The Story Behind the Album covers: TRAPEZE ‘Lost Tapes’ with MARCUS GALLEY

A new TRAPEZE album is set for release – Lost Tapes vol. 2. Like Vol. 1, which came out last year, Lost Songs vol. 2 features previously unreleased recordings from the band’s career. The band’s guitarist was Mel Galley (RIP), who was also the band’s only constant member from beginning to end, in a band that was also known for the other ‘name’ players that were there from Glenn Hughes (Deep Purple), Dave Holland (Judas Priest), and Peter Goalby (Uriah Heep). Galley was also songwriter (along with his brother Mel) and shared vocal duties. His son, Marcus Galley is a graphic designer and has created a number of album covers, most notably and recently the last year’s Lost Tapes vol. 1, and the forthcoming ‘Lost Tapes vol. 2‘. Both album covers share a theme of old tape boxes, quite cool and retro looking. I haven’t seen the rest of the packaging for vol. 2 yet, but vol. 1 comes in a brilliant package. Below is my exchange with Marcus Galley on his involvement & work on these Trapeze projects, his favorite cuts from these releases, a bit about his other work, and a bit more. I’ve included a couple of galleries featuring some of Marcus’ other designs, and links at the bottom.

Pre-Order TRAPEZE Lost Tapes vol. 2 (available on CD & vinyl) HERE or HERE

Can you tell me a bit about your own work (own your own company?) – what all does it entail aside from the few album covers I see you credited on?

I set Mammoth Creative Works up in 2010 but had been in the design industry a long time before that. MCW is mainly focused within the music industry, where I design tour and general merch, posters etc
for a lot of bands. Also book covers, album artwork, skateboard graphics, different sports brands… I’ll do anything that I ﬁnd interesting really.

Prior to the Trapeze covers, you did a couple of others. Any brief recall on 1 or 2 of those?

I’d done a lot of covers before the recent Trapeze ones. A couple of which were also connected – the Phenomena albums created by my uncle, Tom Galley. Dad, a bunch of the Whitesnake and Trapeze guys and some great guest artists also played on those. Amongst the most recent, I’ve done 5 or 6 over the last couple years for a new label that specialize in 100% eco-friendly vinyl presses, they’re putting some great music out, and have a couple HUGE releases lined up for this autumn… but I can’t
talk about that yet. I’ve done a bunch of reissue covers for albums originally out in the 80’s / 90’s. It’s always fun revisiting old artwork and of course advancements in printing and computing mean you can clean up images and really go to town.

Lost Tapes Vol. 1 had such a cool retro cover concept. What inspired that whole idea, and the details involved? and can you tell me about the process involved in achieving that cover?

Thank you! I’ve got a real thing for good packaging design, and as soon as we came up with the title for the album I had the idea in my head what I wanted to do. We always had reel to reel tapes around the house and there’s some gorgeous utilitarian design on those. I took various ideas from a few. Budget unfortunately wouldn’t allow for what we really wanted to do – The idea was to house the two 12″s in a box and have loose photographs, info sheets etc enclosed, make it look like something that had been lost in the loft for years. It’d be nice to do that one day, maybe with Vol. 2 in there too. It was good looking through our photo archive here and picking which of Carl’s images to use.

Did you have a pretty ﬁrm mental picture of how you might’ve wanted either cover to look before you got started? And did you have any input from anyone else involved in the projects?

Pretty much. I did insist it was pressed on clear orange vinyl to carry the logo theme on, same as Vol. 2 being on a clear smoke grey to replicate a tape reel. I work very closely to Tom on these, and luckily, he trusts me to come up with something half decent! Tom’s very artistic too and has a great vision (sometimes too grand!) I’m pretty bloody minded when it comes to anything Trapeze related, so I’ll always stick to my guns on the look.

Lost Tapes vol 2 is a very different cover, but also very retro, and as you mention it retains that ‘tape box’ theme. I presume you’ve seen plenty of those from old recordings, etc… did you have speciﬁc recollections, photos and tapes that you might’ve used for inspiration, ideas….?

There are a few Japanese brands that had the best packaging, they just do stuff like that better over there. I’ve got folders on hard drives full of images that I know I can use on something one day. I think Vol. 2 is based on bits from three or four different ones. Of course, I’m not going to tell you which, where’s the fun in that!

Aside from the tape boxes, was there any other old LP covers that had any influence of how either ‘Lost Tapes’ covers look?

Without giving it away…yes. There’s a nod to two Trapeze albums inside Vol. 2. I recreated a couple pieces of artwork imagining how they’d look if you were to visit today. You’ll have to buy the album to see! Of course, there’s the logo used on Volumes 1 & 2, based on the logo from the self-titled album, I’ve always liked that logo, so we just recreated something similar.

As you are attached to Trapeze very personally, can you tell a bit about how much it meant to have these recordings ﬁnally released and being such a big part of it? And do you have any favorite tracks from Lost Tapes Vol 1 ?

It’s a weird mix of emotions to be honest. I’ve heard these songs in every incarnation from being hummed on the dog walk, played on a guitar sat in front of the TV etc, so I don’t get that same ‘wow!’ as someone else hearing the tracks for the ﬁrst time will get, but that doesn’t take it away from the fact that I’m a fan, and it’s great to give people something new (to their ears at least) to listen to. I’d buy the album’s if I had to (I’ve had to buy all the Trapeze ones again over the last few years, as we never really had copies in the house, they were always given away to friends).
Favorites from Vol.1, ‘Goin’ Home’ for sure, Hot Wire being my favorite Trapeze album. It’s the album that sounds like Trapeze should, given the inﬂuences at the time.

Favorite tracks off Vol.2, I just put the masters on now to listen again. I’d say ‘Can You Feel It’, ‘Turn It On’ & ‘Midnight Flyer’, but they’ve always been favorites anyway. They sound like Trapeze should sound, a great groove. The couple gigs I played drums for my dad, we did ‘Way Back to the Bone’ and ‘Coast to Coast’ in the set. We were just about to start rehearsing for another couple gigs when he got taken ill, so that was a shame we never got to play those. There’s a CD here in my office that he sent with the 24 songs to learn that were going to be in the set.

As one who creates album covers – do have a short list of some of your favorite album covers or favorite artists (album designers)

A short list!?!?! are you kidding!?!? I’ve always bought records; I’ve spent a fortune over the years on albums just because they had a great cover, so to narrow it down is a tough call, and deﬁnitely not a short list.
Barney Bubbles could do no wrong in my eyes, a huge inspiration. Hipgnosis, Stylorouge, tDR (of course), Vaughan Oliver, Peter Saville, all absolute genius. I could go on all day…but they’re the ﬁrst names that come to mind.

Might we see either of your Trapeze album covers be used in ofﬁcial merch for fans? (t-shirts, posters)

I hope so! Prints are a thing I’d particularly enjoy to do, mainly due to the size and unlimited colors you’ve got to play with, especially of the two reimagined pieces I mentioned a few questions ago for starters, but we’ll deﬁnitely do shirts. They’ll have to be slightly different to the Vol. 2 cover, that nine color screenprint would come out super expensive! Merch based on old promo bits has always appealed to me, there was a cool raglan / baseball shirt and coach jacket I’d like to make available at some point.