Gary Burden, a designer and art director who crafted some of the most enduring images of California rock – record covers from the 1960s and 1970s that featured the blue-tinged face of Joni Mitchell, a surreal shot of Neil Young on the beach and a cheeky photo of the Doors outside the Morrison Hotel — died March 7 in Los Angeles. He was 84.
His wife, Jenice Heo, confirmed the death to the New York Times but did not give a cause. She and Burden collaborated through their design firm, R. Twerk & Co., and received a Grammy in 2010 for designing the boxed set “Neil Young Archives Vol. 1 (1963-1972).” It was Burden’s fourth Grammy nomination for album design, following nominations that led him to appear at the ceremony in a silver-ornamented mariachi suit and a sequined tuxedo purportedly made for Elvis Presley.
Burden, a Marine Corps veteran, came relatively late to rock-and-roll. He was working as a bowtie-clad architect in the late 1960s when a client — Cass Elliot, singer “Mama Cass” of the Mamas & the Papas — suggested he stop renovating houses and start designing album covers.
“She’s the one who said, ‘You know, Gary, you should make our new cover, you know how to design stuff,'” he told the NPR radio program World Cafe in 2015. “I don’t know anything about that. I have never been interested in being a graphic artist or any of that stuff. But she insisted that I do it, and she was right. She handed me a career.”
