I have a pretty impressive collection of record and CD covers with Pweter Blake’s art. Over the years I’ve managed to get many of them signed by Sir Peter and just before Christmas I got hold of two more CDs beautifully signed by Sir Peter. My agent popped round to Blake’s home with a few CDs and asked Chrissy if she could ask Peter to sign them. Chrissy knows that signed items can go for quite large sums but this time she took them to her husband who signed them beautifully.
Paul Weller’s 2024 album “66”.
I really like this cover. It’s traditional signwriting and I like to dabble in signwriting myself as I’ve had a longterm love of typography. Peter Blake studied tyypogrpahy at Gravesend College and many of his album covers show his expertise with various forms of type. The inspiration for Paul Weller’s cover came from the fact that Weller’s 66th birthday was the day after this album was released and Weller wanted the album called “66“. Blake delved into his collection of old signs and found a butcher’s sign advertising something for 6d (six old pence) and copied the typeface.
Blake has published several series of prints of various alphabets and even published boooks of them. Other typefaces that Blake has used include some victorian lettered tiles that he has used on several covers, the first being Paul Weller’s Stanley Road. There have been many since. Type sourced from old alphabets appeared on Madness’ 2012 album Oui Oui, Si Si, Ja Ja, Da Da. However, the typeface Blake obviously likes best is hhis own handwriting! It stands out on the Madness cover but appeared as early as on the Who’s Face Dances album. Other styles he has used include rubber stamped and stencilled letters.
Band Aid 40’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” CDEP.
The Band Aid 40 cover is one of my favourites as it is a prime example of Blake’s recycling. In 2010 he made two series of prints, one said “I Love Recycling” and the other “I Love London”. When I met Him and Chrissy at the opening of the exhibition of these prints I showed my collection of Blake’s record covers at the Galllery and he gave me a set of these prints.
The Band Aid 40 cover is a recycled Blake design from 1959-60. Originally a painting called Valentine (for Pauline Boty) that he gave to his lover Pauline Boty.
Valentine (for Pauline Boty)
These two CDs covers have what I consider the best examples of Peter Blake’s autograph. I haven’t seen better placed signatures before–and I have many examples in my collection, He usually signs LP covers with smaller signatures, sometimes almost invisible, like on this 1983 album cover.
Gershwin – Signed album cover. Blake’s signature is visible just above the “ux Montmartre”
Perhaps the rarest cover with Peter Blake’s art is the 1990 promotional EP I’m Frank by the Manchester band the Fall that was only released in America. How the Fall (or their American record label, Fontana) came to use Blake’s 1981 Nadia painting is a mystery.
Peter Blake’s 1981 painting Nadia on the cover of the Fall’s “I’m Frank” EP.
And if there is one cover in my Peter Blake that is really special, it has to be my copy of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, signed by both designers Jann Haworth and Peter Blake.
I’ll tell more stories about Peter Blakes record and CD cover art in a book that I hope will see the light of day sometime soon.
When Sotheby’s offered Peter Blake’s painting “Valentine (for Pauline Boty)” for auction in 2019, they described the two artists as “inseparable.” The work sold for £287,500—a significant sum for what appeared to be a simple valentine. But this wasn’t just any love token. It was evidence of a relationship that would shape Blake’s emotional life and set a pattern of loss that would haunt him for decades.
Robert Fraser opened his famous art gallery at 69 Duke Street in London in 1962 and attracted the cream of pop art artists to the gallery’s roster: Richard Hamilton, Derek Boshier, Peter Blake, Colin Self and Jann Haworth. Fraser’s gallery attracted visitors from the world of film, music and art. He was the first to show American pop artists such as Andy Warhol and Jim Dine in London. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were gallery regulars—Robert Fraser helped Paul McCartney build his art collection.
There was one English pop artist who wasn’t represented by Groovy Bob Fraser. She was Pauline Boty (1938-1966), a polymath: pop artist, poet, radio programme host, actress and dancer. You could have seen her bopping to the music on TV’s “Ready, Steady, Go”. She studied at the Royal College of Art from 1958-61 alongside Peter Blake, David Hockney and Derek Boshier.
Wikipedia describes her as “the heartbreaker of the sixties art scene. Talented and outspoken, she was loved by countless men…” Boty and Blake became inseparable. Between 1959-60, Blake painted a valentine for her, simply titled “Valentine (for Pauline Boty)”.
Peter Blake: Valentine (for Pauline Boty), 1959-60.
