February 4th, 2010
Having returned recently from a trip to NYC to visit my wife (there on assignment), old friends and colleagues, and to see Gail Buckland's "Who Shot Rock & Roll" photo exhibit at the Brooklyn Art Museum, I was inspired to redouble my efforts to get the stories behind many of the great album covers from the last 40+ years. As I've been digging through resource materials online, in the local library and in books I've purchased on the subject, I keep finding tidbits that are priceless in and of themselves, so while I continue on my work to bring you long-form interview articles, I thought that I'd share some of these items with you.
Since my most-recent resource guide was the beautiful book that inspired the BAM exhibition (Gail Buckland's Who Shot Rock & Roll - A Photographic History 1955 - Present, published by Alfred A. Knopf), today's "I Didn't Know That" entries come from that book:
RE: Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy (cover produced in 1973 by Hipgnosis - Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell) - featured on pages 180-81 in the WSR&R book - Thorgerson notes that they hand-colored the final image since they'd promised the band a cover image with a beautiful sunrise and, unfortunately, the photos of the little kids taken as they played on the rocks of the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland were taken in B&W on a dreary, overcast day...
RE: Mamas & Papas - If You Can Believe Your Eyes & Ears (cover photo shot in 1966 by photographer Guy Webster) - featured on page 285 in the WSR&R book - according to the photographer, both he and his subjects were quite stoned as they approached the task and only got a far as the bathroom when they all decided that they couldn't go on any further. The band members simply crawled into the tub together and the photo was taken. In order to appease the large record merchandisers of the day (Sears, J.C. Penney, etc.) and their refusal to sell a record that showed a toilet on the cover (wait - didn't they include pictures of toilets in their retail catalogs?), the label released this record with a strategically-placed (i.e., over the toilet) sticker on the shrink-wrap that read "including California Dreaming".
RE: U2 - The Joshua Tree (cover photo shot by Anton Corbijn in 1986) - featured on pages 206-207 in the WSR&R book - the notion of shooting the photo in the Joshua Tree Desert in California came to Corbijn after he had attended some of the recording sessions for the album which, at the time, had a working title of "The Desert Songs" or "The Two Americas". Bono was focused on the idea of survival in a harsh environment after working in an Ethiopian orphanage not long after their 1985 Live Aid appearance.
RE: Black Flag - Damaged (cover photograph by Edward Colver, taken in 1981 in Los Angeles) - featured on page 243 in the WSR&R book - while I always thought that the blood on Henry Rollins' fist was real, I now know that it was made out of a mix of red India ink, dishwashing liquid and instant coffee (probably NOT de-caf).
To buy your own copy of the WSR&R book, please visit your local bookseller or click on this link to find the book on the publisher's site -
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307270160
To find a limited-edition print of the Houses of the Holy image, please visit the RockPoP Gallery site at
All images featured in this UnCovered story are Copyright 1973 - 2010, Storm Thorgerson/Hipgnosis - All rights reserved. Except as noted, all other text Copyright 2010 - Mike Goldstein & RockPoP Gallery (www.rockpopgallery.com) - All rights reserved.
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