Paul McCartney attends Peter Blake’s 80th birthday party

Paul McCartney and his wife Nancy was at the Royal Albert Hall, to attend the 80th birthday party of Sir Peter Blake, the pop artist who is best known for creating the sleeve design of the Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

From BBC News, April 2, 2012:

British artist Sir Peter Blake has recreated the iconic album sleeve for The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on his 80th birthday.

“It’s a cross I bear, it’s an albatross I have to deal with,” he says.

It is a fairly stark, somewhat surprising admission from Sir Peter Blake, sleeve designer of The Beatles’ 1967 album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

“What vaguely depresses me still is that I’m known pretty much as ‘Peter Blake – who did the cover of Sgt Pepper’ when I’ve done so much else,” he says. “Every so often I manage to forget it but it comes back all the time.”

What makes the revelation even more surprising is that Sir Peter has set aside any misgivings he has about his most famous work on the sleeve of arguably the Fab Four’s greatest album, to create a new poster reimagining the image to mark both his 80th birthday and designer Wayne Hemingway’s Vintage Festival.

Gone are cutouts of actress Marilyn Monroe, comedians Lenny Bruce and WC Fields to be replaced by Amy Winehouse, Kate Moss, artists Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst and musicians Eric Clapton and Noel Gallagher. Sadly, gone too are The Beatles themselves.

“I don’t own the copyright,” he explains. “Part of everything that went wrong at the time was that my agent signed away any kind of royalties and the copyright so we had to ask Apple Corps – The Beatles’ management – for permission and they didn’t want it to be associated with advertising.”

Apple Corps have yet to comment on Sir Peter’s claims.

Instead, Sir Peter has used what he called “family, friends and icons” on the latest poster. Though he has craftily managed to get round the Beatle-ban by including not one but three McCartneys. Longtime friend Sir Paul is in there, alongside designer daughter Stella and her sister, photographer Mary.

Alongside the McCartneys are an array of faces – from food, represented by restaurateurs Chris Corbin and Jeremy King and chefs Delia Smith and Rick Stein, to Kate Moss and Paul Smith from fashion and Noel Gallagher, John Peel and Paul Weller for music.

Late singer Amy Winehouse also gets a nod, Sir Peter fondly recalls his first memorable meeting with her. […]