There’s Lewis Morley’s famous photograph of Pauline holding the Valentine painting.
Boty and Jann Haworth were the only two women among the pop artists at the time. Haworth, like Blake, was represented by Robert Fraser and had solo shows at his gallery as well as a joint exhibition with Peter Blake, Derek Boshier and Colin Self.But Boty’s romantic life was complicated. She was having an affair with TV director Philip Saville (who was already married) while involved with Blake. Then in June 1963, after a whirlwind ten-day romance, she married literary agent Clive Goodwin. Blake—and Saville—must have been devastated.
Blake’s response was swift. Just one month later, in July 1963, he married the other female pop artist, Jann Haworth, whom he had met at a party while she was a student at the Slade School of Art. Another whirlwind romance. The newlyweds immediately left for an extended honeymoon in California, where Jann’s father, Academy Award-winning art director Ted Haworth, lent them his Stingray sports car. They drove to Malibu listening to the Beach Boys, and Ted got Blake access to a film studio storeroom filled with props from the Elizabeth Taylor film Cleopatra. They were still in California in November when President Kennedy was assassinated.
Pauline Boty’s remarkable artistic and acting career ended abruptly when, in 1965 while pregnant, she developed a malignant tumour. Boty refused abortion and treatment as it would harm the foetus. Her daughter Katy was born on 12th February 1966, and Pauline died on 1st July, aged only 28. The “Valentine” painting passed to her husband Clive Goodwin until his death in 1977. It was later acquired by art collector Muriel Wilson (1933-2018), who donated it to the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester along with many other works from her collection.
Blake and Haworth remained together for sixteen years, founding the Brotherhood of Ruralists in 1975. But in 1979, history repeated itself. Haworth met author Richard Severy and left Blake. Devastated, Blake left Somerset and the Ruralists and returned to London. He was reported to have been unable to work for almost a year after this separation—a testament to how deeply the loss affected him.
When the Valentine painting came up for sale at Sotheby’s in 2019, it was featured in an article titled “Unrequited Love and Peter Blake’s Pop Art Valentine.” But the image had clearly stayed with Blake. Sixty-five years after its creation, it reappeared on the cover of Band Aid 40’s 2024 single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”—suggesting that his feelings for Boty, and that moment in time, had never entirely left him.
There’s another possible legacy of Blake’s relationship with Boty that art historians may have overlooked. Boty was herself an accomplished collage artist. While the textbooks credit Joseph Cornell and Kurt Schwitters as Blake’s influences in collage, perhaps the woman who was ‘inseparable’ from him during those formative years played a more significant role than history has acknowledged. It wouldn’t be the first time a male artist’s female partner influenced his work without receiving credit.
Blake met artist Chrissy Wilson in 1980, soon after returning to London, and they married in 1987 after his divorce from Haworth was finalized in 1981. They are still together after more than 40 years—perhaps Blake had finally found lasting love.
Haworth and Severy remained together until Severy’s death..
Brian Donnely (born 4th November 1974 in Jersey City, New Jersey) is an American artist and designer iiving in Brooklyn. Took the artist name KAWS purely because of the way the letters appeared while still a teenager. He moved to New York where he began his career s a graffiti artist. He has graduated to fine art, paintings, sculptures and prints including record cover art.
I got a email recently offering me the chance to pre-order a record with a KAWS designed cover and that gave me the idea to try to find as many KAWS covers as I could. Searching the webb I have thus far found seventeen cover designs, the earliest from 1999 and the most recent to be released in July 2025.
So, here we go.
Number 1.
The Propellerheads—Take California and Party–12″ single released on the Wall of Sound label in 1999.
Number 2.
Cherie—Cherie—CD released on the Ape Sounds label. Cherie is a Japanese moodel, singer aand songwriter. This is her second CD, released in 2002. Guy Minnebach pointed out the tiny text above Cherie’s mask that says ”Peel slorly and see.” Now where have we seen that before? Of course! Beside the banana on the cover of the Velvet Underground & Nico! So KAWS is here directly referencing Andy Warhol! You can peel off the mask to reveal Cherie’s face.
Number 3.
DJ Hasebe—Tail of Old Nick EP–Limited edition six-track 12″ EP released in 2002 on the Sweep Inc / WEA Japan labels. DJ Hasebe is a Japanese DJ, hip hop artist and producer born 1971. This EP has become rare and very expensive.
Number 4.
DJ Hasebe—Old Nick 2-track promotional sampler, released 2002 with an outline version of the KAWS figure on the label.
