110 Fun Facts About Album Cover

On the cover of Abbey Road, which Beatle is barefoot and out of step with the others?

Paul McCartney had simply kicked off his sandals on a warm day, and he is wearing them in other frames from the shoot. That did not stop 'Paul is dead' theorists reading his bare feet as a corpse's in a funeral procession.

Roughly how long did Iain Macmillan have to shoot the Abbey Road cover while a policeman held up traffic?

Ten minutes is the usual figure, and he spent them perched on a stepladder in the middle of the road. The frame chosen for the cover was the only one that caught all four pairs of legs in a perfect V.

What make of car is parked to the left of the zebra crossing on the Abbey Road cover?

A Volkswagen Beetle that just happened to be parked outside the studio. The cover made it so famous that it was bought at auction in 1999 for the Volkswagen museum in Wolfsburg.

Which two pop artists designed the Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band cover?

Peter Blake and Jann Haworth, then husband and wife, shared a Grammy for the sleeve. Blake's fee was a flat £200 with no royalties, a deal he later complained about.

Which two figures did John Lennon want on the Sgt Pepper cover, only to be overruled?

Adolf Hitler and Jesus Christ were judged too controversial. No Jesus cut-out was even made, a year after Lennon's 'more popular than Jesus' remark, while a Hitler figure was built but kept out of view.

Which Beatle offered no suggestions for the Sgt Pepper crowd, saying 'whatever the others say is fine by me'?

Ringo Starr left the choosing to the others. Mae West at first refused, asking what she would be doing in a lonely hearts club, and agreed only after the Beatles wrote to her themselves.

Which musician designed the Beatles' Revolver cover and won a Grammy for it?

Klaus Voormann, a friend from the Beatles' Hamburg days, says he drew it in the kitchen of a London attic flat. EMI paid him no more than £50, which it called its limit for a record sleeve.

Pink Floyd's Richard Wright wanted The Dark Side of the Moon sleeve to look like which box of chocolates?

Black Magic: Wright wanted something stylish and simple, like its plain box. The designers left the studio depressed, yet when they returned with several ideas, the whole band picked the prism at once.

Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon prism was inspired by a picture in what?

Physics textbook: the design studio Hipgnosis found a picture of light split into a rainbow by a piece of glass and had it redrawn, after one of the band asked for something simpler than the studio's usual surreal images.

On Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here cover, two businessmen shake hands while one of them is what?

On fire, and for real: stuntman Ronnie Rondell wore a fireproof suit under his business suit, and on the fifteenth take the wind turned and burned off part of his moustache.

Pink Floyd's Animals cover shows an inflatable pig floating over which London landmark?

Battersea Power Station was Roger Waters's choice, a building he had always loved. During the shoot the 40-foot pig broke its moorings, drifted into Heathrow's flight path and came down in a Kent field, scaring a farmer's cows.

Nirvana's Nevermind cover shows a naked baby underwater reaching for what?

A dollar on a fishhook was added to the photograph afterwards. Kurt Cobain first wanted a water-birth picture, but the footage was too graphic, so the label sent an underwater photographer to shoot a friend's baby in a pool.

What did Spencer Elden, the baby on Nirvana's Nevermind cover, do in 2021?

Sued the band over it, calling the image exploitation of a minor. A judge dismissed the case in 2022 and again in 2025, the second time likening the photo to a family snapshot of a baby in the bath.

Kurt Cobain said the only cover-up he would accept on Nevermind was a sticker with what message?

The offended are closet pedophiles: his wording was 'If you're offended by this, you must be a closet pedophile.' Geffen had an alternate cover ready, then backed down and released the photo untouched.

Which artist designed the peelable banana on The Velvet Underground & Nico?

Andy Warhol's is the only name on the front, not the band's. The banana was a sticker marked 'Peel slowly and see', and the label paid for a special machine to make it, counting on his name to sell the record.

What working feature did the original vinyl sleeve of the Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers have?

A real zipper, at Mick Jagger's insistence. An extra panel was added behind it to protect the vinyl, yet in transit each zip pull still dented the record stacked on top, right on the grooves of 'Sister Morphine'.

Who took the photograph of Bruce Springsteen's backside against a flag on Born in the U.S.A.?

Annie Leibovitz shot it. Some thought Springsteen was relieving himself on the flag; he said there was no hidden message, only that the picture of his backside looked better than the one of his face.

On the cover of London Calling, Paul Simonon is smashing which instrument?

