Entertainment For Lively Minds
Mystery civilians on album covers
Posted by David Hepworth on 13 May 2009 - 4:07pm.
Seems rock musicians are the only people in the world who can have pretty much any picture they like on the cover of their records. That leads to some pretty lamentable choices sometimes but it also leads to some good ones like the girls on the cover of the first album by Beirut. I don't know anything about them but I'm prepared to speculate that they're up to mischief. Anyone know who they are or how they got there? And have you got any favourite mystery civilians?
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Mystery sunbather...
Mystery civilians on "Civilians"
I love the cover of "Civilians" by Joe Henry. Make up your own back story:
(Unless it's a still from a film I've never seen?)
the mystery civilian is...
Well, it's not all a mystery. The Woman's name is Mary Frank, she is a sculptor - " The black-and-white image is the new album's cover, a picture of a woman (Mary Frank, wife of artist Robert) riding in a New York City horse-drawn cab, holding a bouquet of daisies and wearing an inscrutable expression" - and the photo is by John Cohen.
(http://www.lacitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/?id=6132&IssueNum=223+civilli...)
Are photographers civilians?
Thanks for the research, Andrew - though I'm not sure I really wanted to know! Still a wonderful, enigmatic photo.
Dexys Midnight Runners' Searching For The Young Soul Rebels...
That's quite a well-known picture
It was taken of a family having to leave their home in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
the details are on the word
album sleeve map if that's still going, the main lad isn't anonymous
Sebadoh: Bakesale
Doesn't exactly scream "Buy Me!", does it?
Nowadays...
they'd remove that cellulite in Photoshop.
This guy has intrigued me for years...
Blind Sam
Its an old blind dyslexic guy from new york used to sell Pretzels for 15cents...blind Sam I seem to remember
Blind *and* dyslexic?
I certainly don't want to make light of his condition, but blind *and* dyslexic? Surely the former trumps the latter?
I guess that excuses...
... the 'pretzle' howler...
Blnid Asm
Tha'ts okay...all his life he's had to put up with comments like that. Good job he's dead now and at peace RPI
The Killers' Sam's Town...
Looks suspiciously like
a Russian remake of Thelma and Louise to me in their souped up Lada, on the run from the law and the threat of being made to work driving tractors in a potato farming collective in Minsk.
Here’s some from the collection
I like the slightly down at heel look of this model there’s a hint of James Ellroy character about her, I fear it didn’t end well.
These two seem to be making the best of a chilly looking Baltic coast beach.
And I may be a melancholy soul but I always wonder what happened to this happy lass? What did she do for the rest of 60’s etc?
Then there are the little kids peeing on the everything but the girl lp (Idlewild?)
The last one
Isn't that Cherie Blair getting a sneak listen of the infamous lost Ugly Rumours demos?
Actually it was Love Not Money
Best use of urination imagery on an album cover since Who's Next.
Always liked the old guys on the covers of The Cure's Staring at The Sea and the Housemartins' Happy Hour 12". (Sorry, can't find them to post them.)
Unhalfbricking
Obviously I can't post a pic, but it's Sandy Denny's mum and dad isn't it?
Yes
Outside their Wimbledon garden.
Leslie West...
...I don't recall the album - from memory it might have been the Great Fatsby, certainly a solo one from the '70s - but years later Leslie decided he was in love with a mystery woman who was pictured on said album cover (I think it was a hired extra/model rather than a passer-by) and actually placed adverts in papers saying 'You were on my album cover in 197_, please get in touch - LW' or suchlike. And she did. And they got married. Amazing!
Eels
Can't embed it but Beautiful Freak's cover is probably one that will haunt her for some time to come.
http://www.eelstheband.com/discography/images/beautifulfreakdsclg.jpg
Whilst we are on this subject...
may I draw your collective attention to a book entitled 'Being Human' - recently published by Thames and Hudson - which collects together 'enigmatic images of people by unknown photographers'. It's well worth a look... ISBN: 978-0500543726
Top album!
