Art and music have always been tied together, and few have merged the two like Ioannis. He has created iconic album covers for bands such as Uriah Heep, Fates Warning, The Allman Brothers, and many more. He is returning to the site to discuss some special projects he’s involved in and how you can own some of his amazing work!
Please press the PLAY icon below for the MisplacedStraws Ioannis interview –
On his deal with Deko Entertainment – Me and Deko have worked together on a number of album covers and they approached me about doing something together and I thought it was a great opportunity. Primarily, my store, what I sell is very limited edition prints and they’re usually a bit expensive. I have gotten requests from so many fans who said, “Gee, I love your work, but I just cannot afford the prints”. There’s nothing I could do about that. So Deko offered me a deal about doing merchandising, which I thought was great to work with them. I’m mostly known for my album covers, but I have a fan base who was into science fiction, fantasy art, because it falls into that category, comic book art. I have fan people who are into gaming, and they like that kind of artwork and everything. So, we’re going to be releasing about, I think, 12 pieces as posters. Which you could buy unframed or framed, I think. They could bundle them with there’ll be t shirts and we’re also doing puzzles, which is a big thing. Nowadays a lot of rock bands actually have licensed their album covers to be used as puzzles. I guess that’s for old folks. We get older, like rock and roll now but we like puzzles, so it’s a lot of fun. So, yeah, so be working on that for a while and we launch this Friday, as a matter of fact you could go to Deko Entertainment to their website where you could find that I have my own website section. An easier way is you can also go to DangerousAge.com, which is my website, go to Shop, and the first I think button available is for the high-end prints. The second button is for the Hyper Gallery, and we’ll talk about that in a second, in London, and what they’re doing with me in the UK. Then the third button says Merchandising. So if you click Merchandising, it’ll take you to all this artwork, and you’ll see it advertised in all kinds of places. We’re doing a deal with Goldmine. There’ll be all kinds of other outlets that are going to be provided.
On what artwork will be available – I’ve done, like you said, a number of album covers, but not necessarily all of them will be illustrations or paintings. I own my own design firm. So, we approached each project as to whatever the needs of the band was. It could have been an artwork, it could be a photograph, it could be a digital piece of art, it could be a photo of the band, it could be all kinds of stuff. These are primarily, obviously my artwork, my paintings, so it could go beyond just the people who like rock and roll. There is artwork from Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bon Jovi, Fates Warning, Styx, Uriah Heep, Bob Weir. Just trying to go off the top of my head, a bunch of other things. But it’s a good collection. It’s about good, about good 12 pieces. Oh, Alan Parsons. I forget about that. That’s a good one. A lot of people like the Alan Parsons Project. It’s a pretty exciting time. It’s just a lot of fun. Hey, I hate the unintentional plug, but we’re running time for the holidays, folks. It’s affordable.
On his work with Hyper Gallery – Well, another thing, which is really more dear to my heart was Mick Rock, the legendary, incredible photographer many years was a friend of mine for at least 35, 38 years. We worked on a ton of stuff together. A few summers ago, we got together and we were just talking, just in general and Mick said, “We ought to do something together. I mean I don’t want to do some commercial. I want to do something artsy, something really for art”. So I said, “Mick, I’ve got an idea”. I said, “I’ve sort of done this before. Why don’t you select one photograph you haven’t published that you really like. Let me have the photo and I will print it onto a canvas and then I’ll go and retouch the canvas and I’ll create an original piece of art. Both me and you could sign it”. Obviously, when you start a series of paintings like that, we figure about four to five paintings, and then we can produce prints from that also, and you can do it. So, Mick was very excited on the idea, and the first one we settled on, which is one of the bands he’s most known for, was Queen. So, he produced to me a Freddie Mercury, photograph he took.
