Roger Dean: Rock's Iconic Painter EXCLUSIVE Video
Published on 12 October 2024
What’s your favourite album cover? Do you love that golden age of the 70s, when huge bands used incredible artists to paint otherwise-impossible images for their records and tours?
If you do, then today’s interview is for you because Roger Dean is one of the best of them all! His magnificent cover art work is instantly distinctive, depicting utopian fantasy worlds with a wonderful blend of nature and architecture. You’ll have seen his work primarily with the prog rock band YES, but he’s also made cover art for Asia, Uriah Heep, Steve Hackett and many more.
Roger Dean is as recognisable an artist as HR Giger and Salvador Dali, with his blissful and otherworldly images, logos and designs used throughout the world in a huge number of ways. Delving deeper, he is also a set-designer, furniture designer and book publisher, with millions of art lovers familiar with his classic Paper Tiger imprint. When does this guy sleep?
My own introduction to this incredible art was as a kid, when my friend owned a copy of the Amiga video game Shadow of the Beast II, which not only used Roger’s art for the cover (as did the preceding game), but his style was used within the game’s graphics too. Later on, I recognised that style on album covers such as Tales from Topographic Oceans, and sought out his art books.
He’s been familiar to me for years, then, but it was only recently that it occurred to me that loads of you will have had a relationship with his art too. Whilst not a musician himself, it’s obvious that he belongs in the world of rock music as much as any guitar player, and I figured that if I was interested, then so would lots of other people. So, I dutifully reached out to his people and was excited to hear that Roger would be happy to chat to me!
My ten year old self, obsessed with gazing at the game artwork of Psygnosis games, was as excited about this one as the adult musician self! Roger gave me lots of time and filled it with excellent anecdotes and insights, from across many (not all) of his areas of authority. Since we are both art school graduates, there’s a little bit of that in there too, but the overall aim was to bring a fresh take to the man’s work in general, and to learn a little about what inspires him, and about how he goes about his business of making wonderful art.
I really hope you enjoy the full video, which you can check out below.
My thanks go to Roger for such a stimulating conversation, and to Ben Clifford at Trading Boundaries for making it all happen.
Roger’s art is on display at Trading Boundaries, so click through to see what they are up to (they put on gigs and more too), and head to the official Roger Dean website for prints, merch and updates on Roger’s activities.
