The Beautiful Art of Gail Collins Pappalardi

Introduction

I have always been fascinated by the surreal but beautiful album cover art from the early albums by Mountain, so I have now just decided to dig into it and found a very sparse Wikipedia entry on Gail Collins Pappalardi which you can read here.

I think I will list the albums and the actual artwork for you to enjoy and tell you a bit about the band and things that I found out about Gail.

She came to prominence (as 'Miss Gail Collins') co-producing, with Felix Pappalardi, the self-titled debut album by Energy, a group featuring Corky Laing.

She also co-produced, with Felix Pappalardi, the Felix Pappalardi and Creation album in 1976.

She co-wrote Cream's "World of Pain" with her husband Felix Pappalardi and "Strange Brew" with him and Eric Clapton. Both songs are included on the album Disraeli Gears. She contributed lyrics to many Mountain songs.

I was hoping to find more of her artwork as the Mountain album covers are outstanding but generally, news items on the world wide web seem to be more interested in the fact that she shot Felix.

She was also a lyricist and songwriter as well as a producer, so she was a very talented woman and art was not her only strong point. There is a book supposedly co-authored by her, Felix and Eric Clapton here.

A Little About Mountain

Originally comprising vocalist and guitarist Leslie West, bassist and vocalist Felix Pappalardi, keyboardist Steve Knight and drummer Corky Laing, the band formed in 1969 broke up in 1972 and has reunited frequently since 1973.

They are one of the bands credited with the creation and popularisation of Heavy Metal.

And So On To Gail's Art

Gail's artwork appears on many album covers by Mountain so here we go.

Climbing!

I used the amazing image she did for Mountain Climbing for a poem I wrote for Vocal Social Society which you can read here. The song used in this story is "Theme From An Imaginary Western" which is not one of Gail's.

Nantucket Sleighride

A Nantucket sleighride is the dragging of a whaleboat by a harpooned whale while whaling.

It is an archaic term from the early days of industrial whaling when the animals were harpooned from small open boats.

Once harpooned, the whale, in pain from its wound, attempts to flee, but the rope attached to the harpoon drags the whalers' boat along with it.

The term wasn't used by whalemen themselves but was probably invented by a late 19th-century journalist.

Flowers of Evil

The individual letter creations on the cover of "Flowers of Evil" we reused for one of the "Best Of Mountain" Compilations. I love the butterfly "M"

Mountain Live: The Road Goes Ever On

Twin Peaks

Avalanche

The Best Of Mountain

Songs By Gail

Although the point of this story is to celebrate her art she also cow-rote my favourite Mountain Song "Nantucket Sleighride" with Felix.

Another was "Strange Brew" by Cream with Felix and Eric Clapton on board too.

Conclusion

On April 17, 1983, Felix Pappalardi was shot once in the neck in the fifth-floor New York City apartment he shared with her. He was pronounced dead at the scene and She was charged with second-degree murder. She claimed that the killing was an accident.

On December 6, 2013, Collins was found dead by her landlord in the Mexican village of Ajijic, Jalisco, a resort town with many American expatriate residents.

She had been undergoing cancer treatments there. She was cremated