Peter Gabriel 1 - Car
The picture was taken in Wandsworth, London. The car, a Lancia Flavia, was owned by the designer Storm Thorgerson of Hipgnosis. It was sprayed with water from a hose and Peter sat in the passenger seat. Originally in black and white, the artwork was then hand-coloured and each droplet highlight patiently scraped clean with a scalpel by Richard Manning.
“The album cover was done particularly with Storm and Peter at Hipgnosis who I worked with a little bit at the end of the Genesis period. I think they are very important in the way that album sleeves have developed over the years. This was actually his car that I was sitting in and I liked the idea of the water and the sort of black and white and blue colour. One idea I’d had for that first cover was to do mirrored contact lenses and it took me about a month to find someone who would manufacture mirrored contact lenses but they made me sign something that if I damaged my eye they wouldn’t take any responsibility. They were very painful to wear but the effect was fantastic, it was like having steel balls for eyes” Peter Gabriel.
