose debut album benefited from the lux gatefold cover by Barney Bubbles.

The printed "Silver Surfer" sealed vinyl envelope for The Glastonbury Fayre. Courtesy: Jeff Dexter Collection.

The Brinsleys’ subsequent appearance on the fund-raising triple Glastonbury Fayre set was the next staging post in Nick’s association with Barney.

"Dome Sweet Dome" cut-out geodesic dome insert, The Glastonbury Fayre.

Barney’s Glastonbury package comprised the tri-fold 24in x 36in card sleeve housed in a sealed printed vinyl envelope with customised labels, booklets and cut-out inserts for the creation of a miniature silver pyramid and  geodesic dome.

"Pyramid" cut-out album insert.

These scans of the pyramid inserts don’t do the originals justice (they’re shiny silver on black).

However, it’s been fun using the scans (and some silver paint) to create our own versions.

"Power" cut-out album insert.

Taking it’s cue from Stewart Brand’s revolutionary Whole Earth Catalogue, the “Dome Sweet Dome” is covered in messages and instructions of ever-increasing pertinence:

“We can survive on waste – energy, experience, imagination is all!”

“Scavenge and scrounge shamelessly – you are your own architect.”

“Ecology is you.”

“We might need this kind of good, cheap shelter one day.”

We also love the “Astral” visage made by glueing the ornate sci-fi insert borders together.

The Eye Of Horus which accompanies the instructions was a marker of Barney’s abiding interest in Egyptology, and one of the powerful symbols he loved to revisit, sometimes using Nick’s aquiline features.

Album insert detail.

For example, a decade later  he openly referenced The All Seeing Eye, as it is also known,  on the cover of Nick’s 1982 album Nick The Knife.

12in sleeves. Front covers, Nick The Knife, 1982. Left: US issue on Columbia. Right: UK issue, F-Beat.

The uncompromising crop on the front of the UK issue (on F-Beat) concentrated on Nick’s angular features to achieve the full effect; as in the case of many another Barney design, the US issue soft-pedaled this with an uncropped and thus more conventional portrait.

Cheekily, Barney responded to comments that the Nick The Knife cover was unforgiving by delivering a totally contrasting sleeve for 1983 follow-up The Abominable Showman.

12in sleeve. Front cover, The Abonimable Showman, Nick Lowe, F-Beat, 1983.

Here there isn’t sign of a single blemish: the boxed-in portrait of Nick is colourised and airbrushed to the max, though the shadows and his expression once again clearly render…The Eye Of Horus.

Really looking forward to tomorrow night’s show. Sure Nick will pull out all the stops at St Paul’s just as he did at another church, St Luke’s, for the BBC a couple of years back – have a look at him rocking with one of the founding fathers of British popular music Chris Barber in the clip above.

12in sleeve. Front cover, Mad About The Wrong Boy, The Attractions, F-Beat, 1980.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of one of the least remarked of Barney Bubbles designs: that for the “solo” album by Elvis Costello’s band The Attractions: Mad About The Wrong Boy. 

7in sleeve. Front cover, Outline Of A Hairdo EP, Steve Nieve, F-Beat, 1980.

The deliberately zany typography of the album sleeve – with it’s kitsch Brian Griffin photography and graphic tics – mirrored some aspects of the design for that year’s  big EC album Get Happy!!.

Back covers, The Attractions, 1980. Left: 12in sleeve, Mad About The Wrong Boy. Right: 7in sleeve, Outline Of A Hairdo EP.

In fact, for the accompanying free EP Outline Of A Hairdo – music for an imaginary film by Steve Nieve, well ahead of similar constructs by Barry Adamson and U2 & Eno – Barney appropriated a Bob “Bromide” Hall shot of Nieve from the back covers of both Get Happy!! and it’s hit lead single I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down.

Back covers, Elvis Costello And The Attractions, F-Beat, 1980. Left: 12in sleeve, Get Happy!!. Right: 7in sleeve, I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down/Girl's Talk.

