Albums released after a musician died are the quietest thing I find in this work, and the maps show them more plainly than any written discography does. I draw each release as a station and each credited musician as their own line, so when somebody's line carries on past the year they died, it is there on the paper without a word of explanation.
I have four clear cases across the maps I have drawn: two on the Bruce Springsteen print, one on The Stranglers, and one on the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Every one comes from the credit sheet I keep for that artist, not from a biography.
I do not tidy them up. If the sleeve credits somebody, the line runs to that station, whatever the date on the headstone says.
Bruce Springsteen Discography Tube Map Art Print
21 studio albums from 1973 to 2022, with every credited musician traced through the records they played on.
Explore This Art PrintWhat Albums Released After a Musician Died Look Like on a Map
On a written discography, a posthumous credit is a line of small print you would have to be looking for. On a transit diagram it is a length of colour that keeps going when you expect it to stop.
That is the whole argument for drawing credits this way. Your eye follows a line across the sheet, and it does not need to be told that the line has outlived the person, because the date is printed at the station.
There is a practical reason it happens so often, too. Records take years. Parts get recorded, shelved, and used later, and a band finishing an album will reach for what is already on tape.
Clarence Clemons Carries Two Stations Past 2011
Clarence Clemons has one of the longest lines on the Springsteen sheet. It starts at Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. in 1973 and keeps reappearing across four decades of records.
He died in June 2011. My research sheet still credits him on Wrecking Ball in 2012 and on High Hopes in 2014, so his line runs on for two more stations.
Standing in front of the A1 print, that is the part people go quiet about. Not because it is marked in any special way, but because it is not.
Danny Federici Does the Same Thing on the Same Map
Federici is on the Springsteen map from The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle in 1973 onwards, with gaps: he is absent from Nebraska, from both 1992 records, and from We Shall Overcome.
He died in April 2008. His last credit before that is Magic in 2007. He is then credited again on Working on a Dream in 2009 and on High Hopes in 2014.
So the Springsteen print has two E Street lines running past the men who played them, and they both stop at the same station: High Hopes.
Dave Greenfield Is on the Stranglers Record That Came Out After Him
Greenfield and Jean-Jacques Burnel are the only two musicians credited on all twenty releases on The Stranglers map, 1977 to 2021. Across forty-four years of credits, nobody else is listed playing keyboards on a Stranglers record until the final one.
He died in 2020. Dark Matters came out in 2021 with his keyboards and backing vocals on it, and with Louie Nicastro credited for additional keyboards beside him.
That is the only station on the whole print with two keyboard players at it, and the reason is the saddest one available.
The Stranglers map. Greenfield's line runs the full width and ends at Dark Matters.
Hillel Slovak Gets One Track on Mother's Milk
The Red Hot Chili Peppers map does it on a smaller scale, and it is more pointed for being small. Hillel Slovak died in June 1988.
Mother's Milk came out in 1989. He is credited on it for guitar and backing vocals on track nine, the Hendrix cover, and for the back cover painting.
Jack Irons is on drums for that same track. One song on that record holds the old line-up while the rest of it holds the new one, and on the print that reads as two short spurs touching a single station.
The Four Cases, Side by Side
| Musician | Map | Died | Credited after |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clarence Clemons | Bruce Springsteen | June 2011 | Wrecking Ball (2012), High Hopes (2014) |
| Danny Federici | Bruce Springsteen | April 2008 | Working on a Dream (2009), High Hopes (2014) |
| Dave Greenfield | The Stranglers | 2020 | Dark Matters (2021) |
| Hillel Slovak | Red Hot Chili Peppers | June 1988 | Mother's Milk (1989), track nine only |
Jet Black Is the Counter-Example, and It Matters
Not every death leaves a posthumous credit, and the maps are just as clear about that. Jet Black's drums run nineteen of the twenty Stranglers releases, from Rattus Norvegicus in 1977 to Giants in 2012.
He is absent from Dark Matters in 2021, where Jim Macaulay takes drums, percussion and backing vocals. Black died in 2022, a year after that record came out.
So on one sheet you have two of the four founder lines ending in completely different ways: one that stops before the man did, and one that carries on after. I could not have designed that. It is simply what the credits say.
Why I Leave These Lines Exactly Where They Fall
I get asked occasionally whether I mark posthumous credits somehow, with a symbol or a note. I do not, and I am not going to.
The rule across every map I draw is the same: the credits decide. A musician gets a line if a sleeve credits them playing or singing something, and the line reaches every station where that is true. Producers with no playing credit get nothing, however much of the record is theirs.
Applying that rule without exceptions is what makes the sad cases land. If I annotated them, they would read as sentiment. Left alone, they read as fact, which is heavier.
Sizes, Paper and Framing
All three of these maps are Giclée prints on 230gsm textured matte fine art paper, archival and acid-free, in A2 (420 x 594mm) or A1 (594 x 841mm), from £42. Both sizes are also sold in US inch equivalents, and both come unframed or ready to hang in a black wood frame.
For this particular detail I would go A1. A line that runs past a date is only legible if the station names and years are readable from where somebody is standing, and at A2 the later Springsteen stations ask you to lean in.
The Springsteen map is held at the Bruce Springsteen Archives at Monmouth University in New Jersey. They got in touch in November 2020 and called it "truly amazing".
Questions I Get About This
Does the map say anywhere that a credit is posthumous?
No. The line runs to whichever stations the credits place the musician at, and the release year is printed at each station. Readers work it out, which is the point.
How do you know the credit is real and not a tribute?
I go by what the sleeve says. If a sleeve credits a named person with playing a named part on a named track, that is a credit, and it goes on the map. I do not infer anything beyond it.
What is not on these maps?
Live albums and compilations are left off by editorial rule, so the stations are studio records. The Stranglers map is the one exception in this piece: Live (X Cert) and All Live and All of the Night are both on it, deliberately, because both carry credits worth having. Producers and engineers with no playing credit are left off everywhere.
Are there more cases than these four?
Almost certainly. These are the four I can point to from the credit sheets I have checked line by line. I add them as the research turns them up rather than going looking for them.
Related Music Maps
The three prints in this piece are the Bruce Springsteen discography map, The Stranglers discography map and the Red Hot Chili Peppers discography map.
If the lines themselves are what interests you, two other pieces go further into the same material: band members who left and came back, and which bands never changed their line-up.
The wider range is in the Music Wall Art Prints collection. If you are buying for somebody and cannot decide which map, there is an art print gift card.
