Pete Townshend – Rough Boys

I worked with photographer the late Bob Carlos Clarke on Pete Townshend’s third solo album, Empty Glass. The opening track is a song called ‘Rough Boys’ written in praise of latter day Punks, revivalist Mods, street kids, boys in the neighbourhood.

For the single sleeve, I used one of Bob’s black-and-white high contrast Kodalith prints of a close up of Pete’s face: the top half for the front of the single sleeve – those eyes and that nose – and the bottom half, the mouth and chin, for the reverse. I added the flat skin tone and whitened the eyes to make them even more piercing.

The second image is the back of Empty Glass in which I combined one of Bob’s photographs of Pete with an airbrush illustration of the two girls, the wine bottle and the half-empty glass. The third image is the front cover of Empty Glass.