3 cover stories in our archive
Behind the Covers' archive includes 3 album covers documented under the "psychedelia" design theme, all from the 1960s. These covers sit within the rock, pop tradition and feature work by The Hollies, The Rolling Stones. Each entry below includes the cover artwork, the designers and photographers behind it, and a short story about the visual choices that defined the release.
Karl Ferris did not simply photograph the Hollies looking psychedelic. He imagined them physically pushing through a membrane into a new musical world, then built the image from plastic, multiple exposures, William Morris wallpaper and work by The Fool.
After an all-night recording session, Gered Mankowitz took the Rolling Stones to Primrose Hill at dawn and smeared Vaseline onto a homemade glass filter. The exhausted, blurred photograph became Between the Buttons.
The Hollies followed Evolution with a cover that abandoned the band portrait altogether: a fantastical butterfly rendered as a self-contained psychedelic emblem, matching the most experimental album of Graham Nash's final period with the group.