American album certifications – Debbie Harry – KooKoo". Recording Industry Association of America. October 19, 1981 . Retrieved December 24, 2020. H.R.Giger’s part in the proceedings followed in the wake of an Alien screening. Giger had been the set designer on the film, creating a series of erotic and symbolic images that were at once both terrifying and strangely beautiful. “We saw the movie and knew that we wanted him to do the cover,” claimed Debbie. “I see the cover as projecting energy and vitality. The title KooKoo stems from the ‘cu’ syllable in acupuncture.” Chrome" served as the B-side to "The Jam was Moving", only being issued in Germany as a single and in the US as a promotional 12-inch single only.

Kent, David (1993). Australian Chart Book 1970–1992 (illustrateded.). St Ives, N.S.W.: Australian Chart Book. p.134. ISBN 0-646-11917-6. style. . . . Giger should be in the [Museum of] Modern [Art]. It's really crazy, and a perfect example of what happens to British album certifications – Debbie Harry – Koo Koo". British Phonographic Industry. January 12, 1987 . Retrieved December 24, 2020. A beautiful coffee table art book chronicling the extraordinary collaboration between Debbie Harry and H.R. Giger for Harry’s 1981 solo album KooKoo. Yes," she says. "For some things he painted on photographs, but for the video he used different stencils and

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The album, was produced by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards of Chic. It was largely ignored by all but devoted fans and the media elite. Chrysalis records advertising campaign, with posters of Harry’s skewered face, were deemed too disturbing, and were subsequently banned from being displayed on London’s Underground network.

Yeah, we just worked with J. H. Willams III who does Batwoman. He just did the last cover. I'd love to do more stuff with him.However, Giger was a fan of jazz rather than pop music, so he didn’t know much about Blondie, Harry, or their sonic output. As such, perhaps it was a strange and conflicting choice to select Giger for the promotional material design. Yet, the outcome was absolutely glorious; the cover art sees Harry’s face pierced by several spikes whilst retaining her striking beauty. Undoubtedly, the 1981 image would go on to play its hand in influencing Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, its race of antagonistic Cenobites, and particularly their leader, Pinhead. KooKoo was recorded while Harry and boyfriend Chris Stein were taking a break from the band Blondie. The album was produced by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards of the R&B band Chic, who had just had major success working with Diana Ross on her 1980 album Diana. Harry and Stein first met the pair at the Power Station recording studio in New York while Blondie were recording their 1979 album Eat to the Beat, and they remained good friends in the intervening years. KooKoo was one of three albums to be (co)written and produced by Rodgers and Edwards in 1981, the other two being Chic's fifth album Take It Off and Johnny Mathis' I Love My Lady, which remained unreleased until 2017. Giger is an industrial designer, which is very apparent to you the moment you step into his home. Even something as alien-looking as his chairs is structurally sound. The Alien creature—with its McLuhanesque quality of being the machine as an extension of the organic—makes sense biologically. The face hugger, with its air sacs, isn’t just decorative. Giger’s work has a subconscious effect: it engenders the fear of being turned into metal. It’s awesome—the work of an ultimate perfectionist, a true obsessive. Surrealist painter Hans Ruedi Giger, whose designs inspired the creature in Alien and whose otherworldly and often grotesque art graced album covers for Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Debbie Harry and Danzig, died Monday, following hospitalization for falling down the stairs in his Zurich home. He was 74.

There I was introduced to a very beautiful woman, Debbie Harry, the singer of the group Blondie, and her boyfriend, Chris Stein. They were apparently excited about my work and asked me whether I would be prepared to design the cover of the new Debbie Harry album. I found both of them immediately likeable; so I readily agreed and was greatly pleased to be allowed to create something for such an attractive woman, although I had never heard anything from the group. This was due to the fact that I was more interested in jazz.Giger said that the idea of the metal spikes derived from a medical procedure he had recently undergone: “Since I had just had an acupuncture treatment from my friend and doctor, Paul Tobler, the idea of the four needles came to me, in which I saw symbols of the four elements, to be combined with her face. I submitted the suggestions by phone to Debbie and Chris. They liked the idea and, in addition, they commissioned me to make two videoclips (music videos) of the best songs.” It’s in that role that he has worked on this book, documenting the project to create an album cover and two videos in the studio of the famous Swiss artist. Born in 1940 in Chur, Switzerland, Giger studied architecture and industrial design in Zurich, before beginning a successful career in art and interior design from the mid-1960s onwards. Beginning with ink and oil paintings, he graduated to using an airbrush, which helped articulate his vivid, often disturbing style, characterised by dark sexuality and cyberpunk energy.

It was a heady moment for both sides of the equation. Alien had launched Giger to a whole new level of fame, while Blondie were still riding the crest of the new wave they had done so much to define; their fourth album Eat to the Beat had come out a few months before. But Harry and Stein were getting tired of being in Blondie.

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movie came out, the Bally Pinball Company made an Alien pinball machine without even asking him. When he tried to When the visual artist H.R. Giger, best known for his biomechanical creature and set design for seminal 1979 sci-fi-horror film Alien, encountered Debbie Harry, the punk icon and lead singer of globally successful New Wave band Blondie, the results were sublime. H.R. Giger’s Tarot Cards: The Swiss Artist, Famous for His Design Work on Alien, Takes a Journey into the Occult Giger made his name with a style he called “biomechanical”, and his creepy, sci-fi designs can be pretty disturbing. But not as disturbing as spending time in his studio, going by these photos. Skeletons, skulls and sculptures are all part of the scenery, along with a “temple” accessed by a big human-shaped doorway. Not to mention a full-size Alien mask. “Giger happily told us that he would run into it late at night and it would ‘scare the shit’ out of him,” reports Stein.