In preparing for the release of the first batch of podcast episodes, I realized I never considered what a cover might look like for the alternate solo debut album I had imagined for George Harrison (see page 203).

Since the album is titled after what would have been its big hit single, I started by looking at the sleeve for that release. It's actually quite an elegant thing:



Assuming that the single would still have been released, it also makes sense to think that the same cover might have been used. So repurposing this cover was out.

A couple of alternatives to the original sleeve popped up over time, most interestingly various versions that simply crop the All Things Must Pass cover, like this one:



This marketing technique is used to clearly tie the single to its parent album, but that works only if it really is a variation on the album cover. This suggested that maybe the imagined album should just get a variation of the real world ATMP cover, which might have something looked like this:



But that doesn't really work because the underlying theme of this image seems to be a comment on the breakup of the band (I'm certainly not the first to notice this!) – a breakup which we are assuming wouldn't have happened, at least not in the way this sad image suggests. Further, this image just doesn't resonate with the revised collection of music, which isn't quite as desolate as George's appearance here.

So instead, I found a contemporary photo which is relatively well-known among fans, but a bit off the beaten path. Here's the uncropped image:



This cropped nicely into a square, and though I played around with adding the album title in the same font as George had selected (Abbott Old Style), it never quite looked right. The image itself seemed to be enough to suggest who George was at this moment.

Click here to see/hear the finished product.