There’s two ways Freddie is known. There’s what he looked like when Mick Rock photographed him, which was, the Queen 2 album cover. In the mid 70s when they were primarily progressive metal rock band. Then obviously the way he looked in Live Aid, the whole change in style. Obviously my favorite is tMick’s period It was from 1972 and it just amazing shot. So I was blown away. I did it. We did the painting. One of my collectors immediately bought the original. I didn’t have enough time to even have it in display. I don’t want to tell you the amount, but it was ridiculous. I just couldn’t say no, and obviously it makes for the money that we got ready to do the prints. Then the next two we’re going to do was Jerry Garcia and Keith Richards. Which I sort of have sort of started then. Unfortunately, it was that summer of 2021, I believe 2021, 2022. I can’t remember exactly, but, but then Mick did an exhibition. I was there that September. It was right as we were coming out of COVID, and he got sick. Unfortunately, he never recovered, and we lost him a few months later. So, I didn’t do the prints out of respect for Mick. I didn’t want to look like I was (taking advantage). But a few months ago, his estate reached out to me and said, “Let’s do this”. So, I talked to the Hyper Gallery who represents me. They’re very excited about it. We did a print. We issued it. It’s very limited. It’s only 60 prints. They’re available at hypergallery.com. You can click Ioannis or you can click Queen and they’ll come up.
If you go to up to Ioannis search immediately, all the prints that I’ve done with them will come up. So the artwork that I did for the 50th anniversary with Styx is there. The artwork that I did with Alan Parsons is there. My artwork that I did with Deep Purple is there. It’s special, it’s very limited. It’s very high end. That’s really high end. It’s beautiful reproduction. It’s hand signed and numbered by me. It’s got an it’s embossed by the Hyper Gallery symbol. Also it is stamped by the Mick Rock estate, which makes it an official Mick Rock print. So, actually, they’re going to be available. They’re available now. You can actually go to them. We’re going to go full force on Mick’s birthday, which is coming up in two weeks. We’re going to go full force on that. I didn’t know this was going to happen, but I did an interview. Me and Mick did an interview talking about our work and the print. I just did it for posterity and never knowing what happened. So, the interview is available. You could see it too, which is really kind of cool. He talks about Queen 2 and how the whole thing happened and what it was like working with Queen and Freddie Mercury. It’s really, really very, very cool.
On Led Zeppelin and upcoming shows – Maybe you’re aware, but if you’re not aware what’s happening. They’ve been working on this for, I don’t know, six, seven years. So and it was ready about two years ago and it’s called Becoming Led Zeppelin and it chronicles them from 1969 to, I believe, 1973. Just like they did with the Beatles films, make everything look spectacular, quadrophonic sound. It involves performances never before seen rare behind the scenes movies, personal home movies, them hanging out interviews, and none of this has ever reached. What Zeppelin did is like they did in 1977, when it became available, they refused to allow it to go to streaming. They would only do a deal If a company only put it out in film theaters. So that’s why there was a delay. Sony Pictures Classics took it over. It’s only going to play an IMAX theater with a qudrophonic sound system. It’s a pretty smart move by them, because what they’re feeling is we want you to see it and want you to experience what it was like, and you cannot experience what it was like unless you have the sound of what we were like, to be able to see it. So, it’s coming out late February. You’re probably going to start seeing trailers flooding right around Thanksgiving.
I think it’s coming out late February and so on. So, on the heels of that. Sterling Publishing who had released the “Get the Let Out” book back in 2008 with me, approached us about reissuing the book, but expanding it. So I’m doing a whole number of new paintings. There’s like a whole number of new chapters have been added. That picks up the story where we left it off because so much happened. We left it off in the early nineties and then obviously they had the reunion concert. There was the famous court case about “Stairway to Heaven”. There’s all these other things that happened. New artwork new stuff, it’s spanking and it’s coming out early September of 2025, on the heels of, of the film. So, I’m pretty thrilled about that. I, I think it’s going to be amazing. I’m going to go on the road and do talk shows and exhibits and exhibit the artwork and, and so on.
Actually, I’m going to be doing the same thing with Deko. Sorry to talk so much, but I just want to give you some more info. I just remember Deko is going to help sponsor exhibits for me where you can come in, you can see me the artwork you could see the prints, and obviously they’ll have all their stuff available you could buy. So far I’ve scheduled two shows. Both in December, early, middle December. One is up at Cape Cod. I believe it’s (Dec. 11). It’s with the band Wishbone Ash was performing. Then three days later at the Milford Performance Center. All the stuff will be on my website, obviously, and on my Facebook page, and people will follow me. We announced it. It’ll be really kind of cool, because there’ll be a really nice, there’ll be a VIP party, there’ll be the stuff, there’ll be a jam band that’s going to perform. Come on down, it’ll be on a Saturday from three to six and bring the kiddies.
