Like a Rolling Stone Cover

In the Sunday New York Times, writer at large Charles McGrath (and I guess "writer at large" means you get to write about any subject that crosses your fancy, whether there's a reason to be covering it or not, much like this blog) interviews George Lois, the legendary designer who created many classic covers for Esquire magazine in the 1960s. Like most people who have worked in magazines, and like a lot of people who haven't, I was aware of and had deep respect for Lois' work, but I wasn't aware that he eventually branched out into making music videos. "I even made a music video once for Bob Dylan, using 5,000 years of the history of art," Lois tells McGrath in the story.

McGrath was either unaware or uninterested in explaining what Lois was talking about, but I'm sure you're not, since OPC readers are on the whole much smarter than readers of the Sunday New York Times. "Jokerman"! "Like everything else," Rob Sheffield once wrote, "Dylan sucked in the '80s." But "Jokerman," both the song and the video, from the heart of the '80s in 1983, is pretty good.

Unfortunately, BobDylanTV, which supplied the video to YouTube, has disabled embedding, so you'll have to click the link.