Artwork, Outline Of A Hairdo. (C) Jake Riviera Collection/Reasons 2010.

In the manner of his approach to fellow F-Beat act Clive Langer & The Boxes, The Attractions were treated to a personalised label.

Left: Label. Right: 12in inner. Mad About The Wrong Boy.

On the inner Barney used a familiar trick of highlighting certain letters in the condensed font slogan “FBEAT WHERE THE ATTRACT!ONS IS” to spell out the record company’s west London location: FBeat Acton.

Double page spread advert, NME, August 30, 1980. Design: Tony Sales.

Barney repeated this on the design for the sleeve of single Single Girl. In his absence, his colleague Antoinette Sales created impressive press advertising from existing artwork. 

Back and front cover, 7" sleeve. Single Girl/Slow Patience, The Attractions, F-Beat, 1980.

The front was an illustration by Barney of the little china dogs from his parent’s mantelshelf.

Artwork, Single Girl/Slow Patience sleeve. (C) Jake Riviera Collection/Reasons 2010.

The addition of the gorgeous silhouette front cover sticker flagging up the inclusion of Nieve’s EP and a neat badge wrapped up the package, though even the musicians themselvesare likely to agree that this is one of those examples where the quality of Barney’s design exceeded that of the music it contained.

Badge and sleeve sticker, The Attractions, 1980.

Thanks to photographic ace and all-round good chap  Tom Sheehan for this splendid Chilli Willi And The Red Hot Peppers poster.

Poster. Chilli Willi And The Red Hot Peppers, 1972. (c) Tom Sheehan Collection.

This portrays the band’s founders Martin Stone and the sadly long-departed Phil Lithman in footloose minstrel mode, in line with their appearance on the inner sleeve of Barney-designed debut album Kings Of the Robot Rhythm.

Detail, 12in inner sleeve, Kings Of the Robot Rhythm. Phil Lithman and Martin Stone. Photo: Daisy Grinchin.

12in paperboard sleeve, front and back, Kings Of The Robot Rhythm, Chilli Willi And The Red Hot Peppers, Revelation Enterprises, 1972.

Label, Kings Of the Robot Rhythm.

Detail from permissions/rights label copy.

In Tom’s poster, they’re not such a skip and a jump from the space-hopping character (a self-portrait?) Barney included in his artwork for the same year’s triple album The Glastonbury Fayre.

Detail, artwork, The Glastonbury Fayre, Revelation Enterprises, 1972.

Kings Of the Robot Rhythm was the second release on Revelation Enterprises, the label launched by Barney’s former Friends colleague, music editor John Coleman, to raise funds to pay off the debts from the previous year’s festival (at which Stone’s former band Mighty Baby performed).

Poster detail, 1972.

South Londoner Tom recounts how he became a fan of  the Willis during a spell working first for the parks department and then The Star & Telegraph in Sheffield – and loved to replicate the “Very Amazing Cut Out N Colour Me In” bowtie Barney provided on Kings Of The Robot Rhythm’s charming insert.

12in brown paper insert, Kings Of the Robot Rhythm, Chilli Willi And The Red Hot Peppers, Revelation, 1972.

This gloried in the recommended hues: “Colour me ruby redneck” is the instruction for the rail on which the cowgirl rests, and “acupulco gold”, “blue bird blue” and “juke box emerald” are just a few of those suggested for the sun rays.

“I traced around it and made ‘bowties’ for me and my friends to wear to Willis gigs,” says Tom, one of Britain’s highest rated music photographers.

Insert detail, Kings Of The Robot Rhythm, 1972.

Note how the insert’s desert horizon is recalled in the landscape on the drumhead he painted for the Willis’ drummer Pete Thomas a couple of years later.

Drumhead, 1974. (C) Pete Thomas Collection.

