Tim McPhate | KissFAQ
KissFAQ has launched Back In The Solo Album Groove: The KISS Albums. 35 Years Later…, an ambitious multi-week retrospective dedicated to arguably the biggest milestone in KISStory: the 1978 KISS solo albums. Today, the site has published an interview with art director Dennis Woloch, who secured the services of Eraldo Carugati to create the artwork for the 1978 KISS solo albums.
The following are excerpts from Woloch’s interview with KissFAQ’s Tim McPhate:
On the decision to do portraits for the KISS solo albums:
KF: It was certainly an unprecedented campaign. As you alluded to, no one had ever done something like this before. Do you remember thinking that the ante for the artwork needed to be upped accordingly?
DW: There’s no question about it. I thought that this was the most important KISS-related project to date. My immediate goal that I set for myself was to try to make them as classic and timeless as possible. I didn’t want these things to look dated. I actually never want anything I do to wind up looking dated. I try to avoid anything trendy because if you do something trendy, it looks great now and it looks terrible tomorrow. It’s just always like that. You go back and look at something that was done years ago and it was obviously designed for the times, but it doesn’t hold up. But I think most of the KISS stuff does hold up still
KF: I agree, Dennis.
DW: Yeah, you know, I really had that in the back of my mind. “Let’s not be too trendy with type styles that come and go [and] colors that come and go, [and] silly ideas that come and go.” So for these solo albums, I said, “OK. Timeless and classic.” And I sort of right away knew that they would have to be portraits of each guy. I just couldn’t imagine any other image on there even though I tried. Because portraits was one of the first ideas that came into my head, I said, “Well, it’s got to be their face.” I mean now it seems so obvious, in retrospect, to say, “Well, yeah. What else would you have done?” Well you could have done a lot of things. I mean, they could have all looked different — one from the other. You could have tried to maybe capture each guy’s individual personality on it. Or talk to each guy and say, “What do you like? What are your favorite colors?” But that would have been wrong because it really is KISS. KISS is an entity, as a whole. So I kept it that way. Then I said, “OK, portraits. That’s a given. But let me keep thinking.” I kept thinking and I said, “Maybe it should be their whole body standing there? Their whole figure. Hmmm … no.” (laughs) Because then you have costumes and that comes and goes and that becomes dated where you could point at it and say, “Oh, 1978.” So I didn’t do that. And so I went back to portraits. I think this was a key decision — when I decided not to do a photograph.
KF: I’ve always wondered if photos of the band members were ever a consideration.
DW: Yeah, I don’t know why, because of the “classic” feeling that I was trying to put across, I thought it would be better served by illustration. You know, a photo is just not the same as art.