Featuring a portrait of ‘Salford’s Bob Dylan’, as Tony Wilson called him, this image of Shaun Ryder was plastered all over Factory Record’s newly acquired HQ.

Central Station describe for us the creation of this cover, commissioned by Factory Records for the 1988 release of the Happy Mondays second album:

"At the time we were developing ideas for a series of portraits of iconic faces from British film, radio and television. People we had been influenced by when growing up. Characters like Arthur Askey, Kenneth Williams, and Tommy Cooper. These paintings were shown in our first major exhibition "Hello Playmates" at the Manchester City Art Gallery.

"Shaun Ryder was painted using the same techniques, a combination of silk screen, oil and acrylic paint on canvas. The reason for the tight crop on the sleeve was to make the image more ambiguous. This worked because even Shaun didn't recognize himself. On the sleeve itself we blind embossed the title of the album so it didn't ruin the impact of the image. We wanted to create a new visual identity, and we were confident that people would recognize a Mondays artwork without having to spell it out."