A Fender Precision bass, and his favourite: Simonon wrecked it on stage at the Palladium in 1979, furious that bouncers would not let the audience stand up and dance.

Photographer Pennie Smith argued against using her London Calling cover shot because it was what?

Out of focus, because she had stepped back as Simonon came towards her. Joe Strummer overruled her, and in 2002 Q magazine named it the greatest rock'n'roll photograph of all time.

The cover of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures is a plot of radio signals from what kind of object?

A pulsar, and the first ever discovered: the stacked lines are its radio pulses, plotted by a student for his 1970 thesis. One of the band spotted the chart in an astronomy encyclopedia and took it to the designer.

On the cover of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, Stevie Nicks poses in which stage persona?

Rhiannon, the 'old Welsh witch' of her song. Beside her, Mick Fleetwood has two wooden balls hanging between his legs: lavatory chains he once took from a toilet and kept wearing on stage as a lucky charm.

Which real Los Angeles hotel is pictured on the cover of the Eagles' Hotel California?

The Beverly Hills Hotel was shot at dusk from a cherry picker 60 feet above Sunset Boulevard, an angle so unfamiliar that few recognised it. Once they did, the hotel threatened to sue, then backed off when its bookings tripled.

Which band's 1976 debut album cover, four men against a brick wall, began as a shoot for Punk magazine?

Ramones: an earlier cover shoot had been rejected, so the label turned to a picture Roberta Bayley had taken for the magazine, the one, she says, where the four evened out their heights.

At which city's zoo did the Beach Boys feed goats for the Pet Sounds cover?

San Diego Zoo. Al Jardine blamed Capitol's art department, saying it had not listened to the record and thought it was about animals.

Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy cover was photographed at which landmark?

The Giant's Causeway, where just two models, a brother and sister, were multi-printed into eleven figures. The designers' first pitch, a tennis court punning on 'racket', so angered Jimmy Page that it nearly cost them the job.

Led Zeppelin's untitled fourth album is often called what, after the symbol Jimmy Page chose?

Zoso is only what Jimmy Page's symbol appears to spell. After lukewarm reviews of their third album the band left off both title and name, and each member chose a symbol to stand on the sleeve instead.

Which photographer shot David Bowie with a lightning bolt across his face for Aladdin Sane?

Brian Duffy shot it in his London studio. Bowie's manager ordered an expensive sleeve, reasoning that the label would then have to promote the record hard, so it was printed by a costly dye-transfer process.

On which David Bowie album cover does he stand in a London street beneath a 'K. West' sign?

Ziggy Stardust: K. West was a furrier at 23 Heddon Street, just outside the photographer's studio. The black-and-white shot was hand-tinted afterwards, and in 2012 a plaque went up where the sign once hung.

On the cover of Purple Rain, Prince sits astride what?

A Honda motorcycle, the customised Hondamatic he rides as the Kid in the film. The tenement street is a fake, a set on the Warner Bros. backlot in California, and the woman in the doorway is his co-star Apollonia.

The white suit Michael Jackson wears on the Thriller cover belonged to whom?

Photographer Dick Zimmerman lent his own suit, by his account. The gatefold shows a tiger cub at Jackson's leg, which he says Jackson kept away from his face for fear of being scratched.

Rage Against the Machine's debut cover shows a Buddhist monk doing what in Saigon in 1963?

Setting himself on fire: Thích Quảng Đức burned himself to death at a Saigon crossroads to protest the Diệm government's treatment of Buddhists. Malcolm Browne's picture of it was named World Press Photo of the Year.

Green Day's American Idiot cover shows a bloody fist gripping what?

A heart-shaped hand grenade, which designer Chris Bilheimer drew after hearing a line in the album's song 'She's a Rebel' about a heart held like one.

What did Bon Jovi's withdrawn Slippery When Wet cover show?

A woman in a wet yellow T-shirt with the title across her chest. Jon Bon Jovi says he was appalled, so he sprayed a black bin bag with water and traced the title on it with his finger; Japan kept the original.

Which painter created the winged, armless figure straddling Kanye on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy?

George Condo painted five covers for the album after Kanye kept visiting his studio that summer. This one was pixelated on censored editions; another, a ballerina, grew into the 'Runaway' film.

Which band put a nurse snapping on a rubber glove on the cover of 1999's Enema of the State?

Blink-182 picked adult film actress Janine Lindemulder from a pile of model photos without knowing who she was. The glove was devised for the working title, Turn Your Head and Cough, and stayed when the name changed.