The 3 Guys
that appear on the first 4 RevCo albums
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Revoltingbigsexy.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Revoltingsonofabitch.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Revoltingbeerssteers.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Linger_Ficken_Good.jpg
Mystery Local Couple
I'd like to know who the couple are walking behind Richard Hawley. I asked Hawley a few years ago and he said they were just passers by. I presume they are Scarborough locals, which is where the picture was taken. Bit blurred I know, I doubt if they even realise they are on the cover of a Mercury Nominated album! Perhaps I should ask the local Scarborough rag to run a story asking if anyone knows who they are. It's bugged me for the last few years. If I could see their faces clearly I may know them myself!
That reminds me of this...
Nick Drake daydreams as the rat race carries on regardless...
Talking of whether that couple know that they're...
on an album cover, an interesting thing in a similar vein happened to me a while back. Do you know the famous photograph by Robert Doisneau of a couple kissing in the street in Paris? Well, behind the couple is a chap in a beret. One day two French women came into the bookshop I work in and brought a poster of the photo up to the counter. They told me that they knew the man in the beret - who by now was very elderly - and were buying the poster for him as a present.
The Kiss
Doesn't the debate about who the couple are still rage?
Yes... it still rages...
I don't know who they are, but what is apparently fact is that it was a posed photograph, as was this famous image by Alfred Eisenstadt...
Just goes to support my theory....
...that when things just happen without warning the visual media is always looking the other way or re-loading or waiting for the light to get better.
...except in sport, of course...
(I'm cheating a bit with this one. The full picture, showing at least a hundred facial reactions to the kick, is amazing. But I can't find it and it's not on a record cover.)
Fascinating
That's almost spooky, it's a small world indeed. Perhaps, the same thing will happen to me with the "Coles Corner Couple". After taking a closer lose at my couple, the lady seems quite well dressed, so perhaps they were about to go into the Stephen Jospeh Theatre, which is pictured behind Hawley. I expect the man in the Beret was delighted with his picture and the memories it will give him.
what this one?
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_FndWVWa36Hg/RxxggbmCdnI/AAAAAAAAAiI/S_UIZr8BP4...
cant figure out how to make the picture appear!!Sorry.
Beirut
To return to Mr. H's original cover; the photo was taken by a Russian photographer called Sergey Chilikov, who took lots of pictures in this style. Zach Cordon (aka Beirut) says he found it ripped from a book in a library and only after the record came out did he find out who the photographer was. Other examples of Chilikov's work can be found at http://cleclos.blogspot.com/2009/03/sergey-chilikov.html
That's brilliant
Thanks for that.
Dipsy
To echo Himself - brilliant. What great photographs
excellent pictures
good to know who took them.
Can I just say
I hate the expression 'civilians'. It has always struck me as a pejorative term, equating to 'the little people'. Made prominent by Liz Hurley, I believe, which tells you all you need to know.
I used to be in the mob
"Civilians" is what you are. Accept it.
I know it's not the form, dear boy, but
do f**k off.
No
And that's not polite.
Why should I be polite
after a condescending comment like that? You don't know me, and you're certainly no better than me, so don't make out that you belong to some kind of spurious higher echelon.
Because
We ask you to be polite in our posting guidelines.
I don't think you can't be sure from billyous' post that he was condescending - it certainly read to me as light-hearted humour. Ether way, two wrongs don't make a right. Either way, we'd prefer it you kept things polite. And if billyous has offended you when he didn't mean to, then I'm sure he'll apologise.
you and Liz Hurley ?
was Liz Hurley in the mob with you ?
Used in this context for the very good reason...
...that people know what it means.
It's still
elitist/patronising.
I'd put that forward as a more plausible reason for its use.
Well, course it's elitist and patronising
That's what makes it funny and appropriate. Does anybody know a better one-word expression denoting people who are neither the artist nor well-known in any other respect?
Outsiders?
I'm not suggesting it's any better, mind.
Maybe a little more honest in a "they're not like us creatives, we're special" kind of way.
How about
Punters?
Not quite as all encompassing as civilians which however is a little military
speaking as a "civilian"
I'm not at all offended particularly as it's initial populiser was Liz Hurley; if it means I'm not in her gang bargain! I was just enjoying the pictures of my fellow "non-combatants".
"Punters"?
I've always considered that uniquely horrible.
But not quite as horrible as its derivative "Billies".
