The Some Girls Album Cover: Die-Cut Faces and Celebrity Guest Appearances

The Rolling Stones’ 1978 album Some Girls came wrapped in one of the most famously gimmicky sleeves in rock history. The cover was a die-cut design – essentially a cardboard envelope with five circles cut out, each filled with a sheet of interchangeable sticky paper. Initially, the band dressed in wigs and makeup to match the faces of celebrities like Lucille Ball, Raquel Welch, and Brigitte Bardot. But after threats of lawsuits from the actual celebrities (Ball reportedly hated her depiction), the Stones quickly replaced those faces with their own, leaving only the band’s photos in the windows.

The first pressing of the album featured celebrity faces on the inner sleeve and in the die-cut slots: Lucille Ball, Raquel Welch, Brigitte Bardot, Farrah Fawcett, Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe, and others. After the legal trouble, the Stones printed new sleeves with the band members’ own faces in all five slots, plus a slip of paper apologizing to the offended parties. The whole thing was a clever, chaotic marketing move that perfectly matched the album’s cheeky, disco-punk attitude.