It’s been over five years since my last ‘Painting Metal’ post. Where does the time go?

I would argue that 1976 was a pivotal year in the history of hard rock/metal. KISS released the one-two punch of Destroyer and Rock n' Roll Over that year. Judas Priest found their metallic groove with Sad Wings of Destiny. The best Rainbow album ever--Rising--was released in 1976.

Thin Lizzy was part of that as well. Their iconic LP, Jailbreak--which inspired future metal bands all over the UK--was released in March of 1976. Johnny the Fox was released on October 16--almost exactly fifty years ago. Believe it or not, it came out less than seven months after Jailbreak despite legendary Thin Lizzy frontman, Phil Lynott, being hospitalized for several weeks that summer.

Jim FitzPatrick, Thin Lizzy artist and good friend of Lynott. was once again tapped for cover duties. From what Jim has said, it appears that he didn't even know what the name or theme of the album would be at that point. Check out this quote:

"Philip had asked me to get going on some new album covers. Things were moving fast and there wasn’t going to be a lot of time to prepare. We’d been throwing visual ideas around, Planet of the Apes imagery, post-apocalypse, the fall of the Statue of Liberty, and in particular a comic that Philip was reading and was a big fan of, Killraven."

That rocks. I absolutely believe Mr. FitzPatrick about the Killraven influence. I'm a fan of Killraven myself. However, what struck me about that sketch was its (rough) resemblance to the cover of Kamandi #1. Jack Kirby's Kamandi comic for DC was still a thing in 1976 and Jim is a life-long Jack Kirby fan. Just sayin'. Apocalyptic times, those ‘70s...

The other thing I want to say is that FitzPatrick should totally craft a finished/updated version of that first idea. Doing so would really make the golden anniversary of Johnny the Fox something special. Personally, I would buy such a print in a heartbeat.

Phil Lynott had other plans. Once again, from Jim FitzPatrick:

"Other notes Philip gave me were that he loved my Celtic Irish art but didn’t want any diddly-aye elements, meaning anything too overtly Irish on the cover. I had done an album cover for Planxty with that kind of Irish imagery and Philip wanted something different. (...)
I thought Philip would go straight for the warrior image, the jets and the Statue of Liberty. Instead he was blown away by the border. “I love that effin’ border,” he said. Philip had a great eye and I really appreciated that he could see things the way I could. So I went ahead with the border and left out the rest of the artwork.

The border was initially without any Irish or Celtic design elements. I was being influenced at the time by a French artist by the name of Philippe Druillet and incorporated certain elements of that style into the border.
Once I had done a detailed drawing of the border, Philip asked me to put in some minor Irish elements. I had some Celtic knotwork borders already drawn and ready to go, so with some adjustment I put them in too."

That border is pretty damned cool. You could almost call it "cyber-interlace" or "digital-knotwork". Without a doubt, nothing like it had ever been done for a rock album cover.

The story of how the center illustration for the cover art came together is fairly complex and I'll let Jim tell it here.