Charles O'Connor on the cover art for three Horslips albums

Happy to Meet, Sorry To Part (1972):

"At the time it had to be a showcase piece, and due to the fact that three of the band were in advertising anyway, it was an advertising showcase. We wanted it to sell to record companies and that was one of the briefs - that we show off a bit. It was over the top, and it cost us. The cover at the time mystified a lot of people, as did the music. The cover had to reflect the music, and I think it does to this day. The cover was difficult, but I came up with using the shape of a concertina because it was fun and eye-catching. Getting the end result from the initial concept was seriously difficult. The concertina on the cover, believe it or not, is not an existing one. We had to make one to fit the shape so the album sleeve would fit into it. It was quite elaborate and expensive - we paid for it ourselves, initially. I don't think the album sold on the strength of the cover, but it certainly didn't do any harm. It was a nice sleeve to handle, which you don't have with CDs."

The Táin (1973):

"That was the serious start of how to integrate what we saw as graphically representing the band stage-wise and in print. The fist on the sleeve was my idea; a military concept in many ways. Often, when you put a theme together in terms of visuals and music, a lot of it might not be produced on stage easily, but because we were good at putting light acoustic music together with rock it worked as a show and as an album. The concept was very strong, the visual equally so - and the fans loved it. The image of the fist took a long time to photograph. It was a bit daft having your hand painted silver. My hand, too! The ring on the hand was a lovely ring - from an ex-girlfriend - but it was stolen from a dressing room. The chain mail obviously wouldn't have been around in Celtic times, but we wanted to bring it up to date, so we used basic military chain mail. It looks strong, doesn't it? As well as on stage, the fist image also featured on the front of our black Luton wagon - it looked quite demonic as we rolled into town, parked outside a Ballroom of Romance."

The Book Of Invasions (1976):

"It looks like a piece of Celtic jewellery, doesn't it? That was actually quite a large screen print, printed on glass. We'd screen-printed this Celtic motif, which was a fairly basic traditional one. I wanted to combine the mythological aspects of The Táin with a star-gazing science-fiction thing. The cover itself with the silver eye on it looks more like sci-fi than anything else. What I did with the CD design was to feature as many of the graphics as I possibly could: the Celtic swirling thing, which was basically photographed through gelatine and was animated. It was an image also perfect for stage. That Celtic swirl became a 30-foot (nine-metre) backdrop with a hole in the centre for light to shine through into the audience when we came on stage. The whole auditorium would light up and it was magic. No one could see us, because we'd just be enormous shadows shrouding over the crowd. We were once again trying to integrate what we knew about Irish mythology into the music. Everything - visuals, music, from Sean O'Riada, the orchestrated thing - was integrated. We wouldn't go home and listen just to Little Feat; it was far more Irish than that."