Forever Changes: The Bob Pepper Debate

A lot has been made of the PKD cover art work, especially that of Bob Pepper. My loyal Boxers out there have been imploring me to weigh in on the debate over the finest Bob Pepper cover art for PKD. While I love all of the Daw covers Mr. Pepper did in 1983 (especially for A Scanner Darkly and We Can Build You), my favorite cover of Pepper's and maybe in all of PKD-land, is his 1969 cover for Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? This may be Pepper's most underrated cover, possibly because his name is nowhere to be found on the art work. However, there is no mistaking this as his work, as a simple comparison with his seminal album cover artwork for Love's 1967 masterpiece, Forever Changes, will show.

The two works are very reminiscent of each other; one depicts all the faces of Love as if they were one being, the other depicts a human/android as if it were one being. Additionally, both have a psychedelic color palette; it being a tripped out time after all. Simply groovy.

Bob Pepper's art for both these works is amazing; making this a case where one can definitely judge the book/music by its cover.

A word of caution; I once tried to read Androids to the sounds of Forever Changes, and while I love the album, the music didn't really coexist well with the mood of the book and I got a tad nauseous. 

Or maybe that was a Substance D flashback? Hmmm...