Far Out Magazine explores the surprising real-world sources behind five famous album covers, showing how musicians and artists often repurposed existing photographs, adverts and paintings rather than creating original imagery from scratch. The piece highlights how chance discoveries, dark historical events and vintage commercial art have shaped some of rock's most recognisable visuals.

– Sonic Youth's Goo (1990): the cover's mod couple was based on a 1966 press photo of Maureen Hindley and David Smith, witnesses in the Moors Murders case, after DGC rejected an earlier, more explicit design.
– Frank Zappa's Weasels Ripped My Flesh (1970): artist Neon Park combined a 1956 Man's Life magazine cover of a man being attacked by weasels with a Schick razor advert to create the album's grinning imagery.
– Butthole Surfers' Locust Abortion Technician (1987): the unsettling clowns-and-dog cover, titled Fido and the Clowns, was painted by commercial illustrator Arthur Sarnoff, though how the band obtained it remains unconfirmed.