3 album covers in our archive
Behind the Covers currently documents 3 Beastie Boys album covers from 1986 to 1994. Read together, the entries show how the artwork changed from release to release, with each story identifying the designers, photographers, source material, and design decisions behind the sleeve.
Cover evolution
A man in dark sunglasses leans out a diner window clutching a phone, frozen in a 1964 photograph that Esquire never printed. Bruce Davidson shot it, forgot it, and thirty years later the Beastie Boys pulled it into daylight for an album about hip-hop, punk, jazz and funk crashing together.
The iconic panoramic street corner shot was captured by Jeremy Shatan but credited to Nathanial Hornblower, Adam Yauch's pseudonym. The fictional Paul's Boutique sign was hung over Lee's Sportswear for the shoot.
Licensed to Ill looks like a private jet until you open the sleeve. Rick Rubin conceived the Beastie Boys' exaggerated rock-star aircraft; art director Stephen Byram and artist David Gambale, working as World B. Omés, turned the joke into a gatefold crash scene whose tail number 3MTA3 reads EATME in a mirror.
