4.6 What's the story behind the alteration of covers for A Question of Balance?
Cover artist Phil Travers originally included a small painting of a man named Blashford Snell within the collage of A Question of Balance (AqoB). Snell was a well-known British explorer and children's advocate, and the painting on AQoB was inspired by a photograph, which appeared in National Geographic. The original album image was of Snell wearing a pith helmet, holding a pistol and pointing it at an elephant. After the album was released, Snell sued Decca Records and the Moodies over the image, which he said was "a source of constant embarrassment over being on the cover." Travers, with the direction of Decca, changed the image of Snell to that of a man without a pith helmet holding the pistol (although some altered versions have a black box over the eyes). Unfortunately, Decca only printed up new covers within England and not abroad. So Snell filed suit again against Decca and the Moodies. All future copies of A Question of Balance (vinyl, cassette and CD) are supposed to be printed with the altered version. Though, when Mobile Fidelity released their version of AQoB, it had the original version of the cover. When asked about it, they said since the Threshold CD remastered version had the original cover, they [Mobile Fidelity] felt it was OK to do the same.