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Michael Penn has been getting active on his facebook page recently, you should get over there and check it out. Recently he posted up this:
"Several people have asked me to post the original artwork for Mr. Hollywood Jr., 1947. As some of you may know, there is a long and strange story behind this painting. I will leave that for another time...but for those with an interest, here it is..
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Now this sparked a memory in me and I went and dug out an old radio interview he did and found the story behind the painting. Here in his own (transcribed) words is said tale
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"I’d written these songs that all took place in 1947 and I was working on the record and, I guess it was round summertime of ‘94, I went to the Pasadena Rose Bowl Swapmeet and out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the greatest things I’d ever seen. On this little guy's stand there was this painting. It was the oddest painting I’d ever seen and the central figure in the painting was a kid who was wearing a sash across his chest that said Mr. Hollywood Jr, 1947. So now not only did I know exactly what the album was going to be called, I also thought I had the album cover. So I bought the painting for fifty bucks and then normally when you buy a painting at a swap meet you don’t think twice about using it but this thing came with a fucking dossier attached to it. The artist’s name was completely legible and there was a little plaque at the bottom of the frame that had the name of the subject of the painting. So I dutifully went onto to google and searched around and tracked down the artist and there was a gallery that had his work for sale and stuff. I wrote an email to the gallery that got returned, wrote another e mail to the gallery and that got returned saying mailbox full. So I called up the gallery, got no answer. This went on for months and I was absolutely set on using this painting. I was so frustrated I couldn’t get a hold of the guy. I finally found out this artist had had a show in another state several years ago so I called that gallery and was informed that this artist had passed away like just a week before. I finally talked to his next of kin, which involved another hunt, another search, trying to get her name, which finally led to the L.A. coroners office and I spoke to her. She was really into the idea but the whole estate was in disarray and it wasn’t able to happen and that was kind of a drag…"
"I’d written these songs that all took place in 1947 and I was working on the record and, I guess it was round summertime of ‘94, I went to the Pasadena Rose Bowl Swapmeet and out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the greatest things I’d ever seen. On this little guy's stand there was this painting. It was the oddest painting I’d ever seen and the central figure in the painting was a kid who was wearing a sash across his chest that said Mr. Hollywood Jr, 1947. So now not only did I know exactly what the album was going to be called, I also thought I had the album cover. So I bought the painting for fifty bucks and then normally when you buy a painting at a swap meet you don’t think twice about using it but this thing came with a fucking dossier attached to it. The artist’s name was completely legible and there was a little plaque at the bottom of the frame that had the name of the subject of the painting. So I dutifully went onto to google and searched around and tracked down the artist and there was a gallery that had his work for sale and stuff. I wrote an email to the gallery that got returned, wrote another e mail to the gallery and that got returned saying mailbox full. So I called up the gallery, got no answer. This went on for months and I was absolutely set on using this painting. I was so frustrated I couldn’t get a hold of the guy. I finally found out this artist had had a show in another state several years ago so I called that gallery and was informed that this artist had passed away like just a week before. I finally talked to his next of kin, which involved another hunt, another search, trying to get her name, which finally led to the L.A. coroners office and I spoke to her. She was really into the idea but the whole estate was in disarray and it wasn’t able to happen and that was kind of a drag…"
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Here's Michael with the mighty Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the Paul Thomas Anderson directed video for Try
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Here's Michael with the mighty Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the Paul Thomas Anderson directed video for Try
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And heres the eventual cover to the album which was later reissued on Sony with a bonus disc of his kcrw session of the time.
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1 comment:
Whose face was put on the cover over the painting? Was that Michael as a boy?
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