The album cover that turned Josh Homme into a revolutionary
The art of judging a book by its cover is more or less extinct at this point in music, yet that’s what made Josh Homme the culture-shifting artist he is today.
The immediacy of complete and total access to pretty much all the music in the world has completely changed the way people go about listening to music. Streaming means we don’t really need to take chances anymore, because we can listen to material we’re unfamiliar with and don’t end up enjoying as part of the same transaction that allows us to keep listening to what we love. The whole process of coming across something new, giving it a try and then deciding whether or not you want it to be a part of your life can last all of five minutes today.
Once upon a time, however, consuming music was a far greater gamble with a lot more at stake. Staring at an album cover and wondering how the imagery might sound isn’t really something people do anymore, simply because they don’t have to. There’s no paywall between cover art and the songs it carries when you have an endless supply from your Spotify or Apple Music subscription, which typically costs less per month than one physical copy of an album. That is precisely why you had to put more thought into purchasing CDs, vinyl records or cassette tapes that you had never heard before but were still intrigued by based on their facade.
To that point, Homme credits his radicalisation as an artist to one particular album that set him on the path he is still on, all because the cover caught his attention. During an interview with Entertainment Weekly, he revealed that the first record he ever bought with his own money was a live compilation album by various punk artists titled Eastern Front.
A glimpse into the early-1980s hardcore scene, the collection he was referring to was the second instalment in a three-part series. Each release was made up entirely of recordings from the Eastern Front Festival, which took place annually in the California Bay Area from 1981 to 1984. The 1983 edition that the singer and guitarist took home was mostly packed with California bands, though a handful came from out of state, and one even made the trip over from Britain. The tracklist featured the likes of Channel 3, Wasted Youth, Jody Foster’s Army (JFA), Circle One, and Chron-Gen, among a few others.
“I bought it purely for the cover,” Homme admitted. “People say don’t judge a book by its cover, but that’s what people with a shitty cover say.”
Not much information about said album is available to the public, although it’s pretty clear that the artwork in question is a twist on one of the most famous photographs of all time: six United States soldiers raising their country’s flag during a battle in Japan as part of the Pacific War of the early 1940s. The cover art of Easter Front, contrarily, features a posterised version of the shot in which the US flag has been replaced by the Rising Sun Flag, which is a common and controversial symbol of Japanese nationalism. The imagery, which represented an aversion to Western militarism, did indeed set something off in Homme, which is clear from the next three albums he purchased.
“The next three were the Cramps’ …Off the Bone, Misfits’ Legacy of Brutality, and The Stooges’ Raw Power,” he shared. “When it’s time for you to revolt and buy real music, no matter what you end up buying, you’re kind of looking to go wild.”
