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The rejected album cover design submitted by Barney Bubbles for Elvis Costello’s Punch the Clock (1983), was one of the great British artist’s final works.
Barney Bubbles was a short-lived graphic design hero and one of the key founding fathers of the now largely defunct art of the modern album cover.
Born Colin Maximilian Fulcher in 1942, he graduated from the Twickenham College of Technology in London before establishing his own graphic studio and rehearsal space, Teenburger Designs, at 307 Portobello Road in 1969. He became head of the underground mixed media collective Frendz and kicked off a successful commercial design career.
Hard-working Barney burned bright and was in huge demand, if only for a short time.
He was responsible for a staggering number of record covers and music videos for a new generation of artists, and his influence and popularity have only increased since his untimely passing in 1983 at the age of just 41.
Even if you don’t know who Barney Bubbles is, you would be familiar with his many eye-catching and instantly recognisable LP and 45 sleeve designs rendered in his singular DIY style, or through his work in magazines such as The Face and many influential promo posters from the late-’60s through to the early-’80s.
Barney’s audacious cutting edge style was a fusion of pop-art and, at times, soviet poster art, and always incorporated a sense of rhythm, harmony and lightness of touch. He used bright colours and was as adept at design as he was at illustration, yet his name remains in the shadows, unlike some of his more studied contemporaries, such as illustrator Roger Dean (Yes), and designers/photographers Hipgnosis (Pink Floyd).
Before becoming the original talent of the New Wave era, Bubbles initially formed an association with Nick Lowe’s legendary pub-rocking outfit Brinsley Schwarz, and most notably, cosmic rockers Hawkwind.
His striking poster designs, stage sets, and a run of elaborate gatefold album sleeves, including the remarkable In Search of Space (1971), the Art Nouveau extravaganza for the legendary live album Space Ritual (1973), and the futuristic Hall of the Mountain Grill (1974), gave the West London counter-culturalist’s music a compelling visual identity.
He bridged the gap between the psychedelic space-heads and the advent of punk, a movement that provided a new lease of life for the versatile artist, and his angular and brightly coloured work became increasingly popular with the emerging New Wave bands of the era.
Around this time, he was appointed Art Director at Stiff Records by label chief Jake Riviera. Bubbles applied his brilliance to the cover of Ian Dury’s New Boots and Panties (1977), where he cropped the photo of Ian and his son and added the hand-drawn lettering on the front and back.
The cover design of The Damned’s Nick Lowe-produced debut album, Damned Damned Damned (1977), was credited to Big Jobs Inc., a pseudonym of Barney Bubbles. While not as elaborate in terms of graphics, the masthead really pops, blending in behind the iconic band photo like a magazine cover.
Barney would go on to work with some of the most dynamic artists of the era, including Generation X, Devo, Dr Feelgood, and other notable Stiff and Radar recording artists. Ian Dury and the Blockheads’ Do It Yourself (1979) must’ve driven the record company crazy as it had at least 34 alternative sleeves, each one featuring a different wallpaper design with a variety of colour options.
Barney also created The Blockheads‘ “clock face” logo and redesigned the branding for the NME. His new logo for the legendary British music rag remained in use up to the late ’80s and forms the basis of the current (degraded) magazine logo. His logos for post-punk record labels Radar, Stiff, and F-Beat remain timeless to this day.
Among his other works were album covers for Stiff-producer Nick Lowe’s wry pub-rock landmark Jesus of Cool (1978), retitled Pure Pop For Now People for the US market. It features five pics of “Basher” (and one of guitarist Dave Edmunds) decked out in a smorgasbord of over-the-top rockstar getups in front of an assortment of graphic pop-art saturated colours.
The cover works not for the glimmer of “cool” but rather for the combination of impeccable artifice and self-effacing charm. It also makes for a great t-shirt. Barney’s playful lettering and distinctive Hammer & Sickle logo, the symbol of proletarian solidarity from the Russian Revolution, adorned the cover of Lowe’s follow-up album, Labour of Lust (1979).
Standing among his finest works is the striking, day-glow masterpiece that is The Psychedelic Furs’ original UK edition of their 1982 classic Forever Now. For the American release, Columbia did away with the Barney Bubbles artwork because they couldn’t read the name of the band, replacing it with a generic new-wave instant fossil, without telling Richard Butler.
