By the time he was hired by Jackson Browne to work on 1974’s Late For The Sky, American graphic artist Bob Seidemann was already infamous. As well as his controversial reinterpretation of the Pietà (it reversed the theme of Michelangelo’s famous sculpture by depicting Jesus cradling Mary), this was the man who had photographed the naked 11-year-old girl on the sleeve of Blind Faith’s eponymous 1969 album.
Browne had a less provocative theme in mind for the sleeve of his third album. Arriving at Seidemann’s studio in Los Angeles, the singer-songwriter reportedly pinned a poster of René Magritte’s 1954 painting L’Empire Des Lumières (depicting a darkened house beneath a brilliant blue sky) onto the artist’s wall, and explained that this was to be the conceptual blueprint.
