Album Art: First in a Series
Back in the old days, vinyl album covers were canvases for artists, as well as marketing and advertising mediums for the record companies and their recording artists. Sexvertising will be exploring the use of sexual imagery, innuendo and themes in album art.
To begin the series, we chose this controversial cover for the band Blind Faith, one of the first supergroups. Its famed members included Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Steve Winwood and Ric Grech. The album was released in the summer of 1969 in the US (Atco) and the UK (Polydor). It naturally drew fire for depicting a topless underage girl, reportedly 13 years of age. The cover was created by Bob Seidemann. (According to wikipedia, the British girl posed with the consent of her parents, for a fee). Some thought the airplane was phallic (isn’t everything of tubular dimension?).
In response to the backlash, the album cover was changed to a photograph of the band. Certainly, the bad publicity was still publicity. And in many ways, it’s the publicity given to shocking photos, videos, etc. that grab attention and are fodder for publications who end up marketing and promoting the very thing they are objecting to.
Technorati Tags: album art, advertising, marketing, Blind Faith, UK
