RIP Ray Lowry

Without Ray Lowry one of the most visually striking record sleeves in the history of rock music would never have existed.

The cartoonist and graphic designer, who has died aged 64, was remembered yesterday by colleagues and admirers for the distinctive, dark illustrations that adorned publications from Oz and Private Eye to the NME over four decades.



Perhaps his greatest achievement rests, however, in an image that he did not draw: the cover of the Clash's 1979 album London Calling.



The photograph that dominates the sleeve shows Paul Simonon pounding his bass guitar into the stage after a show at the New York Palladium in September 1979.

Pennie Smith, who took it, thought that the shot was too grainy to blow up. It needed Lowry, serving as the band's “official war artist” on that American tour, to persuade her that it would work as a cover. Lowry then framed the shot with the words “London” and “Calling” in a typeface, colour scheme and design that recalled the sleeve of Elvis Presley's debut album, the underlying suggestion being that the Clash's music offered the same sense of swagger and danger that Presley's had 20 years earlier.