The original artwork for The Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed album is up for auction. So what? Well, it was sleeve art with a complex history.
In 1969, the Stones’ Keith Richards commissioned his friend Robert Brownjohn to design the now-iconic cover for Let It Bleed. Richards, after leaving art school in 1962, had taken his portfolio around several of the top London designers, including Brownjohn.
The Let It Bleed cover displays a surreal sculpture made by Brownjohn. It consists of the LP being played with an old-style phonogram arm, which is fitted with an automatic changer spindle supporting a number of items that include (instead of LPs): a dinner plate with a magnetic tape/film reel canister, a clock face, a pizza, a bicycle tire, and cake with garish icing and the band itself in the form of wedding cake-style topping figures.
The cake was made by then-unknown chef Delia Smith, now a U.K. TV star. She was instructed by Brownjohn to create a cake and she has recalled that, “they wanted it to be very over-the-top and as gaudy as I could make it.”
Selected Robert Brownjohn works are represented in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Auctioneers Bonhams of London anticipated a ?30-40,000 ($50k) price when all the original artwork is auctioned on December 15.
The album Let It Bleed boasted “Gimme Shelter,” “Love in Vain,” “Midnight Rambler,” Monkey Man” and more and is considered one of the Stones’ finest-ever albums.
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