The run times on the album's back cover are rendered in a font called Terminal, which appears in a design suite called Lazarus-the name of a Blackstar track and the musical that Bowie composed before his death. When a light is shone on the spinning vinyl version of the record, a ring moves around the record in various sizes. When you reflect light off side one, you get a bird in flight. Reflecting light off one side of the vinyl at a certain angle creates what looks like a star. The star glows blue when you hold it under ultraviolet light, and the inner gatefold sleeve shows up stars when you expose it to sunlight. The album uses fragmented stars to spell out Bowie's name at the bottom.

There's probably a whole book in each and every one.įor such a simple-looking cover, Bowie's final album uses a plethora of subliminal imagery and messaging. On the album covers I've picked below, I can't even imagine how many wild things must've unfolded for them to come together. Glancing at that cover, no one would understand all the layers and beautiful, serendipitous moments that led to its existence.

He asked Gent if the drawing could feature on the album cover and the rest is history. I happened to show it to my brother and his eyes nearly popped out of his head. To say thanks, Gent kindly gave me a drawing he'd done of Charles Bukowski holding a sign saying 'I am become Deaf,' a reference to Robert Oppenheimer's quoting of the Bhagavad Gita scripture, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I absolutely loved his work and managed to scrape some cash together to buy two of his paintings. My brother had settled on calling the record Once Like a Spark but was struggling to find the right cover art.Ī good mate of mine had just started managing an incredible unknown (at the time) artist called Jonathan Gent.

After a few twists and turns, we ended up making a record in my family's garage and somehow being played by Jo Whiley on Radio 1. I'd joined my brother's band after he sacked his drummer (nepotism, what?!) and a few weeks later found myself on stage at the Mean Fiddler in Harlesden. I recently stumbled across the cover of the first record I ever played on.

Thank me later album cover explicit