Number 5.
DJ Hasebe—Old Nick Radio Show–CD released in May 2002 by WEA Japan.
Number 6.
Towa Tei—Sweet Robots Against the Machine:–12″ released on the Rhjythm Republic label in 2003. Towa Tei is a producer, remixer, DJ, artist and creative director, born Yokohama, Japan, in 1964.
Number 7.
Various Artists compilation–Heavy Volume 2–Single-sided LP in abook with KAWS’ reimagination of various record covers.
Number 8.
Kanye West—808s & Heartbreak–2LP + CD–Rock-A-Fella Records, 2008. Kanye West, born 1977, probably needs no introduction, having being married to Kim Kardasian between 2014 and 2022. He currently uses the name Ye.
Number 9.
Clipse–Til the Casket Drops–12″ LP–Get on Down Records–2009. Clipse are a gangsta rap duo ade up of No Malice and Pusha T formed in 1992. This was their third album.
Number 10.
Screenshot
The Scotts—The Scotts--7- and 12-inch singles with coloured vinyl or as picture discs. Released on Travis Scott’s Cactus Jack label. Travis Scott and Kid Cudi formed The Scotts in 2020 for this single release.
Number 11.
J-Hope—Jack in the Box–Single-sided 12″ LP–Released by Bighit Music in 2022. J-Hope, born in 1994 is a South Korean hip hop, rap and dance pop star.
Number 12.
Kid Cudi—Man on the Moon: Trilogy–Box Set 3 x reissue 2LPs–released by Republic Records in 2022. Kid Cudi, born 1984, is Scott Ramon Seguro Mescudi and also uses the moniker Kud Cudi.
Number 13.
Snoop Dogg—Doggy Style–12″ LP. This is a 2023 reissue of the album originally released in 1993, released with reimagined cover art as part of Interscope Records 30th anniversary celebration.
Mumber 14.
Kid Cudi—Insano–2LP–Released 2024 by Republic Records.
Number 15.
Clipse–Let God Sort EM Out–LP–released July 2025 on the Interscope label. Clipse return after a sixteen-year hiatus with a new album. To my mind the finest KAWS cover design so far.
Here’s another artist whose record cover art I don’t really collect. But as you probably know by now I do have a penchant for Pop Art and I put Ed Ruscha in that class. However… I did pick up the Beatles’ Now and Then / Love Me Do single on seven- and twelve-inch vinyl, so I have the beginnings of an Ed Ruscha collection.
Yesterday (18th May, 2025), I went to Stockholm’s Wetterling Gallery to see the Ed Ruscha exhibiton Figure It there and was honoured to be given a guided tour by Björn Wetterling himself. He also dug around for a copy of the exhibiiton catalogue which is housed in a twelve-inch record sleeve. Thus I have two Ed Ruscha record covers, so I decided to see what other covers he has made.
First off, there’s Paul McCartney‘s 2020 album McCartney III, which wasn’t designed by Ruscha but he provided the typography on the front cover. Photography was by Mary McCartney, so Paul kept that in the family.
The first cover Ruscha painted was for Mason Williams ‘1969 album Music.
2. Ruscha did the title on the cover of Talking Heads‘ 1992 compilation album Sand in the Vaseline. The cover art, however, is credited to Frank Olinsky and Manhattan Design.
3. Van Dyke Parks released a seven-inch single in 2011 called Dreaming of Paris / Wedding in Madagascar (Faranaina) and used a photo of Ruscha’s Paris print on the cover.
4. The two remaining memebers of the Beatles, with the help of AI reworked John Lennon‘s demo of Now and Then and in 2020 released it as a single on seven-, ten-, and twelve-inch vinyl coupled with a Giles Martin remastered version of the Beatles‘ first single Love Me Do. This time Ruscha designed the cover.
5. In 2023, Interscope Records celebrated its thirtieth anniversary and invited several “fine” artists to reimagine the cover art of many of the label’s back catalogue. Damien Hirst reimagined twelve of Eminem‘s covers and Richard Prince reimagined Nine Inch Nails‘ The Downward Spiral cover. Ed Ruscha reimagined 2Pac‘s All Eyez on Me album from 1996. There were two versions; a picture disc version in a ‘limited’ edition of 500 copies and a black vinyl edition of 100 copies that included a giclee print of the cover art signed by Ruscha. The picture disc edition sold for USD 100 and the 100 copy edition for USD 2,500!
