What Music Means When

February 28, 2018 8:54 AM

William Eggleston, photographer, on the music that made him a legend The 78-year-old, whose work has graced album covers for Spoon, Big Star, and Joanna Newsom, talks about the music that has meant the most to him, five years at a time.

Grayson Currin went on an extended roadtrip suddenly and chucked into his vehicle some old CD binders. He muses on the music and the places he listens to it and the memories evoked. Road-Tripping with Old CDs

posted by MovableBookLady (6 comments total)

While familiar with most of the albums mentioned, I had no idea they all shared a photographer in common! Thanks for posting.
posted by namewithoutwords at 10:37 AM on February 28, 2018

Saying that the album covers made him a legend is a tad disingenuous on the authors part and this is, I don’t know, kind of a weird way to approach his work. William Eggleston, for those who may be unfamiliar, is one of the acknowledged grand masters of American photography. His work hangs in most major museums, there are innumerable books, articles, exhibitions; he is taught in college classes. And, in a departure from photography, I see from a quick Googling, he even recently released an album of his own music. In TFA he says he didn’t know his work was being used for most of those covers; I hope he got paid for it. So saying “that’s what made him a legend” is kind of like saying that Mona Lisa mousepad made Da Vinci famous.
posted by mygothlaundry at 11:18 AM on February 28, 2018 [8 favorites]

Yeah, I'm very familiar with Eggleston and had never knew anything about the album covers.
posted by octothorpe at 12:00 PM on February 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

Man, Eggleston's photographs in the behind-the-scenes book about True Stories were basically a blue print for my entire aesthetic. I still get chills looking at them (and also "City of Dreams" stuck in my head.)
posted by Hey Dean Yeager! at 12:02 PM on February 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

Eggleston also played piano on Big Star's third album. I get the feeling he was sort of an eccentric-uncle figure to Alex Chilton.

I'm a huge Eggleston fan now, and I think my first exposure to his photography was in the early '90s, seeing "The Red Ceiling" on the cover of Radio City. And although Big Star never got too famous, his work with them did predate his 1976 MoMA show, and may have lent him a little underground cred (as much as the art/music worlds crosspollinated in the mid-'70s, I'm not sure). But I agree that this article's theory that his album-cover work made Eggleston famous is a stretch.

The Eggleston Trust is a good website to start seeing more of his work if you're not too familiar with it, and there's a show at the Met in NYC right now.
posted by lisa g at 12:54 PM on February 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

Tav Falco (Of Panther Burns semi-fame and an Alex Chilton collaborator) worked as William Eggleston's assistant for several years and learned photography from him.
posted by zombiedance at 1:29 PM on February 28, 2018 [1 favorite]