Post by darkstar2 on Sept 12, 2008 14:27:16 GMT
New York City Album Art: Strange Days
The Gothamist.com
by Jen Carlson
April 17 2006
After we posted about Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti album cover yesterday, we thought we'd do a series of posts on album covers featuring this city. Next up is The Doors Strange Days cover, photographed by Joel Brodsky.
Since Jim Morrison refused to appear on the cover of the album, Brodsky drew inspiration from Federico Fellini's 1954 circus film, La Strada, and photographed a group of acrobats and jugglers on the streets. Apparently they had trouble finding models, since most circuses were out on summer tours. The trumpet player is actually a cabbie that the art director grabbed from a passing cab. He offered him $5 to appear in the shot, and the driver apparently called him later and asked where he could further his modeling career. The muscleman was the doorman at The Friars Club.
The location of the photoshoot was Sniffen Court (named after architect John Sniffen) and can be found at 150–158 East 36th Street. Wow, something might actually get us to go to Murray Hill. If you don't want to go, you can watch this video of Sniffen Court. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj_AQbyeJNs...sniffen%20court
www.gothamist.com/archives/2006/04/...album_art_s.php
People Magazine
June 17, 1996 Vol. 45 No. 24
Face the Music
The Folks Who Graced Some of Rock's Most Memorable Album Jackets Share Their Cover Stories
The Doors, Strange Days
Claiming to be "the only seminormal one" among the circus acts cavorting across the Doors' Strange Days cover, Zazel Lovèn says that she finds it "bizarre" when she is recognized as the tall figure gazing from the sidelines of the 1967 album that rose to No. 3 on the charts. "People tend to associate me with the mystery that the Doors and Jim Morrison created," says Lovèn, 50, a writer at Country Living Gardener magazine. "I was involved in the rock and roll scene, but not its darker side." The self-described "nice girl from the Connecticut suburbs," now a Manhattanite and mother of two, was working as a stylist for the photographer's wife when she was asked to pose in an alleyway "and look pensive, or however you look when you're 21," she says. Lovèn recalls meeting Morrison at a party. "He stood in the corner and threw food at everyone," she says. "He had his own reality. That reality wasn't 'Hi, Zazel, thanks for appearing on our cover.' It was more like, 'There's a meatball in your hair.' "
www.people.com/people/archive/artic...0141545,00.html
YOU CAN'T JUDGE AN ALBUM BY ITS COVER…
DANCING IN THE STREETS... OF NEW YORK
by Chris Epting
Road Trip America.com
Two of the most iconic album cover photos in history were shot on the streets of New York . The Doors' classic "Strange Days" was photographed at 150-158 east 36th street between Lexington and Third Avenue -- what is called Sniffen Court. A surreal photo with circus performers, the image helped make this one of the band's most memorable efforts. The courtyard was built in 1863 and 1864 as stables, and converted to housing in the 1910s. Led Zeppelin also created album cover magic, downtown in New York's east village. An old brownstone at 96 St. Mark's Place served as the cover for the band's 1975 album, "Physical Graffiti." This is also the building where Keith Richards sat with a bunch of Rastafari waiting for Mick Jagger in the Rolling Stones' 1981 video, "Waiting on a Friend."
www.roadtripamerica.com/OnTheRoad/D...of-New-York.htm
Excerpt From the book -
100 Best Album Covers by Storm Thorgerson & Aubrey Powell
November 1999
The Doors, Strange Days
“I hated the cover of our first album”, Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors, told John Carpenter of the Los Angeles Free Press in 1968. “So for Strange Days, I said: ‘I don’t want to be on this cover. Put a chick on it or something. Let’s have a dandelion or a design…’ and because of the title everyone agreed, ‘cause that’s where we were at, that’s what was happening. It was right.” What The Doors did get was a cover that could have been straight out of Fellini’s La Strada – a veritable freak show of carnival characters, complete with strongman, jugglers, and midgets parading, not in an Italian town piazza, but on a New York side street. And why, you may ask, are they performing for the snooty model in the doorway? Weird scenes inside the goldmine.
The Doors were looking for a cover that was different to what the other Californian bands were doing. “We didn’t want anything psychedelic as we weren’t that kind of band, we were looking for something more ‘strange’, more Fellini-esque. Something along the lines of La Strada or Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal”, said Ray Manzarek. The band met up with the art director at Electra Records, William S. Harvey, and briefed him on what they were looking for. “We wanted a Fellini scene, little people, circus folk, people with marvellous faces. We told Bill that it had to be surrel. We were into lots of Dali-esque things, we just told him to go off and do something along those lines”, said Ray. “There are the ‘freaks’ that Jim had asked for… the acrobats, the juggler, the strongman the two midgets. One dances and waves his magic wand for the camera while the other proffers his tambourine to a beautiful model standing in a doorway. That was the chick Jim had wanted on the cover. He was our tip-of-the hat to all the psychedelic bands of 1967”, said Ray.