6. Dead End. This is the cover from the Wetterling Gallery‘s recent Ed Ruscha exhibition. The Dead End print looks like it’s made of metal but it is actually a multi-layered print on hand-made paper. The typeface is Ruscha‘s typical Boy Scout Utility Modern with its squared off, geometric letter forms. Insted of a record, there is a card insert along with the actual catalogue.
I haven’t been able to find any more Ed Ruscha covers so I might be tempted to try to collect the few that I don’t actually have.
I don’t normally write about record cover artists that I don’t collect. However, A friend has nagged me about William Eggleston’s covers and I felt I had to look into them.
Eggleston, born July 27th, 1939 in Memphis, Tennessee, was apparently an introverted child who his mother described as “a brilliant but strange boy”. He taught himself to play the piano and drawing. He was drawn to visual media and collected postcards and cut out pictures from magazines. Eggleston first became intrested in photography while at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and bought his first camera after a friend who recognised his fascination with visual imagery and his interest in mechanics suggested he buy a camera.
He turned to colour photography and in 1976 the Museum of Modern Art organised the first exhibion of Eggleston’s photographs–an exhibition that for the first time showed colour photographs. This seminal show was accompanied by the Catalogue Willim Eggleston’s Guide and showeed, for the first time, that colour photography could be raised to the level of art. Two of the photos in this book would turn up on record covers.
Eggleston has had many impressive exhibitions since.
Record covers
1. Eggleston‘s first record cover image was on Big Star’s album Radio City, released in 1974. The cover featured Eggleston’s 1973 photograph Red Ceiling. Alex Chilton (1950-2010) was a founder member of Big Star. Eggleston was a good friend of Chilton’s parents and Alex’s father championed Eggleston’s work. Alex knew him well and also admired his work, so it was natural to ask Eggleston for an image for Big Star‘s album, In addition Eggleston was later to play piano on Nature Boy, one of Big Star‘s songs on their third album.
2. Alex Chilton‘s 1979 album Like Flies on Sherbert features Eggleston’s Dolls on a. Cadillac photo from his Los Alamos series made between 1965 and 1974. Again, Chilton asked his friend for a suitable cover image.
3. Green on Red, from Tucson, Arizona, was a quartet made up of Dan Stuart, Jack Waterson, Chris Cacavas and Chuck Prophet. The band released their fourth long player Here. Come the Snakes in 1988 with Egglesgon’s Near the River at Greenville, Mississipi from 1975 on the cover.
4. Primal Scream went to Ardent Studio in Memphis to record Rocks and recorded their 1992 EP Dixie Narco there.Intgerestingly, Big Star had recorded Radio City at Ardent studio and Alex Chiltern’s mother had an art gallery in Memphis showinfg Eggleston’s photography. It seems likely that Primal Scream would have been exopsed to Eggleston’s work during that visit to Memphis and resulted in the band using four of Eggleston’s photos on record sleeves.
5. Another Big Star album came out in 1993 when the re-formed band made up of Alex Chilton, Jody Stephens and new recruits Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow from the Posies released Live at Missouri University. Once again Chilton turned to Eggleston for a cover image. The picture of a ceiling fan is reminicent of the Red Ceiling photo on the band’s Radio City cover. the photo is titled Washington D.C:, 1970.
6. The following year (1994) Primal Scream used a cropped version of Eggleston’s Troubled Waters on their 1994 Give Out But Don’t Give Up album. According to Primal Scream the image of a Confederate Flag was a reference to the fact that the band had been to the South to Memphis to record with legendary producer Tom Dowd.
7. Gimmer Nicholson moved in the same Memphis circles as Eggleston and recorded his Christopher Idyll album in 1968, produced by Terry Μanning, a photographer and friend of Eggleston. Eggleston had helped edit the photography on Mannings’s own 1970 album Home Sweet Home. Nicholson‘s Christopher Idyll was first released as a limited edition LP in 1981 and later as a CD in 1994.
8. The title of Jimmy Eat World‘s 2001 album Bleed American echoes the title of Eggleton’s photo, which is also from the Los Alamos series (1965-1974). The photo shows sports trophies on top of a cigarette vending machine supposed to rerpresent “the fragilityof success.”
9. The photo on thee cover of The Derek Trucks Band‘s Soul Serenade album is Eggleston’s Untitled (Near Minter City and Glendora, Mississippi) from 1970 and is the first to come from the William Eggleston Guide book.I haven’t been able to establish a direct connection between the band and Eggleston, but the fact that the band comes from the American South makes using a photo from a fellow southener (Eggleston) logical.
