I realised the song I want played at my funeral, Jeff Buckleys i know its over and hallejuyah medley, if I was struck down dead now, or whilst wandering sqaundered by terrorists, that would be my final wish, to make people think, if I die happy make people happy, play something else.

Any way, I emailed Oliver West, who did Elbows art work for the album seldom seen kid, to find out some information this is what it contained.

hello there, It came to my attention that you did my course afew years ago, BA hons interactive arts at manchester met. One day I would love to produce art work for bands albums singles etc, and was wondering how you got involved with working with bands such as elbow, please reply thanks very much

Edd Butt .

hi edd, i did the elbow thing because the band are friends of mine and they asked me to do it, but i couldn't have done it if i hadn't been working hard on my practice for years. i'm not a trained illustrator so i can't offer you any advice regarding getting certain briefs and clients.

what i started off doing was to create black and white comic books of my work and gave them away for free to people who came in the bar i managed at the time (The Temple, Elbow's local). this cost me about £80 but meant 100 people saw my stuff. people like free stuff. after three of those, when people new what i was about, i started printing in colour and charged a fiver for them. self publishing your work is an excellent way to get your stuff 'out there' and seen by people you want it seen by. the internet's all fine and dandy but people love being able to hold something in their hands.

from doing this for three years i now have a book publisher who've published two books and want another two off me. some animation and record companies have seen these books and have asked me to do work for them.

work as hard as you know you can and you'll be half way there, but you also need a bit of luck as well i'm afraid. i happened to be managing Elbow's local when they were recording that album, and a competition i entered was being run by someone setting up a comic book publishers.

learn by doing stuff, don't wait till you've learnt it; if that makes sense.

hope that helps. if you've any other questions i'd be glad to help


Thats great thanks, thats a lovely peculiar place the temple, thanks for all the info and advice and il try and find your books around, good stuff, thought id follow a whim, righto thanks for the help.