About meeting NEON PARK from LOWELL GEORGE interview by Paul Kendall in "ZIGZAG The Rock Magazine" (August, 1976, Issue #63) [London, England]:
ZZ: Where did you find Neon Park?
LOWELL GEORGE: He was hitch hiking one afternoon, and a friend of mine picked him up on one of the sidestreets of Hollywood. He cruised over to my house, and I met the man, because I admired his cover of "Weasels Ripped My Flesh" - I mean...an electric weasel...whatever next! - so we began a friendship and also a business relationship, in that I would say "Give me a cover". Many times he wasn't told anything about the album, because I believe art is art, and I would rather do that than have somebody construct a concept and get heavy, because seriousness really doesn't play too great a part in what we're doing. It happens, and you never really know...there's really no concept...except perhaps "Feats Don't Fail Me", which was a party record - have a beer or two and dance or whatever happens - that's the frame of mind we were in for that record.
[Note the slight variation on who was hitchhiking to the first meeting between LOWELL GEORGE and NEON PARK]
From FEATPRINTS #7 [Fall 1992] A 1992 Interview With
[Neon Park did the famous cover for Frank Zappa's album "Weasels Ripped My Flesh"]
NP: Weasels was '69, the first Little Feat cover was I think '71 ... It was their second cover. And actually it turned out that Lowell was on the Weasels record.
L: That's not how you made the connection with Lowell though?
NP: No - I met him after that, right after that. I met Lowell because I picked up a hitchhiker, who I ended up taking to his destination, which was Lowell's house, and that's when we met. I had a bunch of artwork with me and I showed Lowell and he said - "Oh, you can do our next cover!" And I went "sure", this being Hollywood ... But it came true. Before I did that cover I did a tour sticker, I think that was the first thing I ever did for him. Which is the piece we put on the T-shirt.
L: The Sailin' Shoe or something?
NP: It was the bug, the caterpillar looking up the girl's dress. That was the first thing I did for Little Feat. And then after that came the Sailin' Shoe ... Funny the way the world turns ...
L: And then you got to be friends besides just working with him.
NP: Yeah, in fact we were neighbors. He lived over the garage of the place I had in Hollywood. It was sort of like a ruined castle. Hollywood was like that then. So we were neighbors for awhile, and that's when we really became friends.
L: And then you went on to create all those amazing covers for them. I'm sure the inspiration for each one of them was different, did it come from the music?
NP: It came out of the music, I really wanted the outside to look like the inside sounded ... I thought that was really important. And I figured it was a break that they weren't getting ... commercially? It wasn't something that was really of primary importance - I mean, you do a job for a record company and you'd say "what's the music like". And they go - "uh, it sounds like the last one..." And you'd say, "well, what do you want," and they'd say, "we want it Thursday."
L: Lots of inspiration there...
NP: Yeah. I wanted more for them because I really loved their music.
L: You did a good job - actually it's like nothing else, I think. No other group has had the same cohesion of art & music that's so identifiable.
NP: I think it's because Lowell had the balls to do it. He'd go and "coerce" ... make it happen with the record company. And then it became, I guess a trade mark. The thing that made the covers similar was their lack of consistency ... I mean the fact that no two of them were the same ... In fact, if I may be so bold, to this very day, when I did the tour book...
L: For "Let It Roll" ...
NP: There was only one that happened not too long ago, the gatefold in it was their covers all in a row.
L: It was a nice presentation...
NP: Yeah, and I got to design the book, which was fun, because I had designed the booklet that went into the "Hoy-Hoy!" album. The "brochette" we called it - it was more than a brochure, it was a brochette. So because I had survived, I designed it - when Warners asked me to do it, I thought they were gonna get somebody smart to design it. Instead it ended up being me. But it came out okay.
Because of the success of that, Peter Asher asked me to do the tour book. And I figured since I survived the brochette, probably I could handle this too. I was the first one who sat down and did a "chronology" of the band, so I had sort of a working knowledge of what progressed year by year, that did make it easier to do the tour book. But seeing all the covers in a row, I was struck by how dissimilar they were. And I remembered something that Picasso said once, about his work was similar through its inconsistency...
L: Apt description...
NP: Yes - but it thrilled me to see all of their covers in a row.
HotLinks: NEON PARK Web Pages | Featprints (more Neon Park) | Neon Park 5/21/71 L.A. Free Press Interview | Neon Park SEP '80 L.A. Magazine | Neon Art Director | Neon Park Tributes | Neon Guitar (Lowell George) | Duck Rush (Neon Mallard)
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