“By calling the album War we’re giving people a slap in the face,” Bono told NME just days before their third record hit shelves, and its artwork was as bracing as its title. U2 – War (1983, design by Steve Averill cover art photograph by Ian Finlay) Nearly all of U2’s subsequent albums have had at least some parts recorded in Windmill Lane, and 19 years after October, the band took some promotional photos for All That You Can’t Leave Behind on the Grand Canal Dock’s waterfront.
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Even though it’s one of the few U2 album covers to feature a photograph in full color, there’s something somber about it, whether it communicates the difficulties the band had in making the record or just the chilliness of its title. Like Boy before it, October was recorded at Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin’s Grand Canal Dock area, and the picture on its sleeve was taken several blocks away from the studio.
U2 – October (1981, design by Steve Averill cover art photograph by Ian Finlay) Working with limited funds, Porter used some press release photos of the band as the basis for his design, distorting them with a photocopier and some crafty pre-computer editing tricks. Island Records was concerned that the original image could be misinterpreted and tasked in-house designer Bruno Tilley and photographer Sandy Porter with creating a new one.
In North America and other international markets, Boy was issued with a different cover. (Guggi sang in a band named the Virgin Prunes, whose lineup also included the Edge’s brother Dik Evans.) But what do you make of Rowen’s expression on the cover of Boy? Is he lost in a daydream? Or is it just the blank, bored look of a six-year-old who was asked to pose for a photo? This ambiguity makes Boy one of U2’s more compelling album covers. Not that he was a stranger, his older brother Guggi (real name Derek Rowen) had been friends with Bono since childhood. Up until 2014’s Songs of Innocence, Peter Rowen was the only person to appear on the cover of a U2 album that wasn’t a member of the band. Here are the stories behind some of the iconic U2 album covers.īuy or stream the 30th anniversary edition of Achtung Baby U2 – Boy (1980, design by Steve Averill cover art photograph by Hugo McGuiness) It might be harder still to convey these lofty concepts with an album cover, but luckily, the Irish quartet has excellent taste in collaborators, often teaming with art director Steve Averill and photographer Anton Corbijn to help give each of their records a distinct visual flair. That’s difficult enough to do in a four-minute song, even with a voice as expressive as Bono’s. Throughout their four decades (and counting) as a band, U2 have explored the space between those two words, capturing the breadth of the human condition within their music – politics and religion, love and war, and yes, innocence and experience. “Thematically, it’s both extremely personal and also very universal,” the guitarist said. with his son on the front of Songs of Innocence, while Songs of Experience’s artwork features the Edge’s daughter and U2 frontman Bono’s son. So they brought their families into the picture, quite literally: That’s drummer Larry Mullen Jr. U2’s thirteenth and fourteenth records featured their most autobiographical work to date, with some songs drawing on childhood memories and others reading as letters to loved ones – and as such, the band wanted to pair these albums with covers that would visually represent their themes more intimately than just another photo of themselves. “Covers are hard,” quipped the Edge in a lengthy Hot Press profile detailing the three years between Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience.
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