Record sleeve
Sir Peter Thomas Blake (b.1932)
Category
Musical instruments, devices and recordings
Date
30 Mar 1967 - 26 May 1967
Materials
Laminated cardboard record sleeve
Measurements
312 x 315 mm
Order this imageCollection
Sudbury Hall Museum of Childhood, Derbyshire
NT 672065.4
Summary
A laminated gatefold style cardboard sleeve for a vinyl record, the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles. The sleeve was designed by the English pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth and used photographs taken by Michael Cooper. The front cover of the sleeve has a photograph with The Beatles standing in the centre (left to right: John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney and George Harrison) behind a drum on which Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band is printed in yellow and green letters. They are wearing coloured military style uniforms, in character as members of the fictional Lonely Hearts Club Band. The drum is situated behind a display of red flowers which spell out ‘BEATLES’. Behind and around the four band members there is a collage of fifty seven photographs and nine waxworks, all at life size, of cultural icons including Bob Dylan, Marlon Brando, H.G. Wells, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Mae West, Marilyn Monroe, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy and The Beatles themselves from their earlier Beatlemania era. Notable omissions from the collage include Elvis Presley and The Beatles rivals The Rolling Stones although they are represented by a doll at the front right corner wearing a stripped tee shirt with a message of welcome to the band. To avoid controversy images of Jesus Christ, Adolf Hitler and Mahatma Gandhi were rejected. The rear of the sleeve has the lyrics of all of the songs on the album printed in black text on a red background. This was the first time that this has been done on a rock music album. In the centre of the rear of the sleeve there is a small photograph of the band members (left to right: Harrison, McCartney (facing backwards), Lennon and Starr), again dressed in their coloured Lonely Hearts Club Band uniforms. The inside of the sleeve has a colour photograph of the four band members (left to right: Starr, Lennon, McCartney, Harrision) sitting in front of a plain yellow background, again dressed in their coloured uniforms.
Provenance
Laminated cardboard record sleeve designed by Peter Blake and Jann Haworth with photographs by Micheal Cooper for the vinyl record Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band recorded by The Beatles and released by the Parlophone Record Company on 26th May 1967.Purchased by The National Trust Museum Of Childhood from Discogs on 3rd November 2017 as part of the Collecting Cultures 'Exploring Childhoods' project.
Makers and roles
Sir Peter Thomas Blake (b.1932), artist Jann Howarth (b.1942), artist Michael Cooper (1941 - 1973), photographer Parlophone Records Ltd, record label