During the swinging sixties, one band typified the feeling of the decade; The Beatles. Their style and energy was a completely new and captivating thing in the music world. If there was one artist to capture this time better than anyone else it was British pop artist Peter Blake.
His artwork for The Beatles‘ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band LP, created in collaboration with then-wife Jann Haworth, will go down in history as one of the most recognisable album covers of all time, but for Blake’s intertwining relationship with the music scene, it was just the beginning.
In 1967, when the album was released, Blake was one of the foremost pop artists in the world alongside contemporaries Pauline Boty, Derek Boshier, R. B. Kitaj, Peter Phillips, Richard Hamilton, and David Hockney his work was widely exhibited across the art world. His talent for comprising pop culture references with a linear narrative all through the medium of collage and paint made Blake a singular entity and the leading artist auteur of the time.
The cover of Sgt. Pepper is still one of the most infamous album covers of all time but his penchant for music didn’t stop there and Blake contributed to countless huge artists in his time. Namely, Oasis, The Who, Bandaid’s original ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’, Eric Clapton, Ian Dury, and many more.
We take a look below at the wealth of Peter Blake’s contribution to music through his enigmatic and engaging work.