Photographer Joel Brodsky should really have obtained a permit to photograph on a New York street. Instead, he gave the Residents Association $500. The album cover photograph was taken in Sniffen Court; a flagstoned mews in New York on East 36th Street between Third and Lexington Avenue. These former 19th-century stables are now private homes except for one housing the Murry Hill Comedy Club, the oldest private theatre group in New York City. “The people on the cover were a hotchpotch of amateurs, professionals, and friends – people gathered from all over the city”, said Joel. The Trumpet Player - was found by Bill Harvey: “I took a taxi driver and pulled him out of the cab and said ‘For five bucks, will you stand over there and blow a trumpet?’ Because he had on this battered old hat I thought, ‘He’s perfect’ ”. The Juggler - was the photographer’s assistant, Frank Kollegy, who latter appeared on several other album covers that Brodsky photographed. The Mysterious Model - standing in the doorway on the back cover was Zazel Wild, a friend of the photographer’s wife, mow a magazine editor in New York. The Strongman was from a circus but also worked as a part-time doorman. The Midgets - Bill Harvey said, “I went up to this strange residential hotel, on Broadway around 70th Street. Very, very odd place, odd people were there. I was looking for these twin midgets, I knocked on the door and the door opened and I look down and there they are. I came in, and they had all their clothes laid out on the bed. They were as neat as pins; I mean everything was just perfect. They were just sweet people, awfully nice men, ‘Do you want us to wear this? Or do you want us to wear that?’ they asked.
A Panon panoramic camera was used with 120-transparency film. The artwork consisted of one colour transparency wrapping around from front to back. Typography on the back was on an overlay with percentage tints indicated for colour.
Bill Harvey designed The Doors logo in 1966; the doors logo is still an integral part of their artwork today. Although very much of the 60s the type style also has a feel of the 30s – especially relevant as The Doors recorded material by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. The “teardrop” type style of ‘The’ was a deliberate acknowledgement of The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, another Electra act, whose logo incorporated the same typeface. Paul Butterfield was one of Robby Krieger’s blues guitar heroes.
While The Doors were on tour, between changing planes at Kennedy Airport, The Doors met Bill Harvey and Joel Brodsky. They were presented with the album cover photograph and immediately loved it. “It was everything we had asked for, it was all there. Bill and Joel had assembled a La Stada circus troupe, the strongman, the juggler, the little people,” said Ray.
END.
"This post was edited to include the "100 Best Album Covers" excerpt." 08-29-08
Since this is a thread about the album cover, "Strange Days" I thought I would add this small bit of information since it is not enough to start a new topic.
James Cameron (Titantic) wrote a story called "Strange Days" and then wrote the script for the film with Jay Cocks. James Camerons' now ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow directed. This film was released in 1995 and starred Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore and Michael Wincott (who also appeared in Oliver Stone's movie The Doors as the Paul Rothchild character.) www.imdb.com/title/tt0114558/
The title of this film was inspired from The Doors' song/album "Strange Days" and the song does appear in this movie but it is not the original track as recorded by The Doors. "Strange Days - Written by 'The Doors' Performed by Prong featuring 'Ray Manzarek' Courtesy of Epic Records."
The San Diego Reader featured an interview with James Cameron this past spring and he was asked about the Doors song, "Strange Days" and its relation to his 1995 film of the same name.
San Diego Weekly Reader
Stories Crasher
Iron Jim
By Josh Board | Published Wednesday, April 23, 2008
I’ve had some people in the office bugging me about going to more “upscale” parties, and there was a party at the Malibu mansion of director James Cameron. It doesn’t get more upscale than that. He’s the guy behind a couple Terminator films, True Lies, The Abyss, and his biggest hit, Titanic.
He (James Cameron) was sitting in the shade talking with artist Ken Marschall. I waited for a break in the conversation and said, “This is probably going to be the stupidest movie question you’ve ever been asked.” Cameron smiled and said, “I doubt that. I’ve been asked a lot of weird questions before.” I said, “The movie Strange Days has a cover of the Doors song ‘Strange Days.’ Was that your original title for the movie or did someone at the studio decide to go with that? Since the Doors are my favorite band, I have to ask.”
He said, “Yeah, I came up with the title when I wrote it. But, we couldn’t get the song for the movie.”
“It was in there,” I said. “It’s just a really weird version. You can barely tell it’s the same song.”
