Stanley Donwood: 20 Year Issue
Interview by Campbell Milligan.
An inspiration seems like a reduced version of what Stanley Donwood is to us.
he god of music album covers could be better. We don’t want to come off as obsessed but, well, we are. An abstract thinker, who doesn’t like to plan or speak in public, cares deeply about his record collection and the planet, Stanley is the embodiment of an incredible artist and person. While he is known to most for his cover artwork for Radiohead and The Smile, to us he is a dear friend and collaborator. Someone who graciously answers our calls and tells us it’s going to be okay when we fuck something up for the millionth time.
Where are you, who are you and why?
Well hello, I'm sometimes known as Stanley Donwood and I am sometimes to be found in the small English city of Brighton, which is where I am now. The sun is out and winter's coming.
What were you doing in 2003?
I think I was in another studio in the English county of Oxfordshire in a studio that had rats, mice, and a lot of spiders. It was very rudimentary. It was a really nice studio and I was painting.
When did you first become interested in art and graphic design?
I remember doing a lot of drawing at school because it was a very good way to make friends with the really hard kids. If you made friends with them, it reduced the chance of getting to fight after school. I realized it was quite an unusual skill to be able to just draw. It became quite a useful skill to impress people.
Were you always talented as far as drawing goes, or did you take a bit of time to hone in on your craft, so to speak?
No, I think when I was young, I thought I was quite good and then as I got older, I realised I wasn't very good and I would have to try harder, which is still the case really.
Do you feel that still to this day?
Yeah, it's quite difficult to think what you've done is good. I think that's why I like working with other people because I get hooked on what they can do, and the combination is usually better than just one person.
So there's somebody to put a full stop on this kind of thing?
Yeah, somebody else can take the blame maybe.
What have been the biggest changes within your industry in the last twenty years?
I had high hopes for the internet about twenty five years ago, I thought the internet was going to be a force for good. I thought that would transform the art I did but in fact what's happened is I've ended up doing more and more old fashioned work, like carving wood and painting.
A lot of the creatives that we've spoken to have said exactly the same thing about digital technology thinking they’d have to adapt but instead going back to how we did things before was actually the better way to do it.Are you someone that always has a lot of projects on the go?
Yeah, yeah, I'm trying not to do that so much. I'm trying to be less kind of stupid about trying to do everything.
Do you like switching between or just focusing on one until it’s done?
You know a lot of people when they start doing creative work, you're just so desperate to earn some money for rent, life, everything that you end up doing everything and anything. It’s quite hard to shake off that feeling as you develop as an artist. You can't turn stuff down because what if there's nothing else? What if you don't get any more work? And then you have to get a regular job or something, which would be really bad. I've just got to the point where I can think, I'm going to be fine. I don't have to do everything just the one.
How do you set out your work year, do you know what projects you are working on or is it all over the place?
It's totally all over the place. I don't really know what I'm gonna be doing for the most part. I know I will be doing artwork for The Smile and for Glastonbury Festival. I'm going to be doing some of my own stuff. I'm trying to do more painting because working in front of a computer is not something I like very much.
With the painting process, how do you feel about the work when it's been hung? How do you feel like walking into a gallery, seeing your work?
There’s a kind of trepidation beforehand because the thing I do is like when I'm painting I have quite a difficult time making stuff good. Then you get to a point where you think that’s good and you stop. Then there's a period of kind of abject terror when you're just like fucking hell everyone's gonna see it. My god maybe it isn’t any good? But then someone says something nice to validate it.
We've spoken in the past about artwork that you created for Radiohead, how it had come from accidents or mistakes. What would be one of the biggest mistakes you've made in your career?
Biggest mistake I've made in my career. Hmm, hmm, that's a difficult question. I’ll circle back to it.
Have you ever tried taking mushrooms or psychedelics and trying to translate that into art?
I think maybe years and years ago when I was very starting off. I very quickly realized that is not the time for doing art. That's the time for looking and remembering. But I have found mushrooms particularly useful to expose what I've seen. You know, the beauty of it.
Looking at your work I am always what you’ve used to make it. It wasn't necessarily just a brush and paint. There were always other items involved. Is that by accident?
For the last thing I did I used these old fashioned paints to directly capture something about the look of these fourteenth century Arabic pirates maps. Looking at it and figuring out what they used. I mean, it also comes from a lack of confidence. I've not been able to fix on any one technique. When you're an artist, if you don't have a thing that you do, it's quite hard to establish yourself in the art world. Almost every artist you can think of has a shtick that you get known for. I've not ever been able to find something that is my thing so I've ended up doing dozens of techniques and styles. For a long time, it was a bit of a problem for me personally but now it’s too late to worry about that. This is it.
Do you doodle?
Yeah, I doodle in the evenings. I don't really like watching TV because, well, it's mostly really terrible so I just draw at the end of the day as a sort of winding down. I put the radio on because it’s the equivalent doodling on the phone to someone. Don't really do that anymore because we don't really talk on the phone as we used to.
