How I Designed Jefferson Airplane's "Long John Silver" Album Cover - "Ernie's Corner"

Award-winning creative designer, Ernie Cefalu has been sharing about the unique and distinct album covers that he has designed. In this episode, he shared the story of how he designed the album cover for Jefferson Airplane's "Long John Silver". For prints and inquiries, check out PacificEyeAndEar.com

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Ernie Cefalu is a contemporary artist and Senior Creative Director, currently working out of Los Angeles, CA. He is known for designing art for music albums.

Cefalu attended the California College of Arts and Crafts (now California College of the Arts) and graduated in 1969 with honors. Soon after, Cefalu started his career on Madison Avenue at Carolini Advertising, where his first assignment was to create the campaign and graphics for the International Paper Company's 1970 national sales meeting. His solution took the form of an elaborate, award-winning off-Broadway musical production, Dolls Alive. In the early part of 1970 Cefalu became an Art Director at Norman Levit Advertising where he created the Jesus Christ Superstar album and Angels in an agency shootout with the Decca Records account as the prize.

After several solo projects for Grunt Records, the members of Jefferson Airplane (including Paul Kantner, Grace Slick, Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady, Joey Covington and Papa John Creach) came together again in March 1972 for the first time in the studio since the Bark album was released in September 1971. Sessions at Wally Heider Studios continued for nearly three months, but tensions were high and several songs were recorded by each member recording their own part separately.[5] David Crosby of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young participated in the recording sessions, but Crosby's vocals were stripped from the record at the insistence of his label.

Joey Covington left the band during the sessions (accounts vary as to whether Covington was involuntarily dismissed); reflecting the balkanized milieu, veteran session drummer John Barbata (formerly of The Turtles and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) and Hot Tuna's Sammy Piazza deputized for the rest of the recording process. Barbata ultimately replaced Covington, playing on all but three songs.

The album was completed in May and scheduled for release in July, but not before RCA forced the band to scrub a line from the song "The Son of Jesus" electronically, which referred to a "bastard son of Jesus". Live versions of the song were performed with the offending line intact.

Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band based in San Francisco, California, that became one of the pioneering bands of psychedelic rock. Formed in 1965, the group defined the San Francisco Sound and was the first from the Bay Area to achieve international commercial success. They were headliners at the Monterey Pop Festival (1967), Woodstock (1969), Altamont Free Concert (1969), and the first Isle of Wight Festival (1968)[1] in England. Their 1967 break-out album Surrealistic Pillow was one of the most significant recordings of the Summer of Love. Two songs from that album, "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit", are among Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".

The October 1966 to February 1970 lineup of Jefferson Airplane, consisting of Marty Balin (vocals), Paul Kantner (guitar, vocals), Grace Slick (vocals), Jorma Kaukonen (lead guitar, vocals), Jack Casady (bass), and Spencer Dryden (drums), was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. Marty Balin left the band in 1971. After 1972, Jefferson Airplane effectively split into two groups. Kaukonen and Casady moved on full-time to their own band, Hot Tuna. Slick, Kantner, and the remaining members of Jefferson Airplane recruited new members and regrouped as Jefferson Starship in 1974, with Marty Balin eventually joining them. Jefferson Airplane was presented with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016