By my reckoning Sir Peter Blake, now in his 93rd year, has so far designed thirty-one record covers, not including the covers of the covers included in four singles box sets: Eric Clapton’s promotional 24 Nights single box, Paul Weller’s Stanley Road box, The Who’s Who box set, and Paul Weller’s recent 66 singles set, between 1967 and 2024. In addition two albums have featured Peter Blake’s art on their covers, though without Blake’s direct involvment. These are House of Love’s Babe Rainbow album (1992) that featured Pete Townshend’s framed Babe Rainbow print on the cover, and Mark Knopfler’s Tracker album (2015) that had Peter Blake’s Love Heart print on the inner spread..

I didn’t start out to collect Peter Blake’s record covers, it sort of happened organically. Having bought the Beatles’ Sgt.Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band LP on the day it came out in June 1967 and bought the Pentangle’s Sweet Child double album after seeing them at the Royal Albert Hall in November 1968. Roger McGough’s Summer With Monika was probably the next album with Peter Blake art that I got as I had read some of McGough’s poetry. Next came the Who’s Face Dances as I was (and am) a major fan of the Who. I can’t remember exactly when, or why, I bought Chris Jagger’s second album The Adventures of Valentine Vox the Ventriloquist, but I have always been intrigued by the cover that seems to epitomise Peter Blake’s whimsy.

Like millions of others, I rushed out to buy the Band Aid single Do They Know Its Christmas? single when it came out in December 1984 and even bought the reissue the following Christmas.

I realised that I had the beginning of a collection of Peter Blake’s record covers and continued to buy other covers over the ensuing years. My late friend and gallery owner Daniel Brandt was organising an exhibition of Peter Blake’s London and Recycling prints at his A and D Gallery in July 2010 and invited me to show my collection of Peter Blake covers along side the new prints. I had previously send a bundle of my Peter Blake covers to the man himself asking him to kindly sign them, which he graciously did, attaching a letter congratulating me on having so many covers, so these were the ones I showed at the Gallery. Peter and Chrissy Blake came to the opening and I gave him a copy of my catalogue from the exhibition of his record covers at Piteå Museum in 2009.

Last week, I got a second parcel of Peter Blake covers back after a four-month period of uncertainty. As I wrote in my previous post, I had sent six covers to Sir Peter i March 2024 and heard nothing until early July when Chrissy Blake left them at the Waddington Custot Gallery and I could arrange for them to be sent on to me.

The arrival of the new signed covers made me think to make a list of all the Peter Blake covers I have managed to get signed. Of the thirty different vinyl and CD covers Peter Blake has designed or illustrated, I have no less than twenty-eight signed!

Here they are in chronological order:

However, there are still three Peter Blake covers that I haven’t managed to get signed. These are Madness Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da album, John Cooper Clarke’s CD The Luckiest Man Alive, and Eric Clapton’s box set of The Definitive 24 Hours.

In addition, my collection includes both the Genesis Publications limited edition book sets: Eric Clapton & Peter Blake 24 Nights the Limited Edition and the Brian Wilson — Peter Blake set That Lucky Old Sun that includes twelve Peter Blake prints.

You all know I collect Peter Blake album cover art and I’ve been lucky, over the years, to get many covers signed by Sir Peter. However, as I live in Sweden, it has not been easy to get covers signed.

Some time in March 2024, my friend — and Beatles expert — Ken Orth wondered if I cuold help him try to solve a mystery. There is a shadowy figure from the Sgt. Pepper photo shoot that has not been identified and Ken has asked just about everybody, including Jann Haworth, if they could identify the person.

The only person Ken hadn’t asked was Peter Blake and so Ken asked mwe if I could pass the picture on to him to see if he knew who the person was. I wondered how this would work and decided to ask Sir Peter to sign some album covers for me and I would enclose the picture of the mystery person in the hope that he mighty remember.

So — at the end of March I assembled a package of six record covers and one CD booklet and printed a large copy of the mystery person. I wrote a long letter asking several questions about the covers and posted the package by registered mail. I received notice that the package had been delivered on April 4th and the waiting started.

One month went by. And then another… And I began to give up hope. I reckoned that I had lost the covers and managed to find replacements. Then, at the beginning of July I received and email from Blake’s gallery saying that Chrissy Blake had delivered a parcel addressed to me for the gallery to forward. I confirmed my address and the gallery sent the package off only for it to be returned after a couple of days as being “undeliverable”. The gallery director emailed my telling me the package was once again at the gallery but for some reason this email didn’t arrive until the 26th July. So I arranged a new shipment where Royal Mail would collect the package and send it registered to me. They tried to collect the parcel on August 1st but the person on the gallery’s front desk didn’t know about the collection, so had to reshedule collection for the following day. That worked and the package was on its way.

It arrived at the Swedish customs on August 12th and I collected it yesterday. In the parcel were my six record covers, on CD booklet and the poster of the Mystery person, now with an inskription by Peter Blake.

So the Mystery person is still a mystery.

Sir Peter had signed all four album covers and the CD booklet but had not commented on my questions.

I would still like to know how The Fall came to use Peter Blake’s Nadia painting on the cover of their promotional EP, and I still wonder where the original painting for the Gershwin cover is now? And how did A Stranger Shadow get their Colours CD cover designed by Peter Blake? The final mystery is why Landscape (or their record company) rejected Peter Blake’s cover for their Manhattan Boogie Woogie album?
These mysteries, too, remain unsolved.