As you’ve gotten older have your music tastes expanded or narrowed?
I think they've expanded. When I was growing up, I’m not sure if it was the same in Australia but you became very, very tribal about music. Say you’re into punk for instance, you're not into all punk, you're only into a very particular part of punk, and all the rest of punk is shit. It's terrible and only assholes listen to that, you know.
And what about your thoughts on finding music now?
Yeah, it's part of kind of forging your identity, isn't it? Buying records was like your totemic artifact because you had so few of them. I mean I certainly could only afford to buy one record a week maximum, so you listen to that record to death? It was almost like you felt like the needle was going to carve its way through the record because you listened to it so much. Now I don’t know. There seems to be less of that tribal nature to it. You don’t see the punks, skinheads and mods. Maybe that's a better thing though. Maybe they're fighting less.[1]
I've got a bit of cynicism in me, but do you find things moving very fast now?
To be honest I think the level of new stuff that's coming out is about the same as it always has been. We've reached a time where pop culture is just continually devouring itself. 70s’ fashion has come around about three times in my actual life you know? It wasn't that good the first time. It feels like our culture is regurgitating the same material to the extent that it feels like there's actually more happening.
How do you feel about your work being presented in fifty years time - like here is a Radiohead cover from fifty years ago?
I don’t know if there are fifty years left for our society or culture. I have great concerns about the future. Without wanting to be too depressing, I think survival is gonna become more important than getting into music. When I look back on stuff I realise that we've been going on about this stuff forever and it doesn't make any difference. People just got bigger cars, more of them and polluting the earth more.
Yeah, I mean half the world's on fire. You kind of think something's up.
Taking all this stuff out from underneath the earth and burning it in the atmosphere is probably not a good idea.
More cheery thoughts from Stanley Donwood. No, I think it’s very interesting, especially when we talk about art and culture. Lots of people believe quite strongly but feel very helpless and then you’ve got these big corporations doing whatever.
Yeah, I'm perplexed. What do these people want the money for? What are they going to do with it?
Should we talk about something more uplifting now? It's like playing Led Zeppelin when you're a DJ and you've got nowhere to go after Led Zeppelin.
Oh, I know what I should do. I should try and find that mistake that I made. What was the accident? I've been busily using my back brain to think about this the whole time we've been talking, you know.
Well on the other side of that what's the thing you're most proud of? Your best achievement.
My children. I don’t know if achievement is the right word, but it's definitely what I'm proudest of. But then again, it's not exactly difficult to have children.
It's difficult to have children and be a good parent. If you could give 2003 self some advice, what would it be?
That's another good question. I would say just chill out. I was always a bit frantic about everything. Enjoy the moment a bit more. Take more holidays.
Just quickly while I think about it, what's the difference between creating artwork for Radiohead and the dynamic for creating artwork for The Smile? Is it very similar or have you found it to be quite new and different?
It’s different because The Smile musically works much quicker. They create a lot of work very fast. So then Thom and I work on the artwork together because he has the time to do that. Not all the time, but a lot more time because they finish quicker. Whereas with Radiohead, I would work with the band at the same time in the same space because the music was a lot more time consuming for Thom. So I would end up kind of doing all the artwork and he'd have a little bit of input, but not very much. With The Smile, we're sort of almost painting on the same canvas at the same time. Very different, it’s great.
So hang on, so you've both got a painting up on an easel, and you're both actually working on different parts of it at the same time?
Yeah he's good at some bits, I'm good at other bits, and then we swap around. We both approach painting in a slightly different way as well.
It must be quite fun to have that friendship.
Yeah, I mean, we've been working together for a long time. So we kind of understand each and what we would probably want from a picture. I hugely enjoy it. When I'm painting on my own, I'm basically just full of doubt the whole time but when I'm working with Tom, it's kind of a shared endeavor. So it feels a lot easier somehow to get to that point where you think, oh yeah, that's finished. You know, one of us can say to the other one, no, stop, stop there. So, you know, so we've both had that like at one point, he's been doing something, I'm like, no, leave it, leave it, leave it. But he's done that to me as well. So it's kind of good. So we've both got a second opinion.
One more question, what is Monster Children to you, print magazine culture?
I grew up with print magazines. I love the space that magazines inhabit. It’s not a book and it's not a newspaper. I don't think they can be replaced by websites because you can't flip backwards and forwards quite so easily. You can't look at something and go oh who did this? Then flip back to the contents page. There's something that I love about magazines which is irreplaceable by any other medium. I particularly like Monster Children because I once got to be its editor and I've never done that before or since. So it’s got a little space in my heart.
I also just want to quickly say thank you for your work.
Ah, thank you. Thank you. And if I remember what my biggest mistake is I'll email it to you.
I mean your artwork was created by messing around.
Yeah, no one should be scared of fucking up. It's usually a good thing.[2]
Get your hands on Issue #73, the 20 Year Anniversary Issue, here.
