“I just thought it was a fantastic picture,” he says, pulling out a framed copy of a Beatles’ compilation album at his Microdot design company headquarters in Kendal, on the edge of the Lake District.
“The photograph on the back of A Collection of Beatles Oldies was taken in Japan in the mid-60s. They know there’s a camera person there, clearly, but it’s a proper fly-on-the-wall shot.
“That’s kind of where the idea came from.
“Most groups on their first album do some kind of pose, but Oasis are sat watching [Clint Eastwood Western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly on] the telly which I thought was hilarious.
“Another one to look at is the Arnolfini Portrait by [15th-Century artist] Jan Van Eyck. It’s in the [later] style of Flemish Renaissance art where the images are littered with visual metaphors.”
Where the enigmatic oil painting featured slippers, a dog and oranges, the Oasis cover, shot by photographer Michael Spencer Jones, included footballers Rodney Marsh and George Best, musician Burt Bacharach, a pink flamingo and a packet of Benson and Hedges cigarettes.
“The mirror on the wall was out of my flat,” Cannon says, “but all of those little bits including the inflatable globe came from recording engineer Mark Coyle and roadie Phil Smith’s house.”
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