Barney also collaborated with the great British photographer Brian Griffin for the memorable Graham Parker and the Rumour live album The Parkerilla (1978), and he branched out into paintings, furniture, set designs and promo videos, not least the era-defining film clip for The Specials’ hit, ‘Ghost Town‘.
His career-best work, however, would be his visual contribution to the early part of Elvis Costello’s career, where he helped calcify Declan McManus’s spiky persona, again going uncredited at his own request.
Bubbles first produced the timeless cover art for the debut album My Aim is True (1977), which came in various editions of collectable background colours.
For the follow-up Attractions record, This Year’s Model (1978), photographer Chris Gabrin captured Elvis behind a Hasselblad camera. The Bubbles-designed initial pressings were made to look like deliberate misprints, showing colour bars and cutting off letters, a quirk abandoned on subsequent editions.
Barney enlisted the help of painter Tom Pogson for Costello’s third album, Armed Forces (1979), and the result was a baroque tour de force.
The UK edition was a painting depicting a herd of elephants that boasted an elaborate fold-out sleeve containing four colour postcards of the band. The Warhol-ian back cover with its illustrated pop-art geometric patterns was a startling mix of styles and techniques, ranging from the figurative, abstract, to Chinese propaganda poster art.
Bubbles’ visual stamp is all over Costello’s subsequent releases, from the ring wear pre-print of Get Happy!! (1980); the Kenny Burrell visual stylings of Blue Note designer Reid Miles for Almost Blue (1981), to the Picasso pastiche seen on the cover of Imperial Bedroom (1982).
Just when Barney Bubbles should have been getting the recognition his artistic genius deserved, his career faltered, and his work started being rejected by his once loyal record labels and artists. Times were changing, new visual trends were coming into vogue in the 1980s, and his vibrant and splice-up style was looked upon as passé.
The design he would submit for Costello’s Langer and Winstanley-produced commercial sidestep, Punch the Clock (1983), was considered less user-friendly and overlooked by the record company, unbeknownst to Costello. It would remain one of the British graphic artist’s final works.
As quietly brilliant as Barney’s Elvis Costello sleeves were, the concept submitted for Punch the Clock certainly was challenging.
Elvis’s electrified face leaps out at you in circuit cartoon form below juddered typeface as a tiny metal hand offers him a spanner. The photo montage on the rear displays the Attractions corrupted, so their heads are replaced with symbols: a pill capsule for Steve Nieve, a question mark for Pete Thomas, and a circular black cog for Bruce Thomas.
The lyric sheet fashioned disembodied heads of the band, as well as legendary jazz trumpeter Chet Baker’s, whose exquisite trumpeting appears on the record’s high point, ‘Shipbuilding‘. These images would ultimately be replaced by a more conventional inner sleeve, and on the back, an uninspiring photo of Costello and the Attractions looking off into the distance with their hands in their pockets.
The final Phil Smee design chosen for Punch the Clock is dated when compared to Elvis’ previous record jackets. The Letraset lettering and stylised layout are very much of their time, as the artist dons a black cap and dark collared-up coat, sports his signature spectacles, and flashes a quizzical look while appearing to be scratching his left ear.
Bubbles suffered from bipolar disorder, and mounting woes tragically led to his suicide in November 1983. At the time of his passing, Barney had considerable personal and financial worries, as well as depression, and as aforestated, had fallen out of fashion by the early 1980s.
Paul Gorman’s book, The Wild World of Barney Bubbles, Graphic Design and the Art of Music (2022), is a must-read for fans of his work, and it reproduces original artwork, printed sleeves, posters and press ads, together with little-seen private work, intimate photographs including the rejected cover for Punch the Clock (1983). You can buy it here on Thames & Hudson.
Barney’s works are held in the collections of the V&A and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Photo: Colin Fulcher, aka Barney Bubbles, in Hammersmith, London, 1966.
References and Further Reading:
♥ Design Freaks Podcast with Clarita Hinojosa
♥ The Psychedelic Furs’ Forever Now on Pop Dose
♥ The Wild World of Barney Bubbles, Graphic Design and the Art of Music.
