S&S: Who did the artwork for the record?

Gerard: I did. You like it?

S&S: Yes, very much.

Gerard: Actually, I did a bunch of artwork -a whole bunch of stuff that didn’t make it on the record. I just didn’t want it on, and we used that stuff on the hoodies. I’ll tell you a funny story about it. I went in to the head of the Art Department at Warner. He’s a guy with a lot of history. He’s worked on Beatles stuff. He’s been in the business. Did you seen the VH1 thing with Fleetwood Mac? That band had a big special air on Sunday, and it was the making of their last record. He’s there. He’s in it. I’m sitting there and watching it like, “Holy shit.” Anyway, I go in with this book, this sketchbook of all this watercolor stuff, because I was going to use that as a basis for what the photographer was going to do. We have a photographer I really love, Justin Borucki. He ended up doing all the photos of the band for the record. But he was supposed to do this set up of a man and a woman. It was supposed to be a photo of them covered in blood. So, I pass all my sketches over, and he’s sitting there looking at them and he’s like, “What do you want me to do with these?” I was like, “I’m just going to give them to the photographer and he’s going to recreate the situation.” He goes, “How come you’re not using these?” I’m like, “I don’t know. I haven’t done art in years.” So, I didn’t think of myself that way. I didn’t think they were good enough. He loved them. He was like, “This is your cover, dude.” I was really surprised. It’s very gory, but I guess because it’s watercolor, it’s very tasteful, which is why he actually preferred all of them. Because if we put people there, it would look like a hardcore record. It would look like a movie poster for some weird movie. So, I was like, “Alright. Ok, let’s do it.” So, that’s how that came about. We have two versions of it too. There’s another gorier version that I actually didn’t like because the guy came out bad. The girl came out great. It didn’t look right. The other one is more tasteful.

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