What Present for a Solo Artist Fan? Twenty-Three Maps of Solo Careers

A present for a solo artist fan is harder than it looks because the obvious things have usually already been bought. My Solo Artist Music Maps collection contains twenty-three discography maps, each drawn as a tube map in which every studio album is a station and every credited musician is a line.

What makes a solo career different to draw is not the music. It is that the lines break. Somebody plays five albums, disappears, and then walks back into a studio twenty years later as if nothing happened.

I read the credit sheets myself before I draw anything, and the breaks are the part I never expect. So this guide picks between the maps using them, rather than listing twenty-three prints at you.

The Present for a Solo Artist Fan Is Usually the Map Where a Line Breaks

A band map tends to run in bands of colour. Four or five lines start together, one drops out, a replacement joins, and the shape is fairly steady across the print.

A solo map does not behave like that. One line runs the full width, and everything else arrives, stops, and sometimes returns, which is exactly what a career made alone actually looks like.

That is why I would choose a solo map by the break rather than by the artist. If you know which record the person you are buying for plays most, you can usually work out which map will make them lean in.

Wonderwall Music Credits More Shehnai Players Than Guitarists

The George Harrison map plots twelve releases, from Wonderwall Music in 1968 to Brainwashed in 2002. The first station is the one nobody expects.

Wonderwall Music features twenty-two credited musicians, most of whom are Indian classical musicians. There is sarod, surbahar, santoor, bansuri, tar, shehnai, two shehnai players and two on tabla, all before you reach a single rock musician.

Then, in the middle of that list, Eric Clapton on electric guitar and Ringo Starr on drums. Harrison's first solo record is a station where the two halves of his listening sit side by side, and it reads that way on the print.

Ringo Starr turns out to be the steadiest line on the whole map. He is on seven of the twelve: Wonderwall Music, All Things Must Pass, Living in the Material World, Dark Horse, Extra Texture, Somewhere in England and Cloud Nine.

Somewhere in England Puts Paul, Linda, Denny Laine and Ringo on One Station

Somewhere in England came out in 1981, and the credits for it stopped me dead when I was drawing the Harrison map. Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney, Denny Laine, and Ringo Starr are all on it; it is the "All Those Years Ago" session.

What makes that useful when you are choosing a present is that three of those four names are also lines on the McCartney map hanging next to it. The two prints are not separate objects if you own both.

Eric Clapton does something quieter on the same map. He plays on Wonderwall Music in 1968, and All Things Must Pass in 1970, vanishes for nine years, and comes back to play the guitar intro on "Love Comes to Everyone" and nothing else.

Buy this one for the person who has been told all their life that Harrison was the quiet Beatle. My George Harrison map guide works properly through the solo run.

Linda McCartney Misses Three Albums, Then Sings Until 1997

The Paul McCartney map carries twenty-five releases, and it mixes the solo records, the Wings albums, and the three Fireman records into one route.

Linda McCartney is on the first nine of them, from McCartney in 1970 to Back to the Egg in 1979. Then her line stops for McCartney II, Tug of War and Pipes of Peace.

She returns on Press to Play in 1986 and is credited again on Flowers in the Dirt, Off the Ground, and, finally, Flaming Pie in 1997, the year before she died. Drawn out across a print, that gap and that ending are the first things people notice.

Denny Laine does something similar, but on a smaller scale. He runs from Wild Life in 1971 to Pipes of Peace in 1983, eleven records, and the only one he misses is McCartney II, which McCartney made almost entirely on his own.

Press to Play in 1986 is a crowded station. Pete Townshend plays guitar and Phil Collins plays drums on "Angry", and Carlos Alomar, Ray Cooper, Anne Dudley and Gary Barnacle are all on the same record.

Gary Sanford and David Houghton Come Back After Twenty-Three Years

The Joe Jackson map runs twenty-one releases, from Look Sharp! in 1979 to Fool in 2019. It contains the single best return I have drawn on any solo print.

The original band consists of four people: Jackson, Gary Sanford on guitar, Graham Maby on bass, and David Houghton on drums. They make Look Sharp! I'm the Man and Beat Crazy, and then Sanford and Houghton are gone.

They are both absent for thirteen consecutive releases. Both of them reappear on Volume 4 in 2003, twenty-three years after Beat Crazy, and their lines simply pick up where they stopped.

Graham Maby never left. He is on fifteen of the twenty-one, missing only the live album, the two soundtracks and the orchestral records, and he is still on Fool forty years after the debut.

Sue Hadjopoulos is the other long thread, on nine records with congas, bongos and percussion, from Night and Day in 1982 to The Duke in 2012. There is more in my Joe Jackson map guide.

Will Power Brings In a Conductor, and the Print Goes Wide

Will Power in 1987 is when the Joe Jackson map changes shape entirely. The credits stop reading like a rock record and start reading like an orchestral programme.

There are violas, cellos, double basses, French horns, oboe, bassoon, clarinet and bass clarinet, and George Manahan conducting. On a print built from lines, one station suddenly sprouts dozens of them and then they all stop again.

That is the map for someone who followed an artist somewhere odd and stayed with them. It is a very different present from a map that runs neatly for forty years.

Tracey Thorn Appears Once, on Mainstream, and Never Again

The Lloyd Cole map covers seventeen releases, from Rattlesnakes in 1984 to On Pain in 2023, and it includes the three Commotions albums and the solo work on a single route.

