Noel Gallagher on designing Oasis artwork for ‘Stop The Clocks’ with Sir Peter Blake
When Oasis released their compilation album Stop The Clocks in 2006, they needed captivating cover artwork to match the excellent songs. The art ended up being designed by none other than Sir Peter Blake, who had, of course, designed the cover for The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
According to Noel Gallagher, there was only one man for the job. “There was true,” he recently said at a Paul Weller-curated event honouring Blake. “Funnily enough, he’d just started doing artwork digitally, and we asked him to go and do it, and he said he would. He sent over the thing right, and it was computerised, and we were like, ‘Fuck, it’s kind of not what we wanted.'”
But rather than reject the artwork, Gallagher felt it more appropriate to go and talk with Blake about what he wanted. He continued: “So I did what all great bandmates do, and I went to see Peter, and I said, ‘Look, Peter, it’s not me, I fucking love it, it’s the other fella [Liam]. He thinks it’s shit.’ He said, ‘Well, what are we going to do?’ I said, ‘Well, let’s fucking kill him.'”
Of course, we know that Gallagher did not kill his brother with Blake as much as he would have liked to. “He kindly let us walk around his studio,” he went on, “We pulled out some things, and he did the collage on the day, and it was fascinating to see him work and to be in the studio. It was an amazing experience.”
The interviewer then asked what significance the objects in the artwork had to Gallagher. However, Gallagher noted that there wasn’t necessarily a profound meaning to any of the objects. “We went around his studio for about 40 minutes and just picked out things that we liked, and then he just laid them all out, and we had a cup of tea and watched him,” he said.
“We were like ‘fucking hell, amazing,'” he added. “That was it, and we photographed it. The thing that we liked about it was that it was just a thing that existed for that day because after that, it was all broken up and put back in its place, and that was it.”
As for what Gallagher himself was responsible for choosing, he noted: “I might have picked out the Seven Dwarves.” When the interviewer asked which member of Oasis might have been Grumpy, Gallagher responded, “Well, that depends on who you talk to, doesn’t it? Liam would probably say me.” He added, “Liam picked out the Elvis stuff, obviously.”
