Sunday Times

Everyone loves great record sleeves. Remember Ian Dury and the Blockheads’ Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick: a spotty puppet dog with origami bits? Or the charging elephants from Elvis Costello’s Armed Forces? Hawkwind’s intergalactic Space Ritual, perhaps? Or even the light- bulb simplicity of Billy Bragg’s Life’s a Riot with Spy Vs Spy? All of them share one common thread: Barney Bubbles, a colossus of British sleeve design in the 1970s and early 1980s.