The Guardian’s Karen McVeigh looks at another cover concept project that Penguin has launched: getting noted musicians like Ryan Adams, Beck, and Johnny Borrell to design book covers for their favorite books. Borrell, lead singer of Razorlight, has chosen F Scott Fitzgerald‘s classic THE GREAT GATSBY, customizing the cover with a betting slip scribbled on a piece of notepaper from the Westin Miyako Hotel in Kyoto, Japan. “I was running a book on the Grand National in Tokyo and I was writing out a betting slip for everyone, and decided that my bookie’s name was going to be Gatsby. So the cover of the book is a betting slip.”
Beck’s illustration, of the French novel LE GRAND MEAULNES by Alain Fournier, follows his DIY art project for his latest album, The Information. “The idea is to provide something that calls for interactivity. Cover art and all the paraphernalia that comes with albums have always been really important to me. I’m one of the people who need a visual crutch for music.” The six books, plus Aesop’s THE COMPLETE FABLES, are available from today.