The soldier on the cover of the Smiths' Meat Is Murder originally had what slogan on his helmet?

Make War Not Love was scrawled on the helmet of Marine Cpl Michael Wynn in a frame from the Vietnam documentary In the Year of the Pig. Morrissey lifted the image and had the helmet relettered with the album's title.

The die-cut tenement building on Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti stands on which Manhattan street?

St. Mark's Place, numbers 96 and 98 in the East Village. Six years later Mick Jagger and Keith Richards sat on the same front stoop for the Rolling Stones' 'Waiting on a Friend' video.

On a famous 1965 Herb Alpert sleeve, model Dolores Erickson appears to be covered in nothing but what?

Whipped cream melted under the studio lights, so what covers her on Whipped Cream & Other Delights is shaving cream. Erickson was also three months pregnant at the time.

Which Metallica album cover shows a cemetery of white crosses under a blood-red sky?

Master of Puppets: strings run from the crosses up to a pair of hands in the sky, echoing the album's theme of people being controlled and manipulated. Don Brautigam painted it from the band's own design.

Which artist painted Iron Maiden's mascot Eddie for the band's debut album cover?

Derek Riggs first painted him as a punk, for a punk record sleeve. Iron Maiden's manager found the picture in his portfolio, and the band asked for more hair, because a punk would not go down well with metal fans.

Which Bob Dylan album cover shows him walking a snowy street with his girlfriend?

The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan: the street is Jones Street in Greenwich Village, in February 1963. Suze Rotolo, then 19, inspired several of his early songs, among them 'Don't Think Twice, It's All Right'.

What did RCA airbrush out of Guy Peellaert's Diamond Dogs painting of David Bowie as half man, half dog?

The creature's genitals showed on the back half of the gatefold painting, and the label had them airbrushed out of most copies. The few uncensored sleeves that escaped now sell to collectors for thousands of dollars.

Which band's 1990 album Goo has a Raymond Pettibon drawing of a couple in sunglasses on its cover?

Sonic Youth: Pettibon, who drew the sleeves and four-bar logo of his brother's band Black Flag, worked from a press photo of a couple on their way to England's Moors murders trial, where they were witnesses.

Which designer created the Yes 'bubble' logo and dozens of the band's fantasy sleeves?

Roger Dean's work for Yes began with Fragile in 1971. In 2013 he sued James Cameron for $50 million, saying the film Avatar had copied his floating islands; a judge threw the case out.

What does Madonna's Like a Prayer cover show in place of her face?

Her crotch in unbuttoned jeans, said to be a nod to her devout mother, who reportedly covered the family's Sacred Heart statue whenever a woman came to the house in zip-up jeans. First pressings were scented with patchouli oil.

Led Zeppelin's debut album cover shows which airship?

The Hindenburg, drawn from Sam Shere's photograph of the 1937 disaster at Lakehurst, New Jersey. Jimmy Page chose it as a play on the band's name, said to come from Keith Moon's quip that the group would go down like a lead balloon.

Which pop artist designed the plain white sleeve of The Beatles (the 'White Album')?

Richard Hamilton suggested stamping a number on every copy, to create, in his words, 'the ironic situation of a numbered edition of something like five million copies'. The low numbers have been collectors' prizes ever since.

The Beatles' withdrawn 'butcher cover' showed the band in white smocks covered with raw meat and what else?

Decapitated baby dolls, which George Harrison later said disgusted him. Capitol glued a tamer picture over the printed sleeves, so fans began steaming the top layer off to reach the original, now a prized collector's item.

Which city's skyline, rebuilt from kitchenware, fills the plane window on the cover of Supertramp's Breakfast in America?

New York: Lower Manhattan is built from boxes, bottles and cutlery, and a waitress called Libby, played by actress Kate Murtagh, stands in for the Statue of Liberty with a glass of orange juice as her torch.

The Who's Who's Next cover, showing the band by a concrete pillar, references which film?

2001: A Space Odyssey, whose monolith the pillar recalled. Photographer Ethan Russell said only Pete Townshend really relieved himself on it; the other stains were water he poured down the concrete from film cans.

Which photographer shot U2's The Joshua Tree cover during a December 1986 bus trip through the Mojave Desert?

Anton Corbijn told the band about Joshua trees on the first evening, and Bono announced the album title the next day. The famous front cover has no tree at all: it was shot at Zabriskie Point, and the lone tree is in other pictures.

Which artist created Radiohead's OK Computer artwork with Thom Yorke, aiming for 'the colour of bleached bone'?

