When Phil Hartman graduated from California State University, Northridge in 1974, with a degree in graphic design, he started his own studio and began leveraging his connections in the music industry. For a decade, while transitioning into comedy, Hartman designed more than 40 album covers for bands including Steely Dan, America, and Harvey Mandel, among other artists.
At the time, Hartman’s brother, John, had set up his own management firm with partner Harlan Goodman after the two parted ways with Geffen/Roberts and hired Phil as a one-man design team. Hartman started by working for their country rock band Poco, featuring former Buffalo Springfield bandmates Richie Furay and Jim Messina, and the Eagles‘ Timothy B. Schmit; Randy Meisner was also briefly in the band before breaking off to co-found the Eagles in 1971.
Hartman designed several of the Poco’s albums, beginning with their 1974 release Seven, along with Cantamos (1974), Head Over Heels (1975), Rose of Cimarron (1976), and Legend (1978). He continued working with more bands, including America, designing History: America’s Greatest Hits (1975), Hideaway (1976), Harbor, and America Live, both released in 1977, and Silent Letter from 1979.
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CSN’s Logo
In 1976, Hartmann designed the self-titled debut, and only album, released by the Los Angeles quintet Silver, featuring Tom Leadon, a later member of Tom Petty’s pre-Heartbreakers band Mudcrutch, and brother of the Eagles’ Bernie Leadon. A year later, he worked on Steely Dan’s more minimalist album cover for Aja, which peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100.
During this period, Hartman also designed the Celtic-style interlocking letters logo for Crosby, Stills & Nash.
This logo was used throughout the band’s career, appearing on stage and more prominently on their 1994 album After the Storm, though the band never formally credited Hartman, who was never bitter about the CSN snub and found it more “amusing.”
Poco’s ‘Legend’
Reflecting on the work he did, two years before he died in 1998, Hartman said he was always most proud of the album cover he designed for Poco’s 1978 album Legend, a simple black and white line drawing of a horse. The album was a success for the band, producing two Top 20 hits: “Crazy Love” and “Heart of the Night,” and was the only earlier work that Hartman had hanging in his office.
“I did over 40 album covers, including the white Poco album,” Hartman said in 1996. “That’s the only piece I have up in my office.”
After several years of designing, Hartman began pulling away from an introverted career and often amused himself by coming up with voices and characters, which he called “flights of voice fantasies.” By the mid-’70s, Hartman started performing with the comedy troupe the Groundlings, alongside friend Paul Reubens (Pee-wee Herman), Cassandra Peterson (Elvira), Sandy Helberg, and John Paragon.
“I was doing that at the time I joined the Groundlings in ’75 because I still had all these multiple personalities in me, but I was spending 12 hours a day at a drawing board,” said Hartman, who also redesigned the group’s logo. “I had to bust out.”
From there, Hartman also starred in Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie (1980), Pee-wee’s Big Adventure in 1985—also co-written by Hartman—Three Amigos in 1986, and the 1987 Kim Basinger and Bruce Willis romantic comedy Blind Date. He also had a recurring role as Captain Carl on Reuben’s Pee-wee’s Playhouse in 1986 before joining the cast of Saturday Night Live, where he remained for eight seasons with his iconic characters like Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer, and impersonations of Bill Clinton, Frank Sinatra, Ed McMahon, and more.
Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, Hartman starred in more films and television, voicing dozens of characters, including the washed-up Hollywood actor Troy McClure and the sleazy lawyer Lionel Hutz on The Simpsons and later on as Bill McNeal on the NBC comedy Newsradio.
“I think in my old age, I’ve come to realize just how precious everything is, and I try to value the many blessings that have been bestowed upon me,” Hartman said in a 1998 interview, months before his death. “But there’s also this sense of vulnerability if fortune took a turn for the worse, and that you live with the awareness that anything could happen in this world.”
Photo: Dave Bjerke/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank
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