Fatboy Slim: You've Come a Long Way, Baby
I’d love to know the history of the fat dude on the cover. It almost looks like a Hollywood makeup job.
An interesting note is that this cover was actually censored for release in USA. I guess American’s felt fat people equate to lower sales. It was changed to this rather forgetable cover you see below. Yawn.
Posted by Ash on 10 June, 2007
Devin:
Astralwerks always edits Fatboy Slim album covers when they release his stuff here in America. His follow-up release, “Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars,” featured a cropped version of the cover photo (thankfully, this was only used on the “clean version” of the album) and the nudist colony screenprints used on the album “Palookaville” were cleaned up for the American release. Finally, for his recent best-of album “Why Try Harder,” an oil painting of the fat kid (now sporting angel wings) was replaced with a still image of Christopher Walken from the infamous “Weapon of Choice” video.
# 03 Aug 07 at 6:41 am
Paul:
I actually like the American version of the cover as well (what a record collection!), but I can’t tell why Astralwerks would make the change.
# 04 Aug 07 at 7:47 am
Ash:
Yeah the record collection is cool but in terms of a cover that stands out and is iconic the non US one works a lot better.
Devin’s comments are great and I’ll have to check out those other releases soon.
# 04 Aug 07 at 12:22 pm
Lee-Roy:
The original “fat” cover is great! For one reason, the title fits the image so much better, because the guy is holding a cigarette and “You’ve come a long way, baby” is/was the slogan for Virginia Slims, which would typically feature a happy, attractive and slender woman. Plus he’s wearing that shirt! Ha! It’s like the record title is saying, “Wow, congratulations on being #1.”
# 28 Aug 07 at 8:20 am
Lee-Roy:
Oh, and plus it’s “Fatboy” Slim. Duh.
# 28 Aug 07 at 8:21 am
scott:
the reason the cover of the greatest hits with the oil painting of the fat bloke was censored in america was because the fat guy threatened to take fatboy slim (norman cook) to court over it.
# 11 Jan 08 at 11:26 am
Susie-girl:
Lol(:
# 27 May 08 at 12:45 am
unimportantbob:
According to Wikipedia, the guy on the cover is Mark Johnson, who had a cameo in the video for the song “Right Here, Right Now”, wearing the exact same outfit featured on the cover.
# 21 Sep 08 at 9:47 am