In celebration of the Beatles' remixed "Revolver" album being released, cover designer Klaus Voormann joined host Kenneth Womack for a special bonus episode of "Everything Fab Four," a podcast co-produced by me and Womack (a music scholar who also writes about pop music for Salon) and distributed by Salon.
Voormann, a German artist, musician and record producer, is a true Beatles insider who first met the band in 1960 when they were performing in Hamburg on the Reeperbahn. As he tells Womack, he came across them when he heard music "coming from a basement window" of the Kaiserkeller nightclub in the entertainment district. He went inside the club, and the next group to perform was the Beatles. "Their sound was fresh, it was new and raw," says Voormann. "I thought it was fantastic."
Along with photographers Astrid Kirchherr and Jurgen Vollmer, he became friends with the band members, with Voormann even sharing a flat with George Harrison and Ringo Starr at one point. He recalls them being an "incredible bunch of people," with the Liverpudlians having "such a Scouser attitude and cheekiness about them. They'd talk about anything and not hold back."
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In 1966, a few years after the Beatles had become a household name, they needed a cover for their forthcoming album. As Voormann says, he got tapped to work on the design because "John [Lennon] called me." From there, he had to "wrack his brain for what to do" because the music on this new album was so different from the band's "Love Me Do" days. He ultimately decided on a collage, asking the four of them to send him any photos they had of themselves, of any quality, and let him do the rest. "I wanted to capture their faces, to tell mini-stories," he explains. The entire tale of the cover is available in his beautiful graphic novel, "Birth of an Icon."
In the decades since the release of "Revolver," Voormann says he's had "millions of people" ask him to sign the cover art (which won a Grammy award) for them. And as a bassist and producer himself, he's had quite a storied career apart from being its designer as well. But as he says, the biggest blessing was getting to know the Beatles. "In those early days, I couldn't wait for them to get famous. Each one of them was so fantastic, and this was just a glimpse of what was to come … to witness that was just amazing."
Listen to the entire conversation with Klaus Voormann on "Everything Fab Four" and subscribe via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google, or wherever you're listening.
"Everything Fab Four" is distributed by Salon. Host Kenneth Womack is the author of a two-volume biography on Beatles producer George Martin and the bestselling books "Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles" and "John Lennon, 1980: The Last Days in the Life." His latest project is the authorized biography and archives of Beatles road manager Mal Evans, due out in 2023.
