Tim Bradstreet: Designing Revolver’s Pantera Cover Was ‘Almost a Disaster’
Gaming and graphic artist Tim Bradstreet -- he's worked on 'The Punisher' -- was dispatched with the enviable task of designing the cover for Revolver's oral history of Pantera's 'Vulgar Display of Power' issue. But the artist said it wasn't all smooth sailing! "It was actually almost a disaster," Bradstreet told Noisecreep. "Those guys came to me wanting me to reproduce the album cover, so that's what I did -- I re-executed it. But they hated it! It wasn't at all what they wanted.
"Somehow in the process of doing the job, they were not able to articulate or I failed to fully understand what they were truly after, which was something infinitely more stylized than what I had initially done." Bradstreet said that they originally wanted it to have "a grayscale or monochromatic, 'painted' type of feel. Well we ended up throwing all of that out the window for various reasons."
Despite heading back to the proverbial drawing board, Bradstreet maintained that no one panicked or got offended. He said, "They had taken a huge risk with an illustrated cover and here they were with a disaster on their hands! Once I understood what they needed, I just went back to work and hammered away at it until they were tickled pink. When I have to switch gears in the midst of a project, it has the tendency to evolve in ways I hadn't considered. I had to re-draw certain elements and use some parts of what I'd completed already, then combine them and finish it off with a lot of digital work over the top."
Bradstreet admits he had to do the job twice, but that it was worth the effort. "All I wanted to do was make those guys happy and not have them regret coming to me in the first place," he said, full of modesty. "It doesn't sit well with me at all when the client is not happy, but all I ever ask for is the chance to set it right.
"Fortunately, [editor-in-chief] Brandon had the faith to stick with me, and we knocked it out of the park. I want to thank Brandon and the two Joshes at Revolver for giving me the opportunity and being great collaborators. It was a bumpy ride but it was worth every bit of the pain."
But it wasn't just about pleasing a client. Bradstreet has his own love affair with 'Vulgar Display of Power.' "It was a singular and special album to me," the artist said. "In 1992, I was really living in that scene, the bar scene, the band scene. It spoke to me on that level like a Mack truck. As an artist, I spent most of my time sitting in a chair working and getting fat. That sedentary lifestyle was just killing me. And at 25, I was pretty angry and self-conscious.
"I was well over 300 pounds! So one night after I found out a girl I was really in love with had no interest in me, I decided once and for all that I was going to do something about it." Turns out, 'Vulgar' was the soundtrack to fuel his mission of shedding those extra pounds.
"Pantera found a voice with this album, and they'd stripped themselves clean. Lyrically, it complimented the music perfectly with that in-your-face, bare-bones style. It was smart and it was telling young people, 'We all have problems. You can sit around and be defeated by the s--- life throws your way, or you can stand up and fight back on your own terms.' It was the medicine I needed." Additionally, 'The End of Silence' by Rollins Band was also in heavy rotation alongside 'Vulgar' while Bradstreet lost the excess weight! He dropped 100 lbs in four months.
The Bradstreet-designed issue is on stands now.