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Rejected: 50 Years of Lefty’s Head

In 1998, Left­y’s Head released a con­cept album titled “50 Years of Left­y’s Head” (the con­cept being that some­one had sent their great­est hits com­pi­la­tion back from the future, to serve as a bea­con of hope for us stuck here in the less-enlight­ened present). The fol­low­ing images rep­re­sent vary­ing stages of devel­op­ment for the CD cover.

Here’s the first con­cept sketch I made:

My hard dri­ve died short­ly after cre­at­ing that last pic­ture, so I had to start over. I went a more comedic route this time.

This ulti­mate­ly proved to be the wrong direc­tion; por­tray­ing the band in a dis­turb­ing and unat­trac­tive light.

This is as far as I got with it before they asked me to stop.

They went with an oil paint­ing from a dif­fer­ent artist, depict­ing the band at their present age. And while that was prob­a­bly the right move, I do think it dark­ened their basic message.

If ambas­sadors from the future are still con­cerned with the appear­ance of youth, how far could we have pro­gressed, really?