Why David Bowie had to pass on dream collaboration for album cover

David Bowie passed on a dream collaboration for an album cover because it would have taken too long.

The Life on Mars hitmaker had hoped to work on an album with acclaimed painter and illustrator Norman Rockwell. While the collaboration between Bowie and Rockwell never came to be, there had been a time when the two were set to work together. Bowie had to pull out of the dream project because it would have taken too long, but did get a “lovely experience” with Rockwell nonetheless. Speaking to Playboy Magazine in 1976, Bowie confirmed he had approached Rockwell to work on an album cover which would have been used for Young Americans. The time it would have taken Rockwell to complete the project was, unfortunately, too long of a wait for Bowie’s 1975 classic.

Bowie said: “I really wanted Norman Rockwell to do an album cover for me. Still do. I originally wanted him for the cover of Young Americans. I got his phone number and called him up. Very quaint.

“His wife answered and I said, ‘Hello, this is David Bowie,’ and so on. I asked if he could paint the cover. His wife said in this quavering, elderly voice, ‘I’m sorry, but Norman needs at least six months for his portraits.’

“So I had to pass, but I thought the experience was lovely. What a craftsman. Too bad I don’t have the same painstaking passion. I’d rather just get my ideas out of my system as fast as I can.”

Bowie and Rockwell would not work together, and instead Bowie would opt for an inspiring portrait of Toni Basil. The front cover of an After Dark magazine would inform the drafts of Young Americans’ cover.

Photographer Eric Stephen Jacobs would work on the Young Americans cover for Bowie off the back of the pair’s collaborative efforts on the Diamond Dogs tour. Bowie had called Rockwell directly, and he gave the same directness to Jacobs when approaching him for Young Americans.

Jacobs recalled in an interview with Uncut: “I would have expected his people to call my people, as they say. But there we were talking one on one! David was in LA performing – so I made the trip to California to shoot him on what was an old movie studio sound stage. There wasn’t much time, but I knew he wanted an image as similar to the Toni Basil After Dark cover as possible.

“It was a bit rushed for me… the car took me directly to the studio where we were to be doing the photo session before I’d checked into my hotel. We used the original old-fashioned studio klieg lights, which were a bit hard for me to control.

David’s makeup and hair man, Jack Collello, did the prep, and his wardrobe people picked the Tattersall cotton shirt. Had I been older and wiser, I would have chosen something simpler like a plain black shirt. The pattern in the shirt did cause a problem for me.”