Before a trip to Australia with fellow British artist Ben Eine in early 2003, Banksy was approached to create the artwork covers for Blur’s upcoming release of their seventh album, ‘Think Tank’. This included creating the art for the band’s singles released from April that year.

Banksy, was no stranger to creating album art. He had been doing this for many years with the record label ‘Wall of Sound’ in their Portobello Road studios in West London. But, he had never worked on a commercial release.

“I’ve done a few things to pay the bills, and I did the Blur album. It was a good record and [the commission was] quite a lot of money. If it’s something you actually believe in, doing something commercial doesn’t turn it to shit just because it’s commercial. Otherwise, you’ve got to be a socialist rejecting capitalism altogether, because the idea that you can marry a quality product with a quality visual and be a part of that even though it’s capitalistic is sometimes a contradiction you can’t live with. But sometimes it’s pretty symbiotic, like the Blur situation.”

The term ‘Petrolhead’ refers to someone who loves motor vehicles. Here, Banksy’s image uses the nozzle of a fuel dispenser as a gun, as the figure aims it towards its own head. This suggests that the continuing use of fossil fuels, and in turn decline of the environment, is the same as a person holding a gun to its own head. 

This CD was a limited release in a card sleeve. Each cover has been hand-stamped by Banksy with his Petrolhead design, making each CD unique from one another, varying slightly from cover to cover. There are reports of some covers missing stamps altogether and even fewer with a completely different version of cover, having a baby’s foot imprint in pink. But this version is very scarce.