Stanley Donwood and Yorke worked on an early Apple Mac under one rule: no undo, so any mistake had to be scribbled over. Twenty years on, a fan identified the motorway on the cover as a highway junction in Hartford, Connecticut.

Which album cover shows a motorcycle bursting from a graveyard?

Bat Out of Hell: comics artist Richard Corben painted songwriter Jim Steinman's idea. Steinman wanted equal billing with Meat Loaf; the label refused, and the front carries 'Songs by Jim Steinman' as the compromise.

Which band's 1969 debut album has a screaming face on its cover, painted by Barry Godber?

King Crimson: lyricist Peter Sinfield asked his friend Barry Godber, a computer programmer, to try a cover, and Godber painted his own face from a mirror. It was his only painting; he died of a heart attack months later, aged 24.

Who created the dayglo cut-out-lettering cover of the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks?

Jamie Reid began cutting letters from newspaper headlines because the radical paper he worked on could not afford Letraset. When a Nottingham shop manager was charged over this sleeve's 'Bollocks', the court ruled the word was not obscene.

The registration number on the crashed plane on the Beastie Boys' Licensed to Ill spells what in a mirror?

EAT ME is the tail number 3MTA3 read backwards. Producer Rick Rubin wanted a 'Beastie Boys jet' after seeing Led Zeppelin's private plane in a biography, as a sarcastic take on rock-star excess, and had it drawn crashed into a mountain.

Mati Klarwein's 1961 painting Annunciation became the cover of which Santana album?

Abraxas: Carlos Santana saw the painting in a magazine years after Klarwein finished it and asked to use it. The artist later said he had found the album pinned to the wall of a shaman's mud hut in Niger.

How did the 'stretched' look of the Beatles' Rubber Soul cover photo come about?

A projection board fell backwards while photographer Robert Freeman was showing the band slides on an LP-sized card, stretching their faces. They asked if he could print it that way, and he said he could.

The design group Hipgnosis, behind many Pink Floyd sleeves, was led by Storm Thorgerson and whom?

Aubrey Powell, known as Po, met Thorgerson as a teenager in Cambridge after being expelled from boarding school. He took many of the studio's photographs himself, spending two months in Los Angeles on Wish You Were Here alone.

Whose face is laid over a Queensbridge street on the cover of Nas's Illmatic?

Himself as a boy of seven: the age, he said in 1994, when he began to take in everything around him and to see a future for himself.

On the cover of The Who Sell Out, Roger Daltrey sits in a bathtub filled with which tinned food?

Baked beans, fresh from the fridge, filled the tub, and Roger Daltrey blamed the freezing shoot for making him ill afterwards.

The pink-and-green lettering on the Clash's London Calling copies the debut album of which singer?

Elvis Presley's self-titled debut ran pink letters down the left and green across the bottom, and designer Ray Lowry copied the layout as a tribute.

On the Beatles' Help! cover, the band's arms were meant to spell the title in which signalling system?

Semaphore was the plan, but photographer Robert Freeman disliked how HELP looked, so the four poses on the British sleeve actually spell NUJV.

Mick Rock's shadowy cover portrait for Queen II was later recreated in the video for which song?

Bohemian Rhapsody reused the diamond formation in 1975; Mick Rock had modelled the pose on a photograph of Marlene Dietrich in the film Shanghai Express.

Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother cover carries no band name or title, only a photo of which animal?

A cow named Lulubelle III got the job after designer Storm Thorgerson drove into the countryside and photographed the first one he saw.

Which street artist, who normally shuns commercial work, stencilled the cover of Blur's Think Tank?

Banksy defended the job as one of a few things done to pay the bills, and the original cover artwork later sold at auction for £75,000.

George Harrison sits among four of which lawn ornaments on the cover of All Things Must Pass?

Garden gnomes, newly delivered to his home, lay on the lawn that day, and many read the four figures as the bandmates he had outgrown.

On ABBA's Arrival cover, shot at an airfield near Stockholm, the four members sit inside what?

A helicopter, a Bell 47, was parked at Barkarby Airport for the shoot, and the group were photographed both inside and outside it.

On the cover of Drake's Views, the rapper is perched on the edge of which landmark in his home city?

The CN Tower's own Twitter account confirmed the picture was edited, after fans noticed that Drake appears far larger than life on its ledge.

AC/DC gave Back in Black a plain, all-black cover as a sign of mourning for which rock musician?

Bon Scott, the band's singer, had died months earlier, and Atlantic Records accepted the bare sleeve only once a grey outline was added to the logo.