Tom is also the proud possessor of a number of original Willis stickers; in Reasons To Be Cheerful, the band’s manager Jake Riviera points out how successful these were at spreading the word about the band at grass roots level in the early to mid-70s.

Stickers 1973-75. (c) Tom Sheehan collection.

Barney produced a number of variations, along with badges, cards and posters. 

Three stickers and a badge, 1972-74.

There was also Up Periscope, the proto-fanzine  and newsletter to which Willis fans could subscribe.

"The Atom Age Good Read": Masthead artwork, 1973.

Barney also created  posters  (in the style of Continental transport designs of the 20s and 30s.) for the hard-touring musicians (one year alone, Chilli Willi performed 370 gigs). These contained spaces for promoters to insert venues and dates.

"By night and day here these weirdos come to play." Gig poster, 1973.

In 1974 Chilli Willi released their stirling second album Bongos Over Balham via a deal with Charisma associated label Mooncrest/B&C.

A4 artwork, Chilli Willi And The Red Hot Peppers card, 1972.

In January 1975 the band was added to the bill of the Naughty Rhythms package tour with soul/funk ensemble Kokomo and the dynamic Dr Feelgood.

Naughty Rhythms roundel, 1975. (C) Tom Sheehan Collection.

Barney produced the delightful artwork for the tour, including the cheery banana lady whose tailfeather-shaking  is accompanied by the phrase “Wud Wud”.

“That was such a Barney touch,” says Naughty Rhythms booking agent Paul Conroy.

We’re grateful to Tom – who came to know Barney once he started working for the music press  in the mid-70s – for giving us an opportunity to celebrate this wonderfully eccentric and sorely overlooked British band.

Wud Wud!

A 12-year-old trade magazine clipping has revealed that Barney Bubbles even played an (admittedly indirect) role in the formalisation of Richard Branson’s business interests, with one of his invoices setting in train the perma-grinning bearded entrepreneur’s journey to worldwide domination.

An issue of US music industry weekly Billboard published in 1998 carried a special section celebrating Virgin Records’ 25th year.

From Billboard, September 5, 1998.

Among those interviewed was Ken Berry, seen by many as the architect of Virgin’s financial framework and by the time of the Billboard feature, president of EMI Music. But back in 1973, Berry was a 21-year-old drifter keen to break into the music industry.

Berry recounted asking Virgin co-founder Simon Draper on his first day about the new label’s royalty payment system. “Simon said, ‘I don’t know but I’ve got something here,’ and he pulled a piece of paper from his desk. It was this yellow invoice from a guy called Barney Bubbles – he used to do the album artwork – and Simon had written various numbers on the back. These were the various royalties we were supposed to pay people.”

12in sleeve. Front cover, Marjory Razorblade, Kevin Coyne, 1973.

This was doubtless Barney’s meticulously prepared invoice for the design provided for Kevin Coyne’s incredible double album Marjory Razorblade, one of Virgin’s earliest releases following its debut in May that year with Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells. 

Artwork, Marjory Razorblade, 1973.

Marjory Razorblade contains many of the late Coyne’s greatest songs, including his musing on his time as a psychiatric nurse House On The Hill, the single Marlene and the storming Eastbourne Ladies (championed a few years later alongside tracks by Peter Hamill, Can, Big Youth and Neil Young by Johnny Rotten on Capital Radio’s summer 1977 broadcast A Punk & His Music).

Another client of Barney’s, Wreckless Eric,  recently played a set of Coyne songs with his partner Amy Rigby and Coyne’s son Eugene  in Germany; Eric says they might do some KC songs when they’re in the UK this spring – a must-see we reckon.

And Coyne seems finally to be receiving the widespread recognition he deserves with the release of a I Want My Crown, an anthology of his work between 1973 and 1979 for Virgin.

So, the next time you’re waiting for a Virgin Train, working out at a Virgin Active or checking your Virgin Mobile bill, think of Barney’s small part in the transformation of a scruffy hippie label into a global business empire.