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by Martin Popoff

And Dangerous Age... tell me about what goes on over there. I guess you are selling a print of your Blue Oyster Cult - Curse Of The Hidden Mirror art?

"Yes, signed by me and the three original members, which is what their manager wanted to do - Eric, Buck Dharma and Allen Lanier - for $65. We sold quite a bit. It's moving quite healthy right now. And we limited it to 1000. That's the thing. I'm getting more and more into the fine art market. So you limit it; once it's out, that's it. The plates were destroyed; I'm never going to do that again."

And you've done this before?

"Yes, there are prints of Alchemy by Yngwie Malmsteen, Fates Warning, King Crimson, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Allman Brothers..."

And have you sold most of them?

"Yes, they sold pretty fast. Lynyrd Skynyrd sold out just about immediately, which I was amazed at. They were asking a lot of money. King Crimson was 100 bucks a pop, and we went through 1000 really quickly. The art collectible market is a pretty cool thing, if you create a good product. If you think about it, there are t-shirts and sweatshirts going for $50 right now, so I said wow, if you have an original piece of art, signed by the band, a limited edition thing... you know, you buy it for what it is, but it definitely gains in value later. I mean, Roger Dean's prints - God bless him - he's selling them for like $1800, $1900 a pop right now."

What do you think your style is on the recent covers you've done?

"Jesus, man, that's a tough call. I can always say wholeheartedly, unashamedly, that I always was a huge Roger Dean fan. So obviously, my early '80s covers and stuff, you can definitely tip the hat to Roger Dean. I mean, I had to figure out half the techniques I was doing for this stuff. Fates Warning, you can see heavily a Roger Dean influence, on the back cover for instance of Awaken The Guardian. That's a hard question."

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