10. Chuck Prophet, as previously mentioned, was previously a member of Green on Red and was a confirmed Eggelston fan. His Age of Miracles album was released in 2004. The photo, from 1975, was of Eggleston’s friend Martha Hare spaced out on half a Qualude taken in Memphis. It would turn up again on Primal Scream‘s 2006 single Country Girl.
11. Primal Scream seem to like Eggleston’s work as the band released two singles in 2006 with cover photos by him. Here’s the cover of Country Girl. The other was Dolls. (see No. 12)
12. David Berman, formed the Silver Jews in New York together with Stephen Malkmus and Bob Nastanovich from Pavement in 1989. Berman was living in Memphis when the band’s Tanglewood Numbers came out in 2005 and he felt that one of Eggleston’s photos from Memphis suited the album’s cover.
13. The second Primal Scream single from 2006 was Dolls with Eggleston’s Untitled, Memphis, 1972-73 photo on the cover. I’m not sure who the model was on this one.
14. It is unclear why Joanna Newsom decided to use a modified version of Eggleston’s Kenya, 1980 photo on the cover of her 2007 release Joanna Newsom and Ys Street Band E.P. The cover shows a rotated version of the original photo. Eggleston’s original has the branch sticking out from the left of the picture. The record’s title is supposed to be a play on Bruce Springsteen’s E. Street Band.
15. Spoon, a band from Austin, Texas, released their seventh album, Transference, in 2010 and selected Eggleston’s photo of his nephew from his Sumner, Mississippi, series. This photo was also included in the 1976 MoMa exhibition of Eggleston’s owork and included in the exhibition catalogue.
16. 2017 William Eggelston’s Music, his first release of his own musical improvisations with two tracks by well-known composers; Lerner & Loewe‘s On The Street Where You Live and Gilbert & Sullivan’s Tit Willow.
17. Eggleston‘s second full-length recording came out in 2023, when he was 84 years old! This album contained one of his own improvisations and five “standards”; Ol’ Man River, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,Over the Rainbow, That’s Some Robert Burns and Onward Christian Soldiers (which occupies the whole of side two. The title, 512, comes from the flat where he recorded the album,
18. J. Spaceman (Jason Pierce) and John Coxon, part of Spiritualized, one of my favourite bands, released a double album entitled Music for William Eggleston’s Stranded in Canton on 18th October 2024. They first performed the musical score in a show at the Barbican Gallery in 2015 but the record wasn’t released until nearly ten years later. Stranded in Canton is Eggleston’s 1974 raw Memphis film shot in bars and on street corners and showing Eggleton’s friends carousing, playing music and firing pistols into the night sky.
The album cover shows stills from the film rather than separate photographs. I have the standard edition but there is a deluxe white vinyl version with extra photos and a booklet and a different cover image (see the lower picture.)
I would advise anyone who wants to start collection any designer’s, illustrator’s or photographer’s record cover for simpliccity’s sake choose one with a maximum of, say, 200 covers to collect. That would rule out the likes of Alex Steinweiss (who has been estimated to have produced over 2,500 covers) or Anton Corbijn or even Rob Jones (I started collecting his covers but gave up), who designs many covers for Jack White’s Third Man Records.
I started collecting record covers by the artist known as Banksy–whoever he may be–in around 2005 not thinking there would be too many to find. So far my collection includes 180 items, admittedly with a few doubles, but I’m getting dangerously near the 200 cover limit!
Here’s my list as of May 2025. I make no claim that it is complwete. One can always find covers with minor details with Banksy art.