On if any of his covers really stand out to him – It’s like trying to pick who your favorite kid is if you have family, it’s kinda hard. But, no,there are a few that make sense. I think they happen at a specific time and bring specific memories. So I think that I’m more attached to them because of that than anything. They were also key points where my career sort of took off or improved because I did it. You’re never really aware of it when you’re doing it. You just do what you gotta do because it’s a gig and you’re trying to do the job and get paid. It’s later as the years come in that you kind of sit back and look at it. I had no idea Fates Warning, Awaken the Guardian would become such a, Jesus, every time I go to any best of, Progressive heavy metal album covers. It’s like a top five, if not top, which is just mind blowing. I remember back what had to go through to do that and they were not pleasant memories which the whole story for another day. Done. It worked.
The Uriah Heap Wake the Sleeper has meaning to me because it was the first time I got to work with them and (Mick) Box approached me. It was a great story behind how that happened. The Allman Brothers is another good example. The very first album cover I ever did was still dear to my heart, which is the album cover for Art in America. A band that’s long since been forgotten. It was like a progressive AOR band. They came on in 83, but that album cover got me a lot of notoriety, and immediately I started getting commissions. I guess the only thing I regret is I’ve sold a number of these paintings, it was a price I couldn’t say no to. But now, looking back at it, I just, I want some of those back. I feel like I sold one of my kids. It feels that bad. I’m seriously contemplating working with a financial guy about making offers to some of these guys and see if they’ll be willing to sell it back if I give him something different, as a placeholder and maybe some extra money, I don’t know, we will see, but yeah that, that’s the whole thing. I’m always excited about the next thing I’m going to do and the next thing I try out and see what happens.
On upcoming work and covers that wound up being used for different bands – One of them is a major, major act that you’ll know. I’m not allowed to say because they don’t have a release date and they want to announce to their fan base that, “Guess what? We’re doing an album”, because they know they’re going to get a serious, massive reaction to them. But I gotta tell you, it’s a long road from being approached to being commissioned, to executing, to getting approvals, to finally making it out to shoot. There’ve been situations where we’re down to the 11th hour and everything is go, go, go. All of a sudden the record company changes its mind, or the manager changes his mind. Well, something goes wrong or they decide they want to go in a different direction or something, and it’s not happening. You get paid, but it’s no solace when you create a piece of art specifically for that and it never sees the light of day.
It’s really funny, a lot of them my well known covers a bunch of them actually were done from other bands and we didn’t make it and other bands wind up buying them. One of them, Styx’s Brave New World one, the artwork was originally done in 1985 for Emerson, Lake and Powell and submitted, and we went all the way down the line until the record company decided that we’re going to keep it in house to save money of all things and ventured with an outside firm, even though the band loved the artwork. So, when Styx came to me for Brave New World, I said, “Well, I got this painting I think it may fit”. They went to go look and they’re like, “Oh, that’s great. It’s perfect. We want that”. And that’s what happened.
And actually with two submissions, the one for Styx and one for Saga. And same thing happened. I showed it to Saga and they’re like, “No, we want that painting”. So sometimes that happens a lot. I do artwork with nobody specific in mind, and then bands see it and they go, “Oh, God, I want that”.
(The Emerson, Lake, and Powell cover) was an imitation of a cigarette ad 1930s, I believe, French magazine. But it was the eighties. Yes, if you remember, stop using Roger Dean, 90125 or everybody’s looking for very strong graphic symbols, bright colors, you know, the whole Duran Duran look and that kind of stuff. They really gravitated away from colorful, interesting album covers. But of course, everything’s a pendulum and everything just started to swing back by the late eighties, early nineties, and of course, the rise of classic rock, in the nineties brought all that back, and now we’re buying vinyl like there’s no tomorrow. Who would have thought?
On the lack of recognition of cover artists in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame – I’m very surprised with that. Especially now, what’s going on with vinyl, artwork, it’s come back in such a major way. The Grammys did it, and they would award a Grammy for the best album package. Then they sort of, they still do it, but they phased it out where you don’t see it. anymore. Somebody said, “You were nominated. Oh, by the way, you won a Grammy. Oh, okay.” There’s no ceremony or anything. I think they should (be recognized), because especially in the seventies before there was MTV before there was all that stuff, the way you sold an album was based on artwork. That was just a fact the way it was done the 70s and 80s and it’s just so funny now What’s happened, it’s not just the old fogies are driving the vinyl sales. it’s youth and the reason why is they feel completely disenchanted and unattached to downloading something. It doesn’t feel real to them. So what they do is like, if they like a band or an album, they’ll download it immediately. You have access to it. But when they become a fan, they want to have something real, something physical and a CD ain’t doing it anymore. That’s why vinyl, which actually I think last year, I’m pretty sure about this eclipsed CDs two to one in sales and, you know, of course the labels have caught on to this record companies and that’s why you were seeing all these tons of repackages and remasters with vinyl, because, you know, they come out with a lot of money.
