CLICK HERE

  FOLLOWING THE TRAGIC EVENT of April 12th 1966, when Jan Berry crashed his blue ’66 Corvette into the rear of a parked vehicle whilst speeding down Whittier Boulevard, former recording partner Dean Torrence created the successful design company Kittyhawk Graphics. Situated in a three storey office building on Sunset Boulevard, the company was officially launched during 1967, taking its name from the famous location in North Carolina where the Wright Brothers had made their first successful airborne flight.

Dean had graduated from the School Of Fine

Arts at the University of Southern California, majoring in Advertising Design, and so the raw talent was there from the start … the hurdle was getting that first break through. According to Dean’s website, when recalling those days at Kittyhawk;

  “Most of my friends were in the music industry and I knew most of the executives at all the major record companies. It was obvious to me that the music industry was where I needed to be. My pitch to my new potential clients would be pretty simple because I knew that nearly all of them felt the very same frustrations about the lack of control over visuals and packaging, that I had felt as a recording artist. I would work for them. I wouldn’t be an employee of the record company. I would be the liaison between them and the company …”

  Dean’s first point of call was to his old surfin’ buddy (or musical buddy would perhaps be more appropriate …) Brian Wilson. Taking Dean’s sales pitch on board, Brian agreed to give the new designer his first job, and Dean went away to create a trade ad for the Beach Boys forthcoming single “Heroes & Villains”;

  “I turned in the original art work, which looked a lot like the “Sergeant Pepper” album, to the company and waited. It never appeared. They said they lost it … this was my first wake up call, illustrating to me that the record company art departments wanted nothing to do with freelance graphic designers if they could help it …”

  Following a meeting with new Columbia Records staff producer, and occasional bass player (most recently with Dean’s friends Chad Stuart and Jeremy Clyde) Jim Guercio, Dean managed to get some minor projects for up and coming jazz/rock band Blood, Sweat And Tears, and that in turn led onto a potential project designing the group logo for another of Guercio’s new acts. The idea would be that this new act would have a newly designed trademarked logo that would appear on each and every album cover. Dean immediately set about gathering ideas from logos such as the Coca Cola Company, The Ford logo, Miller Brewing .… wanting to create the same institutional feeling that one gets from viewing such ‘branded’ logos as these. And the group’s name ? The Chicago Transit Authority …

  Having settled the new 8-piece band on the floor of his office as temporary sleeping arrangements, Dean struggled with the new logo. He had managed some rough designs, using the capitol ‘C’ from the Coca Cola logo, and then placing the ‘h’ inside the curl, but the remainder of the lettering wasn’t coming together …

  “I wasn’t experienced enough to actually do the finished art. Everything I had done just didn’t look right. I apologised to Jim and suggested that a professional hand lettering expert should take over the project. By the groups second album (Jim) had shortened the group’s name to ‘Chicago’. Damn, only seven letters. If I had been given just the word ‘Chicago’ instead in the first place …”

  It was the L.A.-based band The Turtles that finally gave Dean his first album covers project, turning the group’s own concept into reality for their “Turtles Golden Hits” release, and one of the next artists to utilise the newly proven skills of Mr Torrence was Harry Nilsson who released a succession of albums incorporating the Kittyhawk design on its outer sleeve.

  “We would spend a great deal of time coming up with visual concepts which would complement Harry’s musical concepts and his quirky/eccentric personality. Once we narrowed down all of our wacky idea, I was allowed to take whatever time it took to execute the packaging design and he would shield me from all the petty corporate bullshit. At the same time, we could also try to find a way to express our total disdain towards Harry’s record company. Our most famous round of ‘tweaking’ was when we would subtly arrange the company logo. You have all probably seen the cute little black dog, Nipper, listening to an old Edison Gramophone. Well, one of our versions had the Gramophone over the top of Nipper’s head … the legal department didn’t catch the altered logo until the second pressing of the record. Another version had Nipper’s paws over his ears. They caught that one. So the next version we just added a small puddle of pee under Nipper. They missed that one.The next one we used on ‘The Point’ album and the final logo tweaking was on “Nilsson Schmilsson”. We tried to sneak a dope smoking Nipper by them, but they caught that one… but they would not tolerate it any longer and the company issued a memo that addressed the problem of ‘Logo Bastardisation”. It was to cease. They were so pleased that they had intercepted and stopped the little teeny dope smoking Nipper logo, so you can imagine how they felt when someone pointed out to them that in the picture of Harry on the front cover he is holding a hash pipe. Stop the presses ! Oh shit, the record has already gone gold …”

  The Beach Boys were some of Dean’s next clients, having recently switched over to Warner Brothers Records from Capitol. He went on to design three album covers for the group, plus some of their solo releases. For Bruce Johnston’s “Going Public” Dean, Bruce and his wife Harriet, flew over to Catalina Island for the photo shoot (and plenty of beer), whilst for Dennis Wilson’s “Pacific Ocean Blue” they ventured further a field to Hawaii …

  “Dennis didn't ask for anything specific, it was my idea to fill it with photography. Dennis was obviously photogenic, so shoot him for gods sake I thought. Karen Lamm took the photo used for the front cover, it was Karen and Dennis' favorite photo. It wasn't as rich in color as I would have liked, but it was still pretty cool. I took all the photos on the inside and it was a show of respect to give credit to the art departments art director John Berg. What he did do was stay out of the way. This was Jim Guercio's project, he also owned the record company…”

  During its 13-year lifespan Dean’s Kittyhawk venture also achieved some major critical successes along the way, garnering 3 Grammy nominations, picking up the winning award for the 1971 album “Pollution” by the band Pollution (below) ...

    DENNIS THOUGHT the best way to get in the mood for a photo shoot was to go to Hawaii for a couple of weeks. We would also have to drink a lot of tropical drinks to help create the proper atmosphere. And of course we had to go surfing. And the best news was that my old friend Jim Guercio was paying for the trip – (Jim) owned the record company that was putting out Dennis’s album. What a great time we had. We spent at least three to four days of just getting in the mood.

  Dennis really didn’t like taking photos, but he was so photogenic that it was essential to fill this album up with photos. Hey, and Maui was pretty photogenic too aswell. After a few days of shooting, Karen Lamm, Dennis’s wife, at least for that week, showed up. She too was very photogenic but very distracting. She caused a bunch of tension but Dennis always seemed to feel at home with tension around him. Anyway, I eventually overcame the tension and somehow I did get some terrific photos of the two of them.

  I (also took) a series of shots just of Dennis’ boys, and one of those photos was included inside the package.

  …although by the start of the 1980’s demand was building along the concert nostalgia circuit for the return of Dean with his former partner, the severly disabled but still functioning Jan Berry.

  When I asked Dean, during research for “Back Through The Opera Glass”, as to whether he still kept his hand in, he responded in the positive, confirming “Yes, I do still do graphic design. Keep looking at the website (www.jananddean.com). I did every page, three years in the making …!”

SCROLL HERE

"I'm just a guy, with time on my hands, travellin' 'round the world, seeing other lands ..."   1964

All rights reserved : No part of this text may be copied, stored or reproduced without written consent of the author. Pipeline Publications (UK) 2006