Artist–Title–Format–Label–Cat No. –Year Released
1. Mother Samosa[1]— The Fairground of Fear — Printers proof of cassette inlay — Mother Samosa — 1993
2. Mother Samosa* — Oh My God It’s Cheeky Clown — Printers proof of cassette inlay — Mother Samosa –1994
3. Revolucion X--Canciones electorales–Cassette — Not on label — 1997 (?)
4. One Cut — Cut Commander — 12” — Hombre Records — MEX 006 1998
5. Capoeira Twins — 4 x 3 / Truth Will Out — 12” promo — Blowpop Records — BLOWP 001 1999
6. One Cut — Hombre Mix — CD — Hombre Records — 666017004020 (CDX002) — 1999
7. Various Artists compilation — The Next XI — Sleazenation No 2, Sept 1999 — Wall of Sound — IMPRESS SN 01 — 1999
8. One Cut — Grand Theft Audio — Double LP — Hombre Records MEX 024 — 2000
9. One Cut — Grand Theft Audio Sampler — 12” promo — Hombre Records — MEX 025 — 2000
10. One Cut — Mr X / Rhythm Geometry — 12” — Hombre Records — MEX 029 — 2000
11. One Cut — Underground Terror Tactics — 12” — Hombre Records — MEX 016 — 2000
12. One Cut — Armour Plated, X-Rated — CD promo — Hombré Records — MEX 024cd — 2000
13. Monk & Canatella — Do Community Service — CD — Telstar Records — TDC 3112 — 2000
14. Various Artists — We Love You… So Love Us — LP — Wall of Sound AMOUR 1 — LP 2000
15. Various Artists — We Love You… So Love Us — CD — Wall of Sound — 72438491421 (AMOUR1CD) — 2000
16. Dynamic Duo / Nasty P — Skateboards — CD promo — Turntable Masochists — 2000
17. Dynamic Duo — Styles by the Dozen — 12” — Complex Broad — CB001 — 2000
18. Various Artists — Monkeys With Car Keys — CD — Natural Born Productions — 2000?
19. The Promise — Believer — Red vinyl LP — Deathwish — DW124 2022-07-15.
176. The New York Folk Music Hall of Fame–Eternal Bridges: Songs of Peace, Hope & Freedom–CD–NYFMHoF–8,88296E–2023
177. Fist2Fist–Hold the Gun–CD EP–Not on label–none–year?
I know you would like to see pictures of each release but there just isn’t time to add them. If I have missed any important releases, please feel free to cotact me in the Comments and I’ll try to add them.
Try to imagine a shy twenry-year-old, who is conviced he is ugly (his nose is bulbous and his hair is already thinning) who leaves art college in his home town of Pittsburgh and, in the summer of 1949, moves to New York to seek his fortune. Andy Warhola is determined to find work and hawks his portfolio to the offices of glossy magazines and record companies.
He goes to the offices of Columbia Rrecords, who the previous August, had begun reieasng long playing records and was in the process of reissuing many of their best selling classical albums previously available as 78 rpm sets in the new medium that allowed a whole symphony to fit on one side of a twelve-inch LP.
In 1938, the company hired a 21-year-old Alex Steinweiss as its art director. Steinweiss felt that the company’s record albums with their plain covers were dull and suggested adding pictures to the covers. His superiors were sceptical, but allowed him to make a few trial cover. These were successful, increasing sales. Steinweiss first cover was for an album of Smash Hits by Rodgers and Hart.
The young Warhol was commissioned to illustrate two covers.
Andy Warhol’s first cover for Columbia Records, 1949.
In 1951, Warhol was commissioned to illustrate a newspaper advertisement for radio programmes called The Nation’s Nightmare and Crime on the Waterfront to be broadcast by CBS Radio that autumn. CBS decied to release the programmes the following year on an LP.
Warhol won his first design award for the designs.
In the fifties, Warhol cooperated with Reid Miles, the legendary art director at Blue Note and Prestige Records, producing a numner of classic jazz covers. He also continued to get commissions from Columbia Records subsidiaries and designed several classical covers.
Other Pop artists would later design record covers: Robert Rauchenberg designed the limited edition cover for Talking Heads’ Speaking in Tongues (1983), Robert Indiana’s LOVE image appeared on a recording of Messiaen’s Turangalila Symphony and Ed Ruscha, who has become Paul McCartney’s buddy, has designed several covers for the ex-Beatle as well as the cover for the Beatles’ last single Now and Then.
And England’s Pop artists were also designing record covers. Peter Blake together with his wife at the time, Jann Haworth came up with the famous cover for the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album and Blake has continued to design record covers — now over forty! Richard Hamilton was invited to design the Beatles next full album The Beatles (the white album) and chose a minimalitic cover to contrast with the Sgt. Pepper design.
Other British artists who have designed record covers include Damien Hirst, David Shrigley, Tracy Emin as well as design groups such as Hipgnosis.
Andy Warhol, announced in 1965 that he was giving up painting to concentrated on his other projects — film and the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, featuring the Velvet Underground and performances and dancers including Gerard Malanga, who would assist Warhol in his printmaking. He took the Velvet Underground to Norman Dolph’s Scepter Studio in New York to record the band’s first album. Warhol insisting that Nico, a German singer, sing on three songs. Warhol offered the record to Columbia Records, who turned it down, suggesting it needed beter production and Warhol let Tom Wilson re-record the album, which Warhol then offered to Verve Records who released it in March 1967. Warhol designed the Banana cover and the front cover just had the banana (with ‘peel me and see’ beside the neck) and Andy Warhol’s name at the bottom.
