You Gave Me The Answer: How does Paul choose his album artwork?

Artwork has always been an important part of how Paul brings a new album to life. From photography and painting to collage and illustration, each cover offers a first glimpse into the world of the music inside. Whether it's the intimate photography of McCartney, the cinematic outlaw storytelling of the Band on the Run photoshoot, Egypt Station, which began life as one of Paul's own paintings before becoming an album of the same name, or the Liverpool-inspired imagery of The Boys of Dungeon Lane, each sleeve reflects a different creative starting point. But where does that process actually begin?

This month's question comes from Camden Grady, who wanted to know more about Paul's creative process when it comes to creating the visual world of an album.

Camden Grady: How do you decide what your album artwork is going to be? Is it a process or more instinctive?

Paul: There is a process, but it’s very loose. It is based on intuition.

So, for instance, Dungeon Lane, I was talking with people in the early days about what I thought, well, what Dungeon Lane was. And I was explaining to them, it’s a Liverpool thing. It’s where I grew up.

We had some old photographs I’d taken on hitchhiking trips with George and with John. And so I pulled those out and we just started looking at those.

The guy I was working with, David Lane, was an art director from London. He then started to say, “Oh, well, we could do this, or we could do that.” And then we built the process.

The thing he liked best, he told me, because we were here doing it in my office, was that we were just making the decisions, just him and me. Saying, “Well, yeah, we should do that, and we can do that and that,” and making the final decisions.

He said it was so great because normally he’s got to go away and talk to the board of a record label or someone, and they all make suggestions, and they’ve all got notes. He said it’s so terrible because your original idea then gets wrecked.

PaulMcCartney.com: Too many cooks!

Paul: Too many cooks, yeah!

So that’s how this one happened. It was basically just me and David. And then he threw in the idea of this girl he knew who was a screen printer, Kate. And that really started to set the direction then, because she did those collages.

David put together the collage based on what I’d shown him. And then I told him how I liked birdwatching when I was a kid, so he put the little birds in that are on the collage.

So then we just made it up! But it was nice because we made the final decision, just the two of us.

From old hitchhiking photographs to childhood memories of birdwatching, the finished artwork became a collage of Paul’s Liverpool years and a map of his youth, created much like the album itself: by following instinct and seeing where it led.

And it seems the secret to a good album cover might also be knowing when to keep things simple. Sometimes, two cooks are plenty!

Got a question for Paul? Submit your questions for 'You Gave Me the Answer' directly or you can also share yours via the Official Paul McCartney Facebook Group.