Cover & Name
The cover art is by renowned artist Iain McCaig.
The runic symbols around the edge of the cover are from the Anglo Saxon rune system. The words are, however, English: the opening lyrics to Broadsword:
I see a dark sail on the horizon, set under a black cloud that hides the sun. Bring me my broadsword and clear understanding. Bring me my cross of gold as a talisman.
The album was going to be called "Beastie", responding to the first track on side one. But during production the band deliberated over the preference between "Beastie" and "Broadsword", the first track on side two. In the end they decided (as on Aqualung) to give each side its own title and thus its own identity and to combine both in the album title. Ian Anderson himself thinks of the album as "Broadsword". As the artwork also puts much more emphasis on Broadsword, many owners and fans also refer to it as the "Broadsword album".
Read more about this topic: The Broadsword And The Beast
Famous quotes containing the word cover:
“Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)