Warhol was a “mover and shaker” in 60s and 70s New York travelling to parties and discos always with an entourage of beautiful people. He loved being with celbrities. He met Mick Jagger who asjed him to design the cover for the forst Rolling Stones album to be released on the Stones’ own label. Warhol came up with the zip cover for Sticky Fingers (released April 1971).
My signed “Sticky Fingers” LP.
There has been a debate about whose jeans Warhol photographed for the Stocky Fingers cover. It wasn’t Joe d’Allesandro, as many have suggesteds. It may have been Warhol’s parrtner Jed Johnson’s twin brother Jay who was the model.
Warhol was also asked to design the cover for the Stones’ Love You Live album. He had invited the band to hs Long Island home at Montauk wherer he photographed them biting themselves or each other. He selected a picture of Mick Jagger biting his daughter Jade’s hand for the cover. Warhol dis not want any writing on the cover but Mick Jagger added the band name and the record title, which annoyed Warhol. He would normally sign anything he was asked to sign but refused to sign the front cover of the Love You Live album, usually choosing instead to sign the inner spread.
The Front cover of “Love You Live” showing Mick biting a child’s hand (Jade Jagger). .
Later Warhol began a cooperation with Jean-Michel Basquiat, a New York street artist turned fine artist. Basquiat would only outlive Warhol by little over a year, dying in 1968 of a drug overdose, but nor before he had managed to produce a few record covers.
That brings me to other street artists, including the enigmatic artist who calls himself Banksy. Banksy started as a street artist in his native Bristol in the late 90s and produced designs for record covers from then. His first major albel design was for Blur’s Think Tank album in 2003.
Bansky’s art has appeared on over two hundred records and CDs, the majority unofficially.
Other street artists have designed record covers. Mr. Brainwash designed Madonna’s Celebration compilation from 2009.
Hellstrom, a Swedish street artitst, designed a limited edition cover (40 copies) for his namesake Håkan Hellström’s Illusioner album (2019) with a silkscreened portrait of the artist.
Other Swedish designers and artists have designed interesting ecord covers. Martin Kann has designed the covers for bob hund’s records and CDs and — as far as I know — produced on the second cover to give the cover designer’s name on the front of a release: Omslag Martin Kann by bob hund.
The Swedish designer who has sold the most ercords in Swedden is probably Helen Sköld, who has desgne dthe covers for kent, Sweden’s biggest band since ABBA.
Karin Mamma Andersson is a Swedish artist who has made an international career. She has designed covers for the alternative poet and songwriterr Mattias Alkberg as well as providing paintings for three of Beck’s releases.
Cundy Sherman is another worrld renowned photographer who has used her photos on record covers. The latest is for her friend Jenni Muldaur’s (daughter of singer Maria Muldaur) and Teddy Thompson’s (son of Richard Thompson) Teddy & Jenni do George & Tammy EP.
Teddy & Jenni Do George & Tammy
There are other ways of collecting record cover art. Anyone remember bubble gum packaged in small copies of record covers? They are quite collectable. As we are at Spritmuseum, hoem of the Absolut Art Collection, I wold also mention the Absolut Cover adverts that use Bowie’s Aladin Sane image, Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew cover image and others in adverts.
Just recently, I discovered an invitation to an exhibition of the Absolut Vodka record cover adverts in New York in the form of a seven-inch single.
This article is a somewhat expanded version of a lecture given in Swedish on Sunday January 26th 2025 at Spritmuseum, Stockholm, as part of the Money on the Wall– Andy Warhol Exhibition that runs until September 14th 2025.
Band Aid’s single Do They Know It’s Christmas? was concieved on November 2nd 1984 by Bob Geldorf who contacted Midge Ure and together they wrote the song on the following day. The song was recorded at SARM West End studios on Sunday, November 25th by a collection of artists enlisted specially for this recording.
Peter Blake was approached to design the cover and was give one week to come up with the design. A classic Peter Blake collage:
The record was released on 7th December 1984 both on seven-inch and twelve-inch vinyl, and went on to sell millions of copies resulting in GBP 8 million for the charity. I went out and bought several copies to give to friends as Christmas presents.
