Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album carried on the childhood and Liverpool theme with its circus and fairground effects, its pervading atmosphere of the traditional northern music hall that was in both its main creators' [McCartney and Lennon's] blood." "Sgt. Pepper" album cover was designed by the pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth. Blake recalled of the concept: "I offered the idea that if they had just played a concert in the park, the cover could be a photograph of the group just after the concert with the crowd who had just watched the concert, watching them. If we did this by using cardboard
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as largely responsible for the connections between art and pop to be made explicit." Riley describes the cover as "one of the best-known works that pop art ever produced", while Norman calls it "the most famous album cover of all time". In the late 1990s, the BBC included the "Sgt. Pepper" cover in its list of British masterpieces of twentieth-century art and design, placing it ahead of the red telephone box, Mary Quant's miniskirt, and the Mini motorcar. In 2008, the bass drum skin used on the front cover sold at auction for €670,000. "Sgt. Pepper" sustained its immense popularity