What he did do was create the famous Electric Magic poster advertising the band’s gigs at Wembley Empire Pool in November 1971. It’s a masterpiece, a homage based on the work of the legendary super hero artist Jack Kirby of Marvel Comics. "I can’t remember how many we had printed but it did entail me meeting the band. They wanted what I suppose you could call psychedelic imagery with them portrayed as medieval minstrels. I think Robert and Jimmy (Plant and Page, the band’s voclaits and guitarist) were especially pleased with the finished result - but the most important man you had to deal with was their manager Peter Grant. "You didn’t want to p*** him off because he was heavy!" This work was completed while working for Pete Fulwell’s Modular Design company based above the old Academy on Renshaw Street, "a wonderful ramshackle rat infested place" says Hardstaff. Besides his three days a week as lecturer he was also working part-time on a Saturdays in the original Probe Records on Clarence Street. Both jobs were to be instrumental in the next stage of his developmen. Fulwell moved on to join up with the entrepreneur Roger Eagle and promoter Ken Testi in founding Eric’s Club on Mathew Street in 1976. Probe had also moved in to nearby Button Street and its founder Geoff Davies had taken his first tentative steps into setting up his own record company. It led to an incestuously beneficial period for all concerned with Steve designing posters and records sleeves for Eric’s, Probe and Fullwell’s subsequent Inevitable and Eternal record labels. Consequently he designed work for many of the Liverpool bands of the time including The Icicle Works, Pete Wylie’s Wah!, Dead or Alive, Deaf School, China Crisis, The Yachts plus a great swathe of Probe Plus records right up until the present day. Two of his favourite covers are The Four Lads Who Shook The Wirral by Birkenhead’s finest Half Man Half Biscuit and the limited edition compilation Juke Box at Eric’s featuring some of the late Eagle’s peerless record collection from the eponymous club’s jukie. "When Roger died and was buried in North Wales I threw the master tapes of that album in the grave with him - and nearly fell in myself while I was doing so," laughs Steve. His other works included the South Atlantic Souvenirs Postcard collection of Anti Falklands War artwork which now in the Imperial War Musuem and his selection of cheeky covers for Liverpool based label Viper’s old jazz and blues compilations, his own favourite musical genre. All of this work through the past 40 years is to soon be celebrated in Delights at The End of the Tunnel to be published by Liverpool University Press. However, the artist himelf, attributed as establishing the first music industry design studios outside London, is a little bemused at all the attention. "Everything is digital now so copies can be done but in the past I’d send artwork off to London and never see it again including that Zeppelin Electric Magic poster," he explains. "But I wasn’t precious about any of it because I never thought it would resurface again." That, it appears, is all about to change. mikechapple@dailypost.co.uk | 
