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There are some special, almost magical images that remain etched particularly strongly in our memories, and which – entirely unexpectedly – end up symbolising a certain period of your life. These include the covers of so-called generational records: albums that may not be universally loved masterpieces, but which undoubtedly gave a great deal of joy to many people during their golden years.
There is one late-1990s record that certainly falls into this category: Americana by The Offspring. This was the era of Blink 182 and Green Day, and a time when The Offspring were producing punk that was angry yet decidedly easy on the ear.
And there was another particularly unforgettable thing about this album: the cover. A blond-haired child sits on a rope swing, looking picture-perfect and idyllic, apart from a brace on his leg. And there are other unsettling details too, like a strange crustacean and a tentacle emerging from one side, moving dangerously close to the swing…
You can see where we’re going with this one! Today we’re going to look back in time and explore how one of the world’s best-known punk covers came about.
Americana: the ultimate nineties pop punk album
Before we talk about Americana‘s iconic cover, we should first pay tribute to this historic album! The Offspring – led by guitarist and vocalist Dexter Holland – are one of the biggest-selling punk bands of all time. Americana, released in 1998 by the major record label Columbia Records, marked the band’s definitive move to more pop-influenced and catchy sounds, although The Offspring’s punk spirit was still very much alive and kicking.
The record sold an incredible 11 million copies. Anyone who was growing up in those years will surely remember the music videos from the album, which were almost ubiquitous on MTV. Why Don’t You Get a Job?, The Kids Aren’t Alright and especially Pretty Fly (for a White Guy) became the soundtrack for the lives of many of the era’s teenagers, and plenty of older listeners too.
But another truly unforgettable thing about The Offspring’s Americana was its strange and rather disturbing cover. Here’s its story!
The cover of Americana by The Offspring
When Dexter Holland was looking for someone to design Americana‘s cover, he had in mind the subjects of the record’s songs: tunes about cities and societies that although they seemed like something from Happy Days, were actually more akin to Twin Peaks.
The cover for Americana has the same effect: it seems playful and polished at first glance, but it is actually deeply disturbing. Just like David Lynch’s films, it reminds us that monstrous things can be found lurking in everyday life. The music journalist Jason Draper noticed the same thing, describing the cover as offering (more markedly than The Offspring’s music) ‘an unnerving look at suburban American life in the mid-90s, through often awkward eyes’.
About Frank Kozik, the creator of the cover of The Offspring’s Americana
This powerful cover was created by the American graphic designer and rock and punk poster icon Frank Kozik. Kozik produced hundreds of posters for alternative groups like Green Day, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Queens of the Stone Age, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Soundgarden during the 1980s and 1990s, designing between 150 and 200 covers over the course of his long and decidedly unconventional career.
One of these was the cover of Americana. Apparently, Kozik was initially rather reluctant to accept Dexter Holland’s proposal, as he thought creating the cover for a group that had veered towards pop punk and signed a contract with a major label would ruin his ‘alternative’ reputation. It all came to a head in a phone call when the artist warned Dexter Holland, his long-time acquaintance, that he would have to charge $75,000 for the cover to offset the risk of criticism. The Offspring’s leader agreed. And so the historic cover was born.
Kozik presented this choice as a vendetta against the major labels, but in reality he didn’t seem to have much of an issue with commercial productions, or at least not with the money that came with them: in 1994, for instance, he worked with Nike on a series of posters in his trademark punk style, and used the money from this wealthy client to found his own independent record label.
Kozik decided not to put in any more effort than absolutely necessary for the cover of Americana. He recycled the image of the child cuddling a strange crustacean – a sand hopper – from a poster created a few years earlier for the band Ritual Device. For the back cover, Kuzik then designed an original sequel to the strange scene: the creature turns out to have a lethal sting, and there is no sign of the child – in his place there is nothing but a disturbing pool of blood, the brace and a shoe. And the mysterious tentacle has now reached the swing, perhaps attempting to save the poor victim. Or perhaps it was the killer?
Some people see the image as representing the end of childhood and the loss of innocence. Whatever it means, the back certainly gave this iconic 1990s cover a decidedly punk finale!
Do you have fond memories of the graphic design for The Offspring’s Americana? Do you remember when it came out, or was it a new discovery for you? And how might you take inspiration from Frank Kozik’s alternative style?