Which Nirvana album cover shows a see-through anatomical teaching figure fitted with angel wings?

In Utero uses a Transparent Anatomical Manikin with wings added, and winged mannequins like it stood on stage as props during the band's tour.

Which Coldplay album uses Eugène Delacroix's painting Liberty Leading the People as its cover?

Viva la Vida has its title daubed across the 1830 canvas in white paint, and the companion EP Prospekt's March borrowed a second Delacroix scene, a battle.

On the cover of Taylor Swift's 1989, which birds are embroidered across her lavender sweatshirt?

Seagulls fly across the sweatshirt, and Swift cropped the portrait at her eyes so that nobody could tell at a glance whether the record was happy or sad.

On the painted cover of Teenage Dream, Katy Perry lies naked on pink clouds made of what?

Cotton candy clouds were already a series by painter Will Cotton, who named this canvas Cotton Candy Katy, and some copies of the album were scented to match.

Inside the gatefold of Michael Jackson's Thriller, which animal rests against the singer's leg?

A tiger cub sits at his leg in the fold-out photo, and Jackson kept it well away from his face for fear of being scratched.

On the cover of Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen leans on the shoulder of which E Street Band member?

Clarence Clemons, the band's saxophonist, appears in one of some 900 frames that photographer Eric Meola shot during a three-hour studio session.

Which animal sits in one corner of Metallica's self-titled Black Album cover, opposite the band's logo?

A snake, coiled as on the Gadsden flag it was taken from, sits in the bottom right corner, and the flag's defiant motto also gave the album one of its song titles.

The painted cover of Van Halen's 1984 shows a winged cherub caught in the act of doing what?

Smoking a cigarette got the sleeve censored in Britain, where a sticker hid the pack, although the child model had actually posed with a harmless sweet.

Which Notorious B.I.G. album, tracing a life from birth, shows an infant with an afro on its cover?

Ready to Die follows its narrator from the cradle to the grave, and a press report later suggested the child who posed had grown into a Bronx teenager.

Which pet shares Carole King's Tapestry cover, named Telemachus after the son of Odysseus?

Her cat sat near her bare feet in the living room of her Laurel Canyon home, where King holds a tapestry she had stitched herself.

Which singer-songwriter, once an art student in Calgary, painted the self-portrait on her album Clouds?

Joni Mitchell designed most of her own sleeves and went to art college before music took over, later describing herself as a painter derailed by circumstance.

Which Japanese Superflat artist created the cartoon artwork for Kanye West's album Graduation?

Takashi Murakami redrew West's Dropout Bear mascot as a cartoon after the rapper visited his Kaikai Kiki studio, and later animated the designs for a video.

On the cover of Madonna's Like a Virgin, which two words are spelled out on her belt buckle?

Boy Toy sits on the buckle above a full wedding dress, and she later wore the look to sing on a 17-foot wedding cake at the first MTV Video Music Awards.

Jimi Hendrix was caught off guard by the British cover of which album, showing nineteen nude women?

Electric Ladyland went out in Britain without the design Hendrix had requested, and some shops banned the sleeve or sold it turned inside out.

On the cover of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, what dangles between drummer Mick Fleetwood's legs?

Wooden balls on a pair of lavatory chains complete his outfit, and in his left hand he holds up a crystal ball.

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill shows the singer's face as if carved into which piece of furniture?

A school desk fitted the theme: the shoot took in a classroom, a hallway and a school bus before one close-up was retouched to look like carved wood.

The cover of Blur's Parklife, later put on a Royal Mail stamp, captures which British pastime?

Greyhound racing replaced the first idea, a fruit-and-vegetable cart for an album that was going to be called London.

The cover portrait of Ariana Grande on her album Sweetener is unusual for being shown in what way?

Upside down was a friend's chance remark about one of the photos, and Grande said it clicked because she had been feeling that way herself.

Which band's debut Is This It swapped a gloved hand on a bare hip for particle tracks in America?

The Strokes got the original from photographer Colin Lane, who used a glove a stylist had left in his flat; US copies show tracks in a bubble chamber.

No Doubt's Tragic Kingdom cover shows the band among trees of which fruit, with Gwen Stefani in front?

Oranges grow in the grove behind Gwen Stefani, a salute to the band's native Orange County, and her red dress later went on show in a museum.

The Rolling Stones' tongue logo, introduced on Sticky Fingers, borrows from images of which Hindu goddess?

