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"Gasolin'": An album cover by Hergé?

Austin
Member
#1 · Posted: 5 Jul 2008 10:04
This is an interesting item - a recored sleeve using a Hergé picture - anyone have anymore info on it?
Moderator Note: As the original link to an eBay sale has long expired, it has now been replaced with a link to a Wikipedia article on the album.
schnelle
Member
#2 · Posted: 7 Jul 2008 15:08
I do not know much about the Gasolin' album, but it was released by the Danish band of the same name in 1971; the Wikipedia article about it suggests Hergé gave permission.
A coincidence is that Anders Østergaard, the director of Hergé and I, is also Danish, and he made a documentary about the band after his Tintin film!
See here for a bio of Mr. Østergaard.
joboni
Member
#3 · Posted: 2 Jun 2009 12:21
Gasolin' were one of the biggest ever rock bands in Denmark. This is their biography on Wikipedia.
impael
Member
#4 · Posted: 4 Sep 2012 02:09
Tintin has always been very popular in Denmark.The members of Gasolin - later the most legendary rock band in this country - were fans of Tintin to a degree that they put their band name on one of his drawings and had the record company contact Hergé and ask if they could use it as the cover for their debut album (Gasolin', 1971 - great folk/psych rock).

They expected the answer "no"...
But - surprise! Hergé liked the idea, and the end of the story is that a modified drawing from The Seven Crystal Balls became the legendary outer gatefold cover to the LP Gasolin'.
jock123
Moderator
#5 · Posted: 5 Sep 2012 21:04
The image of the blue car from this first album cover was excerpted, and used again by the group as part of the art-work for the release of a "posthumous" live album, issued fifteen years after it was originally recorded, and entitled Derudaf Forever (this in turn was used on a further double-CD set which combined two albums, with both covers used for illustration). There is an illustration of the cover to this second album attached to the linked article.

There was also a single issued from the album. It contained Langebro as the A-side, backed with Lilli-Lilli, catalogue number CBS 7813.

This too had a Hergé-based picture sleeve, excerpting a small section of the album cover, but flipping it, so that the taxi appears to be going right to left, and increasing the prominence of the red car from the back of the frame (at the size used this is more obviously a taxi too, with a customer on the verge talking to the cabbie inside).
jock123
Moderator
#6 · Posted: 21 Jan 2018 22:28
Picking this up after quite a long time, but I just noticed something which might be relevant...

The name of the band actually appears in a Tintin book, albeit that it might be inadvertently...

Frame eight of page 13 in The Red Sea Sharks shows Tintin buying a newspaper from a kiosk on a street corner.

Behind him, on the opposite side is a petrol station (there is a uniformed pump-attendant standing on the forecourt), with a canopy upon which, due to the way the picture is framed, the word "GASOLIN" can be read (actually the "N" is partially obscured).

I wounder if the group were even bigger Tintin fans than first guessed?
number1fan
Member
#7 · Posted: 22 Jan 2018 22:05
Is this the only album cover to feature Hergé's work?
jock123
Moderator
#8 · Posted: 22 Jan 2018 23:57
number1fan:
Is this the only album cover to feature Hergé's work?
There are many records with Tintin-themed content which have Hergé images on the cover, such as all the audio-adaptations of the books which have appeared in various languages (including the BBC cassettes), the sound-tracks of the Belvision movies and live-action films, and collections "inspired" by the books, such as a compilation of classical music ("The Jewel Song", etc.), and Mats Lidstrom's Suite Tintin.
However, the only record that I can think of that had a sleeve specially created for it by Hergé was a single published by Casterman in 1959.
The cover shows Tintin singing, accompanied by Haddock playing an accordion.
The songs on the record are credited to Guy Revaldy and The Bill Woodie Orchestra, and (according to the label), "a choir of Tintin's friends".
Side 1 has the "Chanson de Tintin et Milou", written by Henri Colas, and side 2 the "Chanson du Capitaine Haddock", by Jean Frédéric and Maurice Montfort.
The first song had actually been written and published in Cœurs Vaillants N°31 on the 31st of July 1938; the French audio adaptations of the 1960s use a brief excerpt of the melody, from the Revaldy recording of it, as their theme tune.

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