Cameron replied, “Oh, yeah, I guess we did finally. For the longest time, we couldn’t get the rights. It was Point Break. We wanted to call that Riders on the Storm, but they were doing that Doors movie, so nobody else could get any songs.”
“So, it sounds like you’re a big Doors fan,” I said.
“Yeah, when I was in high school, they were the band.”
www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2008/apr/23/iron-jim/
The Gothamist.com
by Jen Carlson
April 17 2006
After we posted about Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti album cover yesterday, we thought we'd do a series of posts on album covers featuring this city. Next up is The Doors Strange Days cover, photographed by Joel Brodsky.
Since Jim Morrison refused to appear on the cover of the album, Brodsky drew inspiration from Federico Fellini's 1954 circus film, La Strada, and photographed a group of acrobats and jugglers on the streets. Apparently they had trouble finding models, since most circuses were out on summer tours. The trumpet player is actually a cabbie that the art director grabbed from a passing cab. He offered him $5 to appear in the shot, and the driver apparently called him later and asked where he could further his modeling career. The muscleman was the doorman at The Friars Club.
The location of the photoshoot was Sniffen Court (named after architect John Sniffen) and can be found at 150–158 East 36th Street. Wow, something might actually get us to go to Murray Hill. If you don't want to go, you can watch this video of Sniffen Court. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj_AQbyeJNs...sniffen%20court
www.gothamist.com/archives/2006/04/...album_art_s.php
People Magazine
June 17, 1996 Vol. 45 No. 24
Face the Music
The Folks Who Graced Some of Rock's Most Memorable Album Jackets Share Their Cover Stories
The Doors, Strange Days
Claiming to be "the only seminormal one" among the circus acts cavorting across the Doors' Strange Days cover, Zazel Lovèn says that she finds it "bizarre" when she is recognized as the tall figure gazing from the sidelines of the 1967 album that rose to No. 3 on the charts. "People tend to associate me with the mystery that the Doors and Jim Morrison created," says Lovèn, 50, a writer at Country Living Gardener magazine. "I was involved in the rock and roll scene, but not its darker side." The self-described "nice girl from the Connecticut suburbs," now a Manhattanite and mother of two, was working as a stylist for the photographer's wife when she was asked to pose in an alleyway "and look pensive, or however you look when you're 21," she says. Lovèn recalls meeting Morrison at a party. "He stood in the corner and threw food at everyone," she says. "He had his own reality. That reality wasn't 'Hi, Zazel, thanks for appearing on our cover.' It was more like, 'There's a meatball in your hair.' "
www.people.com/people/archive/artic...0141545,00.html
YOU CAN'T JUDGE AN ALBUM BY ITS COVER…
DANCING IN THE STREETS... OF NEW YORK
by Chris Epting
Road Trip America.com
Two of the most iconic album cover photos in history were shot on the streets of New York . The Doors' classic "Strange Days" was photographed at 150-158 east 36th street between Lexington and Third Avenue -- what is called Sniffen Court. A surreal photo with circus performers, the image helped make this one of the band's most memorable efforts. The courtyard was built in 1863 and 1864 as stables, and converted to housing in the 1910s. Led Zeppelin also created album cover magic, downtown in New York's east village. An old brownstone at 96 St. Mark's Place served as the cover for the band's 1975 album, "Physical Graffiti." This is also the building where Keith Richards sat with a bunch of Rastafari waiting for Mick Jagger in the Rolling Stones' 1981 video, "Waiting on a Friend."
www.roadtripamerica.com/OnTheRoad/D...of-New-York.htm
Excerpt From the book -
100 Best Album Covers by Storm Thorgerson & Aubrey Powell
November 1999
The Doors, Strange Days
“I hated the cover of our first album”, Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors, told John Carpenter of the Los Angeles Free Press in 1968. “So for Strange Days, I said: ‘I don’t want to be on this cover. Put a chick on it or something. Let’s have a dandelion or a design…’ and because of the title everyone agreed, ‘cause that’s where we were at, that’s what was happening. It was right.” What The Doors did get was a cover that could have been straight out of Fellini’s La Strada – a veritable freak show of carnival characters, complete with strongman, jugglers, and midgets parading, not in an Italian town piazza, but on a New York side street. And why, you may ask, are they performing for the snooty model in the doorway? Weird scenes inside the goldmine.
