ometimes, my father, Burton Silverman, age 89, has trouble remembering certain things.

He
worries about this. My mother, a psychologist, 79, worries even more, parsing his speech
patterns and emails for any clinical signs of cognitive impairment. He always hand waves
away these concerns, partly for our benefit and partly because there is little to be done.
But as some details — the name of a former friend, where he last stashed his wallet — seem
to fall just beyond his fingertips, dad’s focus has turned towards something less definable: his
career. More to the point, the end of a career that has seen him become one of the more
prominent realist painters of his time. And yet, for all the artwork he’s created, the accolades
and awards, it bothers him, in a way he can’t really express and may not want to recognize,
that one of the first lines in his obituary will mention a “throwaway gig,” from the winter of
1970: the artwork for Jethro Tull’s best-known and best-selling album, Aqualung.
Seven million copies of Aqualung have been sold over the last five-odd decades and the
cover has become one of the most recognizable in rock and roll history, migrating from vinyl
albums to cassettes, CDs, and iTunes art, plus an unending supply of Aqualung-
embossed merchandise. But dad’s earnings had a hard cap. In 1971, Terry Ellis, the co-
founder of Chrysalis Records, paid him a flat $1,500 fee for the three paintings which would
comprise the album’s artwork, consummating the deal with nothing more than a handshake.
No written contractual agreement was drawn up, and, much to his eventual dismay, nor was
any determination made about future use.