Kali, usually shown with her tongue out, was Mick Jagger's suggestion to art student John Pasche, who later sold the copyright to the band for £26,000.

Which co-founder of Factory Records designed the classic sleeves of Joy Division and New Order?

Peter Saville liked to repurpose existing art: one New Order sleeve pairs a Fantin-Latour painting of roses with a colour-coded alphabet.

Which British cartoonist drew the artwork for Pink Floyd's The Wall and animated scenes when it was filmed?

Gerald Scarfe was approached after two band members saw his animated BBC film, and he went on to design enormous inflatable characters for the tour.

Which Swiss artist, later designer of the monster in Alien, painted ELP's Brain Salad Surgery cover?

H. R. Giger also designed the trio's ELP logo, used ever since, and both of his original paintings vanished after a 2005 exhibition in Prague.

Which underground cartoonist drew the comic-strip cover of Cheap Thrills at Janis Joplin's insistence?

Robert Crumb meant the drawing for the back of the sleeve, but Joplin, an avid fan, demanded it go on the front after the label vetoed a photo of the band in bed.

Which photographer, a close friend of Patti Smith, shot the black-and-white cover of her album Horses?

Robert Mapplethorpe took about twelve pictures in a Greenwich Village penthouse and announced at around the eighth that he had the one he wanted.

Which artist sculpted Lady Gaga with a mirrored gazing sphere for the cover of Artpop?

Jeff Koons met Gaga at a Metropolitan Museum fashion event, where she hugged him and said she had talked about his work as a child in Central Park.

Which comic artist, co-creator of Tank Girl, draws the cartoon members of Gorillaz for the band's covers?

Jamie Hewlett created the virtual band with Blur's Damon Albarn, and in 2006 he was named the Design Museum's Designer of the Year.

Which Dracula actor poses as an escaping convict on the cover of Wings' Band on the Run?

Christopher Lee joined five other celebrities, among them James Coburn and Michael Parkinson, who all had to stand still for two seconds in a weak spotlight.

The figure on Guns N' Roses' Use Your Illusion covers comes from a fresco by which Renaissance painter?

Raphael painted the original figure among the philosophers of a Vatican fresco; a modern painter reworked the detail, and the two albums differ only in colour scheme.

The cover of Dr. Dre's The Chronic pays homage to the packaging of which brand of rolling papers?

Zig-Zag papers are a staple of cannabis culture, which suits an album whose title is slang for high-grade weed.

The Small Faces' album Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake first came in a round metal sleeve imitating what?

A tobacco tin from Liverpool, Ogden's Nut-brown Flake, was the model, and inside the lid sat a poster made of five linked circles showing the band.

John Squire's cover for the Stone Roses' debut nods to the 1968 Paris riots, where which fruit countered tear gas?

Lemons had been used as an antidote, a story singer Ian Brown heard from a Frenchman while hitch-hiking; the Pollock-style painting is titled Bye Bye Badman.

Research in 2023 suggested the stooped stick-carrier on Led Zeppelin IV's cover was a Victorian of which trade?

A thatcher from Wiltshire named Lot Long is the likely subject, and the picture long taken for an oil painting turned out to be a hand-coloured photograph from 1892.

Where in London do two men pass each other on the cover of Oasis's (What's the Story) Morning Glory?

Berwick Street was chosen because it was lined with record shops, and one of the two passers-by is the sleeve's own designer, seen from behind.

Ernie Barnes's painting The Sugar Shack, a hall packed with dancers, is the cover of which Marvin Gaye album?

I Want You adapted the 1971 canvas, and Barnes then reworked it for the opening credits of the sitcom Good Times.

Which jazz label's classic sleeves of the 1950s and 1960s were built around Francis Wolff's session photographs?

Blue Note's art director designed about 350 sleeves in eleven years, yet he preferred classical music and gave away or sold most of the copies he was sent.

Alex Steinweiss, creator of the first illustrated album covers, was the first art director of which record label?

Columbia let Alex Steinweiss design a few sleeves after he called the plain ones drab and unattractive, and he later devised the standard cardboard LP jacket.

What kind of building, standing on the River Thames, looms behind the cloaked figure on Black Sabbath's debut album?

A watermill at Mapledurham in Oxfordshire is the backdrop, and the model in the cloak, Louisa Livingstone, was not widely identified until 2020.

Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick originally came wrapped in a twelve-page spoof of what?

A newspaper for a made-up English town carried the lyrics as the poem of a fictional eight-year-old prodigy, with band and crew posing as locals.