Hot Space cover is a tribute to The Beatles?

well, "Life Is Real" - I often wondered if this song for John was influenced by the infamous Dakota tapes recorded by John Lennon from 1975 to 1979 when he went back to studio in August 1979. There is "Life Is Real" (which was the working progress title of the piano version of "Real Love" and the acoustic version "Girls And Boys"- same melody, different lyrics. My guess is that Lennon was so excited to record with a band in August 1979 that he wanted to try everything. Since with his Geffen contract the album had a dead-line (sic) and Yoko recorded half of the song, I guess he saved the "piano" songs for the next album (besides "Watching The Wheels"). Thus, I wonder if he would have kept the piano arrangement or recorded 2 different version : a piano one and an acoustic one.
He leaved some hand written lyrics/notes about the song arrangement he had in mind and referred to "Imagine" sound.

Brian May recorded a George Harrison-soaring guitar solo-like on "Life Is Real".

But before" Life Is Real" there was "The Game" which has a kind of "Sexy Sadie"-piano like- by John Lennon.
It's odd, and kind of sad, that Bowie recorded with Lennon, Elton John too, Mick Jagger (Too Many Cooks), Harry Nilsson, and Freddy apparently never went in the studio to record with John who had another album planned with recording date booked, but Yoko was pregnant and Sean was born in 1975.

I wonder if because of Fred Seaman, Freddy would have got some Lennon's demos tapes at the times; if he listen to these demos.
At the time "Hot Space" came out, Lennon was shot to death (Freddy played "Imagine" in concert), a lot of tapes have "disappeared"; perhaps Freddie was able to lo listen to some Lennon bootlegs.

I read John Lennon's complete playboy interview, he talks about the Clash, Neil Young's song "Hey Hey, My My", Bob Dylan's infamous Jesus tour, but don't mention F.Mercury. But there are a lot of piano melodies magnificent recorded by Freddie and Queen that I'm almost sure that Lennon would have listened to several Queen albums. Thus I'm sure Lennon could have been influenced during his househusband years 1975-79 by Queen's music, especially F.Mercury's piano melodies.

regarding "The Game" artwork, it precedes "Menlove Avenue" Lennon posthumous album in 1986 with the Andy Warhol portrait (even though this Andy Warhol draft of Lennon was done years before)
Because of the color, quite flashy of "Hot Space", even if they didn't get an Andy Warhol typical painting treatment (did they contact Warhol?) you are definitely right about the Let It Be cover.
There is also the White Album Wharholian photo series of the 4 Fabs even if this is not an album cover.

Here is Andy Warhol design which was re-used later in 1986 for John Lennon "Menlove Avenue" album :



this is the closest color-Warholien-look to the "Hot Space" cover.
My guess is that for "Hot Space" that they could color their faces, but not to Warholish to avoid a trial or some problems. We have no trace they try to contact Andy Warhol ?

i genuinely don;t see it.
there are thousands of LP covers that have band photos on them, and (probably) hundreds with the 4-split arrangement.

HS is no way a tribute to the LIB cover. If you really want to pitch it anywhere, it's much much closer to Kiss' Dynasty.

And - if we're being brutally honest, the music genre switch on HS - well it's more akin to the Dynasty content that LIB. Kiss just beat Queen to the dance punch.

Nice spotted! Never noticed it myself and I too think it was done on purpose.

The Kiss example is very far fetched and there is a better example of another record I don't know the name of having the four colourful squares in the same position as HS has. It was a "Best Of" definitely.

Or Blur?

There was a parody of Hot Space in the style of Blur's best of album in the documentary "Killer Queen" but it's gone from YouTube..

"The best of blur" isn't an album.

It's an EP.

One sided.

And includes a cover of John Cake's 4:24

John and Paul were equally lead vocalists, Paul's other role being bassist, while Johns was primarily as rhythm guitarist. if the alluded similarity is between HS and LIB, then the lead vocals (on that Lp - as with most other Beatles stuff) were evenly shared between Lennon & McCartney, so the position of Lennon /Freddie as singers on the album covers is no longer a valid point.
one other point of note: the typical "who played what" conventions more or less went out of the window on LIB - there were tracks where Paul or John took lead guitar and another where John played bass.

another non-similarity, I'm afraid. the two albums were polar opposites - with Queen's HS being experimental, while the Beatles' LIB was by their own admission a complete "Get Back" to basics.