Mainstream in 1987 has two one-off guests who never return. Tracey Thorn of Everything but the Girl sings on it, and Jon Hassell plays on it, and neither appears anywhere else across the other sixteen records.

Neil Clark is the opposite case. He plays the three Commotions albums, sits out the first three solo records completely, comes back on Love Story in 1995 and is still there on On Pain in 2023.

Matthew Sweet is on three albums between 1990 and 1993, then nothing at all until Standards in 2013. Blair Cowan leaves an even bigger hole, which I go into in my Lloyd Cole map guide.

Two names on that map also turn up on the McCartney one. Anne Dudley is on Rattlesnakes, Easy Pieces and The Negatives, and she arranged "However Absurd" on Press to Play, and Gary Barnacle wrote the brass arrangements on Easy Pieces and played saxophone on the same McCartney album.

Nine Lines in This Collection That Break and Then Come Back

Every one of these came out of the credit sheets while I was drawing, not out of anybody's biography. They are also, in practice, how I decide which map suits which person.

Musician	Map	Last seen on	Back on	The gap
Gary Sanford	Joe Jackson	Beat Crazy, 1980	Volume 4, 2003	Thirteen releases, twenty-three years
David Houghton	Joe Jackson	Beat Crazy, 1980	Volume 4, 2003	The same twenty-three years, on drums
Vinnie Zummo	Joe Jackson	Blaze of Glory, 1989	The Duke, 2012	Five albums in a row, then twenty-three years off
Blair Cowan	Lloyd Cole	Don't Get Weird on Me Babe, 1991	Broken Record, 2010	Six releases, nineteen years
Matthew Sweet	Lloyd Cole	Bad Vibes, 1993	Standards, 2013	Twenty years
Neil Clark	Lloyd Cole	Mainstream, 1987	Love Story, 1995	Three solo records, eight years
Linda McCartney	Paul McCartney	Back to the Egg, 1979	Press to Play, 1986	Three albums, then a run to 1997
Denny Laine	Paul McCartney	Back to the Egg, 1979	Tug of War, 1982	One album, the one McCartney made alone
Eric Clapton	George Harrison	All Things Must Pass, 1970	George Harrison, 1979	Nine years, for one guitar intro

If the person you are buying for is loyal to a band that broke up, a map with a return on it lands better than one with a straight line.

Jeff Lynne Gets a Line for the Bass, Not for the Production

People write to ask why a famous producer is missing from one of my prints. The rule I work to is that a producer only earns a musician line if the sleeve also credits them for playing something.

Jeff Lynne produced Cloud Nine and Brainwashed, and he is a line on the Harrison map. That is because the credits also list him for bass, acoustic and electric guitars, keyboards, synthesiser and backing vocals.

Ray Cooper passes the same test on Gone Troppo, where he is credited with percussion, marimba, glockenspiel, electric piano, sound effects and production. Take the playing away from either of them, and neither would be on the print at all.

Which of the Twenty-Three Maps to Actually Buy

Every map in the collection is a Giclée art print in A2 (420 x 594mm) and A1 (594 x 841mm), from £42, with an optional black wood frame. The choice between the two sizes is really a choice about reading distance.

A2 suits a hallway or a space above a desk, where the album titles carry and the guest credits work as texture. A1 is for the person who will stand close and go looking for the twenty-three-year gap.

For someone whose Beatles shelf is full, take Harrison or McCartney, because both give them a second discography they have never seen laid out. For a fan of a band that ended badly, take a map where a line comes back.

For the person who reads sleeve notes for fun, Joe Jackson is the one, because Will Power turns the print inside out. For the writer or the lyric obsessive, Lloyd Cole is one guest who appears once in forty years and then never again.

For a sixtieth, a retirement or a big anniversary, I would go A1 and framed in black wood, whichever artist you land on. It stops being a poster at that size.

Questions I Get About the Solo Maps

Do the band years appear on these prints? Where the artist released under that name, yes. The McCartney map carries the Wings albums and the Fireman records, and the Lloyd Cole map carries the three Commotions albums, because leaving them off would break the story.

My person only likes the early records. Is a full career map wasted on them? Not usually, but be honest about it. If they genuinely stop after two albums, a single-album map will please them more than a print that runs to 2023.

Where do the credits come from? Sleeve credits and release-by-release research that I keep in my own sheets, checked album by album. If a name is on the print, something on a sleeve says they played.

Are two maps better than one? Often, yes. Harrison and McCartney share Ringo Starr, Denny Laine and Linda McCartney, so hung together they read as one connected thing rather than two prints.

What if the artist is still recording? That is fine, and it is why some of these get redrawn. On Pain in 2023 and Fool in 2019 are both on their maps already.

I have no idea who to pick. There is an art print gift card in this collection, and I would far rather they chose it than politely unwrap the wrong one.

Start Here

Browse the full Solo Artist Music Maps collection, or open it out across every era and genre in the Music Wall Art Prints collection.

If the person you are buying for started in a band rather than as a solo artist, the Beatles collection guide and the Music Icons collection guide are the next two to read.

Still stuck between two of them? Tell me who it is for and one album they have worn out, and I will check the sheets. I would rather look it up than have you guess.