The record was re-released in November 1985 with a new B-side One Year On (Feed the World), again as a seven-inch and a twelve inch.
Do They Know It’s Christmas? was first released on CD in 1989 together with a cassettee and new seven-inch versions. The cover was a disappointing black or green cover designed by David Howells.
The next release was for the record’s twentieth anniversary in 2004. Released only as CD single, the cover was initially to be designed by Damien Hirst but his design was rejected as being too harrowing and Mat Maitland made the cover image A Disney-ish winter scene with a superimposed image of the back of a starving child.
For the thirtieth anniversary in 2014, Tracy Emin was selected for the cover design and she produced one of her neon signs.
And now it’s 2024–forty years after the original release and Bob Geldorf has once more asked Sir Peter Blake for a new design. It was released on 29th November, this time, only available as a 12″ maxi EP and a CD. Trevor Horn, the producer of the original 1984 version of Do Thy Know It’s Christmas has produced a new remix for this fortieth anniversary release.
Blake has reused his red heart on a yellow background as the main image and selected a range of collagese placed along the top. Front cover design is, however, credited to Mark Cowne with layout and design by Darren Evans. I get a bit muddled by all these designers. All I know is the images on the front cover are by Peter Blake.
This isn’t the first time Blake’s red heart motif has appeared on a record cover. It turned up on the inner spread of Mark Knopfler’s Tracker LP in 2015.
Stay tuned for my report on the fiftieth anniversary version. I hope I’m still around then.
I lost my original copy of Blur’s Think Tank poster in 2010 when it got lost after an exhibition of Banksy’s record covers in Stockholm. At last I’ve found a replacement — though it was considerably more expensive than the one I lost. This new acquisition made me review my collection of Think Tank albums, promos and such.
I saw Blur at Hultsfreds Festival in Sweden in 1996 and got a couple of album covers signed. So it was quite logical that I also bought Think Tank on vinyl when it first came out, and I suppose this was the first Banksy designed cover in my collection. I also bought the Observer five-track promo soon after. I soon found the large Think Tank poster to add to the collection.
My collection of Banksy covers started in 2005-6 after I missed seeing a streeet art exhibiiton at which several Banksy prints were on sale. I found most early covers at standard issue prices with only a couple costing more than that — the Laugh Now / Keep It Real twelve-inchers cost £6.99 each back then! My next buys were the Think Tank promo CD with the petrolhead stamp and the promo twelve-inch white label.
Think Tank promo CD and 12-inch vinyl.
In addition to the double vinyl, I bought the ‘limited edition’ CD in the red book cover so I didn’t buy a standard Think Tank CD until the reissue box set with bonus CD and the four prints when it came out in 2012.
ThinkTank 2012 box set.
I had seen that a number of the Think Tank promo CDs had been found without the Petrolhead stamp and a good friend sold me a second copy of the CD with the stamp and one without. I had also read about a version with a pink baby’s hand stamped instead of the Petrolhead figure and when one came up on Ebay I nabbed it! So my collection of promo CDs has grown.
Three promotional CDs for Blur’s Think Tank album.
I wondered why no one had come up with one of these promos with a foot instead of the baby’s hand. So I went to Photoshop and created my own, though I haven’t printed it yet.
I ‘m a sucker and gave in to temptation and bought the reissue Think Tank double LP in 2023.
More recently, I read about the Blur stencil that appeared on adverts for the Think Tank album when it was released and found a nice mint stencil as well as a magazine ad for the album showing the stencil.
I know there are interesting versions of Think Tank available from other countries but I’m limiting my collection to U.K./Europe issues. I wonder what other additions may turn up in future.
Klaus Voormann will be 86 on April 29th, 2024, but he hasn’t retired from record cover design. My current list of Voormann covers has just reached its centenary — 100 covers listed! The list includes magazine and book covers in addition to the 90-odd record covers he has designed.
The latest two to turn up are Wolfgang Bernreuther’s Still a Fool, a CD or a limited edtion double LP, released on 21st April 2023.
Classic Voormann drawing.
And, as mentioned in my recent post on Voormann’s early covers, the latest Manfred Mann greatest hits package called Hits From the Sixties, was released in April 2024. Thanks to Stefan Thull, a Voormann collector, I was able to get a signed copy to add to my collection.
Klaus drew this portrait of Manfred Mann in 1966 — as written on the piano keys while he was a member of Manfred Mann. He also designed the cover for the Manfred’s 1966 album As Is.
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