Brain Salad Surgery is the fourth studio album by progressive rock band Emerson, Lake & Palmer, released in 1973 and the first under their Manticore Records imprint. It features cover art by surreal artist H. R. Giger. According to the 1996 re-release notes, Manticore Records president Mario Medious "nicked the title from a slang lyric in Dr. John's 1973 hit, "Right Place, Wrong Time" (released January 26, 1973), Just need a little brain salad surgery/Got to cure this insecurity, to replace the...
Brain Salad Surgery is the fourth studio album by progressive rock band Emerson, Lake & Palmer, released in 1973 and the first under their Manticore Records imprint. It features cover art by surreal artist H. R. Giger. According to the 1996 re-release notes, Manticore Records president Mario Medious "nicked the title from a slang lyric in Dr. John's 1973 hit, "Right Place, Wrong Time" (released January 26, 1973), Just need a little brain salad surgery/Got to cure this insecurity, to replace the working title Whip Some Skull on Yer (both titles are slang expressions for fellatio).
In 2007, Shout Factory Records released remastered versions of Brain Salad Surgery and the entire Emerson, Lake & Palmer catalog.
The album cover is considered one of the most memorable of its time. It features distinctive Giger monochromatic biomechanical artwork, integrating an industrial mechanism with a human skull and the new ELP logo (created by Giger). The lower part of the skull's face is covered by a circular "screen", which shows the mouth and lower face in its flesh-covered state. In the original LP release, the front cover was split in half down the center, except for the circular screen section (which was attached to the right half). Opening the halves revealed a painting of the complete face: a human female (modelled after Giger's wife), with "alien" hair and multiple scars, including the infinity symbol and a scar from a frontal lobotomy. The two images of the woman are very similar, but the outer image (in the circle) contains what appears to be the top of a phallus below her chin, arising from the "ELP" column below (the second painting originally had the complete phallus, but this was removed at the insistence of the record company). The back cover was solid black with the album title in plain white lettering. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.
