Les Edwards: They got in touch with my agent, and told them they wanted me to do it. There was a cover for Metallica for their single 'Jump in the Fire', but most of those were 'second rights' IE they'd be used somewhere else first like on a book jacket and then reused as a cover.
Les Edwards: Well, I'd done some covers before, one for Uriah Heep and another for Monty Python. So Les, how did you go from doing fantasy illustrations to the inside sleeve for a band like the Prodigy? Doing commercial work helps your artistic work with structure. Stewart Haygarth: When I shot the Prodigy cover I was a photographer, then later I moved into illustration and then 10-years I started doing art and design, working in light mixed media. You're a successful artist in your own right, now. Stewart Haygarth: I got £400 I think, and that was that. I just found that sort of stuff more original. Then there were the Blur covers that feature found imagery, like the swimming woman wearing a rubber cap. At the time XL shared offices with 4AD, who made covers for bands like Cocteau Twins, Pixies and Dead Can Dance, and these were the type of covers I wanted to do. It's not an idea I'd come up with or can relate to - it's all a bit heavy metal. And while it's a great album and I'm very proud of it, the artwork kind of makes me cringe because I never liked it. They didn't really fit into one specific scene. Stewart Haygarth: I haven't listened to the record for a while, but they were a very unique band. How do you feel about the cover and the record? Speaking to Stewart from his studio in east London, and Les from his home in Sussex, they explained their part in this unique document. Painted by famous British horror and fantasy illustrator, Les Edwards, it was a farewell to rave, the scene in which Liam had forged his and one had been killed off the year of Music’s release by the government’s Criminal Justice and Public Order Act. Inside is no less impressive, the gatefold conceived to foldout into a landscape portrait of some ravers cutting a rope bridge back to a city full of riot police and industrial decay.
The cover, designed by artist Stewart Haygartth, is a shrieking metallic face that’s often compared to ‘The Scream’ by Edvard Munch, but also looks like Han Solo frozen in carbonite from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, and is one the most striking from the period. Liam Howlett’s unique mixture of German techno and raw punk attitude isn’t the only thing that’s iconic about The Prodigy’s Music for the Jilted Generation there’s the artwork too.
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