Actually, the more I think about it the better I think "civilian" is and I think its original use by Liz Hurley was perfectly judged. She used it when discussing body weight with a journalist. "That's OK for a civilian."
i.e. as a professional entertainer my life is ruled by a series of requirements that most people wouldn't put up with. If I'm successful I get a lot of glory and money but in exchange for that I have to (as an actress/model) go without food, see my personal life taken apart by the newspapers and live with the perpetual anxiety that it will all go wrong and I will get no sympathy.
"Punters" implies docile sheep. "Civilians" implies people who haven't enlisted. Doesn't bother me at all. And it's nothing to do with "creatives".
I wasn't being entirely serious...
'Billies' is far better.
I concede
that you may have a point, David, regarding the privations required for Hurley-like status. But it still strikes me as elitist.
It seems patronised may well be in the ear of the hearer.
Victimhood
Which year, exactly, did that begin?
?
What's wrong
with chaps? Fine fellows? Stout yeomen? Yeowomen? Forget it...
Yeopeople
"Elitist?"
We're dealing with the top echelon of showbusiness here.
The whole nature of having a business of show - rather than going down the parish hall and watching whatever happens to be on - is profoundly elitist.
Well, where Hurley is concerned,
she's attractive, certainly, but not uniquely so (nor even significantly more attractive than hordes of "civilians"), and there are countless actors more talented than she is.
(Although I thought she was great as the devil in Bedazzled.)
Oh sod it.
Just call us 'scum' and have done with it ;)
That's the one.
Nail on the head.
OK, I'll start again
"Who are the mystery scum on album covers?"
Now you're getting it!
:-)
Can I say I thought it was good idea
for a post , the original picture looking at it again is excellent and shows again the accidental joy that happened when artist started putting pictures on the sleeves of records, and because some went to art school wanted some thing different from themsleves grinning in line.
It also pointed out one fascinations of good portrait photos that they make you think about the people involved. The two woman in the beirut picture as DH says have a joy about them and I'm glad I've seen rather than some serious bloke wrestling with a flugel horn or similar.
"pictures of people on the sleeves of records who are not the artist or the lead singer's girlfriend or anyone the drummer knows or indeed the former star of george and mildred" lacks poetry some thing these pictures (the good ones) have in spades.
Oh, excellent idea for a post,
but we can't let that get in the way of a good argument.
From "Kill Your Friends"
Can we settle on "Proles".
Best put a coat on, it might be cold out
The sleeve notes credit this to the Fatzer Archives, which means nothing to me.
a bunch of kooks....
I love this story:
http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2008/feb/15/30gtpaul-cole-man-on-beatles-abbe...
He sounds like a brilliantly grumpy man!
Wonder where this lot are now?
Who came first?
The Afghan Whigs - Gentlemen
This cover is brilliant, but rather disquieting when considered in the context of Greg Dulli’s misogynistic tales of relationships gone south (in songs like Gentlemen & What Jail Is Like).
No one has mentioned The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players. The trio (mum, dad & daughter) describe themselves an “indie-vaudeville conceptual art-rock pop band." They take the idea of immortalizing civilian lives to the next level, by writing songs based around the slides that they purchase from yard sales.
Who's the little lad
next to Ian on New Boots and Panties?
Boy next to Ian Dury on cover of new Boots & Panties!
Isn't it his son, Baxter?
What about this one...
isn;t that just a smaller
version of the one above ;)
.... ducks from hail of missiles...
bloody hell, I never noticed it had been posted before! Apologies all round.
Did you say mystery civilians .... I win
Only until someone remembers Jimi Hendrix
;-0
but it's just a picture of Jimi!
;)
I consider that sleeve
and the lingerie section of the Grattans catalogue a critical element of my education
You've surely forgotten
the National Geographic magazine.....
these civilians they have to be real right?
Surely the most-seen album civilian
Was Paul Cole, who died last year. Story here http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2008/feb/15/30gtpaul-cole-man-on-beatles-abbe...
Move Along Sir
"I walked out, and that cop was sitting there in that police car. I just started carrying on a conversation with him. I was asking him about all kinds of things, about the city of London and the traffic control, things like that. Passing the time of day."
^^ You'd probably get questioned under anti-terror legislation now for doing that!
A great story though....what a claim to fame.
sadly untrue...
when I was at school our maths teacher was the spitting image of the Abbey Road man, and we were convinced it was indeed him. When asked he would be mysteriously non-commital which was good enough for us. I retold the story with conviction for years until I read about the true identification.