27 cover stories in our archive
Behind the Covers' archive includes 27 album covers documented under the "psychedelic" design theme, spanning the 1960s, 1970s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s. These covers sit within the rock, electronic, pop, alternative, indie, hip-hop, funk, jazz, folk, country, world, metal, soul, blues tradition and feature work by Tame Impala, Panda Bear, Elliott Smith, OutKast and others. 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.
Robert Beatty's abstract image of swirling liquid in vivid colors visualizes the album's theme of overwhelming change — something solid becoming liquid, a form dissolving and reforming as something new. Not chaos, but metamorphosis.
Australian designer Leif Podhajsky created this kaleidoscopic masterpiece by digitally manipulating a simple photograph of trees into a swirling vortex that perfectly captures the album's psychedelic introspection.
Panda Bear's psychedelic masterpiece features a self-designed cover inspired by his move to Lisbon, with swirling patterns and vibrant colors that perfectly capture the album's hypnotic sound collages.
A young man stands dwarfed by a swirling black, red, and white mural on a Los Angeles sidewalk. Autumn de Wilde chose that wall because she'd loved it since childhood, calling it the ugliest mural she'd ever seen and then the most beautiful. After Elliott Smith's death in 2003, it became a shrine.
A phone call relayed André 3000's request to a Columbus painter, who got two or three days to turn OutKast's music into a 1970s funk fantasy. The result, with its hovering mothership and gold Egyptian medallion, reached millions and became one of the most celebrated Black album covers in hip hop.
George Clinton called Pedro Bell an 'urban Hieronymus Bosch' who 'inverted psychedelia through the ghetto.' On Funkadelic's biggest album, Bell didn't just draw a cover — he built the visual myth of P-Funk itself, signing on as an 'electric marker heathen of speedomatic dabblings.'
Alan Aldridge's airbrush masterpiece drew inspiration from Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights. Created with Harry Willock, the psychedelic artwork surrounds Elton John with mythical creatures in vivid detail.
Psychedelic poster artist Victor Moscoso created this mind-bending tribal mask design using his signature vibrating color technique, making it one of the most visually arresting jazz album covers ever produced and helping Herbie Hancock cross over to funk audiences.
A Black woman's face emerging from earth — mouth open in a scream or ecstatic cry — matches the primal intensity of Eddie Hazel's legendary guitar solo, recorded in a single take under the influence of LSD.
Stare at the rose on the Grateful Dead's 1970 cover, then read the swirling script around it. It says American Beauty. It also says American Reality. The same letters, two meanings, deliberately built that way by two poster artists who turned a single word into a riddle.
A red, winged, tattooed angel points skyward over a conga drum while a naked dark-skinned Mary sits among flowers and a white dove. Carlos Santana spotted this painting in a magazine and demanded it for his band's 1970 album — and it ended up pinned inside a shaman's hut and a Rastafarian's truck worldwide.
A man charges through a black forest swinging a sword, his pink-and-yellow body smeared into three blurred ghosts. He was supposed to be a War Pig. Then Warner got nervous about Vietnam, the album became Paranoid, and the cover never got the memo.
Mati Klarwein's Afro-psychedelic painting depicts two Black faces in profile surrounded by swirling organic forms — flowers, waves, fire, and cosmic phenomena — a visual match for the album that essentially invented jazz fusion.
The explosive red-orange burst radiating from the center creates one of funk's most dynamic covers, perfectly matching the revolutionary energy of Sly Stone's music. The simple yet powerful design became a template for psychedelic soul artwork.
The debut album cover for Os Mutantes was designed and photographed by Olivier Perroy from publishing giant Editora Abril in his São Paulo home. The simple presentation matched the band's raw experimental psychedelic sound that would revolutionize Brazilian rock.
In 1968 Frank Zappa set out to make a photographic negative of Sgt. Pepper: thunderstorm instead of blue sky, dresses instead of uniforms, rotting vegetables instead of flowers. Then the Beatles' label got nervous, the packaging got flipped inside-out, and Jimi Hendrix showed up in person. Behind the lurid crowd lies a lawsuit-shadowed act of sabotage aimed straight at the summer of love.
Jimi Hendrix's double album sparked international controversy with its provocative cover featuring 19 nude women photographed by David Montgomery. The image was so scandalous that many countries banned it, forcing alternative covers to be created for different markets.
Underground cartoonist Robert Crumb created this hand-drawn comic book cover for just $600, turning down Columbia's slick photography concept. His whimsical cartoon style became one of rock's most beloved covers.
Steve Marriott swapped one word on a real tobacco tin and turned a Liverpool firm's brand into a wink about being out of your head. The Small Faces' 1968 round sleeve was a publicity stunt, a hash joke and a packaging nightmare all at once.
A London store's mass-produced Hindu devotional poster became the frame for a rock band: Jimi Hendrix and his bandmates painted as arms of the god Vishnu, glowing in pink, orange and turquoise. Hendrix hated it. Decades later, a nation's censors seized copies. Here is the strange life of a cover its own star disowned.
The Rolling Stones' psychedelic masterpiece featured the first 3D lenticular cover in rock history, created by fashion photographer Michael Cooper. The elaborate shoot took place in a rented studio with elaborate costumes, flowers, and optical effects that cost a fortune.
A fashion photographer borrowed a prism lens from George Harrison, asked a brand-new, unsigned band to wear the brightest clothes they could find, and split their faces into a kaleidoscope. The result became the only Pink Floyd studio album to put the band's own faces on the front. Oh, and he reportedly never got paid.
Photographer Herb Greene captured Jefferson Airplane in an infrared dreamscape that perfectly matched their psychedelic sound. The otherworldly technique turned the band into ghostly figures floating through a surreal landscape.
A roadie's mispronunciation gave the album its name; a chance meeting in a nightclub gave it its face. Cream's Disraeli Gears wears a fluorescent collage built from a publicity photo, scissors, and paint mixed to capture a 'warm electric sound.'
The Doors are nowhere on their own second album cover. Instead, a strongman, a juggler and a dwarf perform in a Manhattan alley, because Jim Morrison flatly refused to pose. Look closely and the only sign of the band is a tiny poster taped to a brick wall.
Karl Ferris pioneered the use of infrared film for album art, creating an otherworldly image where the band appears in unnatural purple, orange, and green hues through a fisheye lens — as if Hendrix had literally arrived from another dimension.
Klaus Voormann's revolutionary black-and-white collage combines pen-and-ink drawings with photographs, using the Beatles' flowing hair to create a psychedelic masterpiece that won the first Grammy Award for rock album artwork in 1967.