You cannot copy a vinyl or download or do file sharing or anything like that. People were buying that, they want to package. So there’s a massive renaissance of that going on. It’s interesting. The bands take notice because they realized the more attractive the artwork is that they had, the more merchandising they could sell, which is very important to them. That’s the bottom line. So, if you have a great piece of artwork, Iron Maiden, one of the most prime examples, they know they’ll be able to move just a lot of merch. Iron Maiden, I think, makes more money in merch a night than they do in ticket sales. Even though they play massive concerts. It’s just a fact. I mean, Kiss took it to the ultimatum, of course.
So hopefully that’s something that’s not going to be overlooked. Because there was just so many legendary artists who really created the band’s identity. Dean with Yes, Storm Thorgerson, Hipgnosis with Pink Floyd. God, I mean that that that triangle…There should just be like a section or a thing or in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, that features famous, iconic album covers, it just makes sense.
Sony just made that huge deal with Pink Floyd. Part of the deal is that complete ownership they wanted of the images. Pink Floyd had a buyout from the guys who own the estate of Storm, he’s passed away also to get them and listen, they’re not buying this stuff to press more CDs and vinyl. They got that right. It’s what they’re going to do with the merchandising stuff. You’re going to have Pink Floyd merch coming out of your ears. You never mind about music. It’s going to be everywhere through streaming and everything, streaming, meaning not being able to go on stream Pink Floyd, it’s the amount of money that they make leasing it to commercials, documentaries, movies soundtrack. That’s what’s driving these.
I’m just going off on a tangent here. That’s what’s driving the huge sales in the catalogs. When first streaming came about, they thought it was the end of the world, because they couldn’t make money selling vinyls and stuff. But then all of a sudden, they realized that streaming allowed territories everywhere to be able to access that music and earn money from it. You’re able to distribute vinyl, say in Asia, Europe, America, start going to the Far East or Eastern Europe, or Asia, it was all bootlegs, it couldn’t be controlled. Now they’re able to do that by doing that. They increase the popular area of the band. That makes the people familiar with the music and like it, which why people are still listening to the Beatles or Black Sabbath today and stuff like that, which was unheard of back in the 80s and 90s, people didn’t want to hear old music. They wanted to see what was next. Of course, they also realized that when they play songs in a commercial, or they place it in a movie or a documentary or a television series, I mean, Kate Bush was a prime example of that. It just took off. She made like a million dollars that week alone. People just all of a sudden, “Who’s this Kate Bush?” Never heard of her and start downloading her music. All these kids they, they just make a fortune on this stuff which is why they’re paying this ridiculous sums of money because they know it’s iconic music. It’s never going to go away and if anything it will just get bigger and bigger and bigger.
It’s a certain that amount of time between late 60s and mid 80s that is just, these bands, it can never happen again, never be reformed. It’s such a phenomenal thing that’s going on because the paradigm, to leave you with this stuff, the paradigm used to be that the older of the band got, the smaller was its value. Because we lived in a time when we grew up in the 70s and 80s where, by the time you were into Cheap Trick, move over, here comes The Police. Move over, here comes U2, you know, and so on. It was like every two years, everything just sort of circulated. Then all of a sudden, something from 1979 to 1983, looking back at release from 79, they already looked old and outdated and so on, that all stopped in the late nineties. If you had told me back when I was 19 or 20, by the year 2024, the biggest bands still would be Hendrix, Beatles, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin I’d definitely be like, “What are you crazy? Where’s all the new bands?” It’s an interesting time. And of course, coincidentally for me, this is what’s happening with our album cover art, it’s becoming extremely more and more valuable. A Roger Dean piece of art in the early eighties, mid late eighties, even up to early nineties, you could probably acquire anywhere between $300,000 to $500,000. You cannot touch a Roger Dean now under one or two million dollars. It’s just insane. It’s insane.
