Guy Peellaert; Nik Cohn - Rock Dreams - 1973

This is the genuine first edition from the publisher: Popular Library (New York, 1973) — not to be confused with the Pan Books edition (London, 1974) often sold as the "1st edition".

Rock Dreams is a series of 125 tableaux created in Paris by Guy Peellaert between 1970 and 1973, accompanied by texts by Nik Cohn. Technically, the work is a complex hybridity of photomontage and airbrushed painting, close to hyperrealism, which constitutes a pioneering use of appropriation in contemporary art.

Each tableau places the great icons of rock in Fantasmic or surreal scenes inspired by their songs or legends: Elvis Presley in a street fight, the Drifters under the boardwalk, Otis Redding sitting at the end of a pier, Bob Dylan as a tramp, Jim Morrison in his bathtub, the Rolling Stones in Nazi uniforms surrounded by young girls, the Beatles in a New York deli with Dylan and Bowie on the cover.

The stars depicted cover the entire history of rock, from rhythm and blues to 1973: Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, Tina Turner, Ray Charles, Sinatra, Stevie Wonder, Buddy Holly, the Who, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and many others.

Guy Peellaert (1934–2008):
Belgian artist born in Brussels, multidisciplinary visual artist — painter, illustrator, photographer, comic book author. He defined himself as a "maker of images." In the 1960s he produced pop comics Jodelle and Pravda la Survireuse, and he gained worldwide fame thanks to Rock Dreams.

The book’s success opened doors to the greatest—he designed in 1974 the Diamond Dogs sleeve for David Bowie (Bowie half-man half-dog), and that of It's Only Rock'n'Roll for the Rolling Stones, as well as film posters for Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver), Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire, Paris, Texas) and Francis Ford Coppola.

Nik Cohn:
British rock journalist and writer, author in 1969 of Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom, regarded as one of the first serious rock stories. His text for Rock Dreams is poetic, fragmentary, hallucinatory — on par with Peellaert’s images.

The cover — Elvis, Lennon, Dylan, Jagger and Bowie sitting together in a New York deli — has become one of the most iconic images of 20th-century rock culture.

The success of this work was such that Mick Jagger invited Peellaert to Munich in 1974 to commission the sleeve of It's Only Rock'n'Roll, and David Bowie, informed by Jagger himself, contacted Peellaert in secret to commission Diamond Dogs first — a legendary rival story...

- Binding: Soft cover
- Dimensions: 30 x 23 cm
- Pages: 174 (unpaginated)
- Language: English

Condition: Good, this book has been read, interior free of annotations and dog-eared pages, cover with marks at the corners worn. Spine creases, repaired at the top.
See the photos which are part of the description.

Will be shipped in careful, sturdy, and trackable packaging.