Designing the packaging for “McCartney”

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Paul McCartney was given April 10, 1970, as the release date for his debut solo album, “McCartney“ by Neil Aspinall at Apple Corps. The album was finalized on March 23, 1970 and the packaging of the album was likely conceived and realized in March 1970.

From Wikipedia:

For the album’s gatefold cover, artist Gordon House and designer Roger Huggett worked on a design concept by McCartney. Photos by Linda McCartney featured throughout the packaging, including a collage of 21 family snapshots in the jacket’s inner spread. The images depicted Paul, Linda, seven-year-old Heather (Linda’s daughter by her first marriage), newborn Mary, and the McCartneys’ sheepdog, Martha. The gatefold cover of McCartney was the first of close to 30 years of albums by her husband to feature Linda McCartney’s photography.

Set against a black background, the front cover image consisted of a bowl of cherry-red liquid placed on a cream-coloured wall and surrounded by loose red cherries, as if the fruit had been emptied from the bowl. On the back cover, a photo taken by Linda in Scotland showed her husband with Mary tucked inside his fur-lined leather jacket. Madinger and Easter comment that, unlike Lennon, McCartney did not feel the need to include his wife on the cover, and her back-cover photo was a “stunning” contribution from the former professional photographer. In a 2013 news article recalling the album’s release, the Philadelphia radio station WMMR described the photo of McCartney and his baby daughter as “iconic” and reflective of “his ultimate message: ‘Home, family (and) love’.”

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Linda did the photography, and this was interesting because we didn’t know what we’d do as a cover. The cover became the back cover, like ‘The White Album’ is really called The Beatles. That would happen, people would make their own decision, which I always liked. So the cherries picture has become the cover but it’s actually the back cover.

Paul McCartney – From “McCartney – Archive Collection“, 2011

We didn’t know what to use. Linda had taken a lot of pictures of me, sort of holding the guitar, doing a pose, against the wall and stuff, we had about 30 or 40 pictures, and we couldn’t decide. And one of them was the one with me with my baby [Mary] in the jacket. And we sent them round to David Puttnam, who was a mate in advertising, now Lord Puttnam. I knew him because he’d always got mistaken for ‘Paul’ when he went to America, he was a Paul lookalike. So Linda and I went out to dinner with him and his wife and left him with some images and said, “Just see if any of these are good for the cover”. And he got back the next day and said, “There’s only one”. Well, which one? “That one, you and the baby, in the jacket, that’s incredible”. So we went, Oh yeah! I like that, sometimes you need someone to show you.

And the cherries picture, there was a wall, when we were on holiday, a low wall outside the holiday villa, where we put these out for the birds. We’d get them from the bar, glacé cherries, and put them out so there’s pictures with loads of birds on there. And Linda took the other pictures which are largely of holidays and us getting together…

Paul McCartney – From “McCartney – Archive Collection“, 2011

For the “McCartney” cover artwork we had a big wad of photos that Linda had taken, and the only one that wasn’t of me with a guitar was a photo with Mary, our new baby, inside my jacket. I used to carry her that way to keep her warm. Eventually, we had so many photos that we couldn’t see the woods for the trees, so we sent a pile of them to a friend – David Putnam, now Lord Putnam. He has a very good eye for an image and he called back and said, ‘There’s only one cover in this lot – the one with the baby in the jacket’. Just to be difficult, though, we put that on the back cover and put a photo of cherries on the front.

Paul McCartney – From “Wingspan: Paul McCartney’s Band on the Run“, 2002

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The cover was worked out as we went along and the photos inside and out are Linda’s, all of them taken on our travels to Scotland, Portugal, Antigua, France, Greece, or Great Britain.

The front cover is a picture of a bowl of cherries we got from the barman at the hotel we stayed at in Antigua and we laid them out on the wall in front of our cottage so that the lovely birds of the area could land amongst them, drink the juice, and eat the cherries. The back cover was taken in Scotland, on our farm.

The various animals inside are Martha (our dog), a Portugese donkey, and Tiger, a kitten who died young. (There are also a couple of Scottish sheep.) The schoolchildren dressed like pixies are from the South of France.

Paul McCartney – From the “McCartney” press release, 1970

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The inner sleeve of the “McCartney” album contains 21 photographs taken by Linda McCartney between late 1968 and March 1970. Those were taken in Portugal, Scotland, Antigua and London.

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Linda also took many additional photos in March 1970, some of them were used for additional promotional efforts for the album.

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Last updated on August 1, 2023