Pop Artist, "Diamond Dogs" Designer Guy Peellaert Dead

Guy Peellaert, the Belgium-born pop artist responsible for the covers of albums by David Bowie and the Rolling Stones, died this week of cancer at the age of 74. The Stones' It's Only Rock N' Roll and Bowie's Diamond Dogs are among Peellaert's most famous work, which also includes a book of rock star iconography entitled Rock Dreams. The Diamond Dogs artwork was especially controversial upon its release as it depicted Bowie as a half-man/half-dog with a genitalia. Later prints of the vinyl had the genitalia airbrushed out, but the original artwork was restored when the album was released on CD. Peellaert also created posters for films like Taxi Driver, Short Cuts and Paris, Texas.

Related Stories:
• Album Review: David Bowie, Diamond Dogs
• Album Reviews: The Rolling Stones, It's Only Rock and Roll
• Movie Review: Short Cuts

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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