The Doors were looking for a cover that was different to what the other Californian bands were doing. “We didn’t want anything psychedelic as we weren’t that kind of band, we were looking for something more ‘strange’, more Fellini-esque. Something along the lines of La Strada or Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal”, said Ray Manzarek. The band met up with the art director at Electra Records, William S. Harvey, and briefed him on what they were looking for. “We wanted a Fellini scene, little people, circus folk, people with marvellous faces. We told Bill that it had to be surrel. We were into lots of Dali-esque things, we just told him to go off and do something along those lines”, said Ray. “There are the ‘freaks’ that Jim had asked for… the acrobats, the juggler, the strongman the two midgets. One dances and waves his magic wand for the camera while the other proffers his tambourine to a beautiful model standing in a doorway. That was the chick Jim had wanted on the cover. He was our tip-of-the hat to all the psychedelic bands of 1967”, said Ray.
Photographer Joel Brodsky should really have obtained a permit to photograph on a New York street. Instead, he gave the Residents Association $500. The album cover photograph was taken in Sniffen Court; a flagstoned mews in New York on East 36th Street between Third and Lexington Avenue. These former 19th-century stables are now private homes except for one housing the Murry Hill Comedy Club, the oldest private theatre group in New York City. “The people on the cover were a hotchpotch of amateurs, professionals, and friends – people gathered from all over the city”, said Joel. The Trumpet Player - was found by Bill Harvey: “I took a taxi driver and pulled him out of the cab and said ‘For five bucks, will you stand over there and blow a trumpet?’ Because he had on this battered old hat I thought, ‘He’s perfect’ ”. The Juggler - was the photographer’s assistant, Frank Kollegy, who latter appeared on several other album covers that Brodsky photographed. The Mysterious Model - standing in the doorway on the back cover was Zazel Wild, a friend of the photographer’s wife, mow a magazine editor in New York. The Strongman was from a circus but also worked as a part-time doorman. The Midgets - Bill Harvey said, “I went up to this strange residential hotel, on Broadway around 70th Street. Very, very odd place, odd people were there. I was looking for these twin midgets, I knocked on the door and the door opened and I look down and there they are. I came in, and they had all their clothes laid out on the bed. They were as neat as pins; I mean everything was just perfect. They were just sweet people, awfully nice men, ‘Do you want us to wear this? Or do you want us to wear that?’ they asked.
A Panon panoramic camera was used with 120-transparency film. The artwork consisted of one colour transparency wrapping around from front to back. Typography on the back was on an overlay with percentage tints indicated for colour.
Bill Harvey designed The Doors logo in 1966; the doors logo is still an integral part of their artwork today. Although very much of the 60s the type style also has a feel of the 30s – especially relevant as The Doors recorded material by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. The “teardrop” type style of ‘The’ was a deliberate acknowledgement of The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, another Electra act, whose logo incorporated the same typeface. Paul Butterfield was one of Robby Krieger’s blues guitar heroes.
While The Doors were on tour, between changing planes at Kennedy Airport, The Doors met Bill Harvey and Joel Brodsky. They were presented with the album cover photograph and immediately loved it. “It was everything we had asked for, it was all there. Bill and Joel had assembled a La Stada circus troupe, the strongman, the juggler, the little people,” said Ray.
END.
"This post was edited to include the "100 Best Album Covers" excerpt." 08-29-08
Since this is a thread about the album cover, "Strange Days" I thought I would add this small bit of information since it is not enough to start a new topic.
James Cameron (Titantic) wrote a story called "Strange Days" and then wrote the script for the film with Jay Cocks. James Camerons' now ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow directed. This film was released in 1995 and starred Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore and Michael Wincott (who also appeared in Oliver Stone's movie The Doors as the Paul Rothchild character.) www.imdb.com/title/tt0114558/
The title of this film was inspired from The Doors' song/album "Strange Days" and the song does appear in this movie but it is not the original track as recorded by The Doors. "Strange Days - Written by 'The Doors' Performed by Prong featuring 'Ray Manzarek' Courtesy of Epic Records."
The San Diego Reader featured an interview with James Cameron this past spring and he was asked about the Doors song, "Strange Days" and its relation to his 1995 film of the same name.
San Diego Weekly Reader
Stories Crasher
Iron Jim
By Josh Board | Published Wednesday, April 23, 2008
I’ve had some people in the office bugging me about going to more “upscale” parties, and there was a party at the Malibu mansion of director James Cameron. It doesn’t get more upscale than that. He’s the guy behind a couple Terminator films, True Lies, The Abyss, and his biggest hit, Titanic.
He (James Cameron) was sitting in the shade talking with artist Ken Marschall. I waited for a break in the conversation and said, “This is probably going to be the stupidest movie question you’ve ever been asked.” Cameron smiled and said, “I doubt that. I’ve been asked a lot of weird questions before.” I said, “The movie Strange Days has a cover of the Doors song ‘Strange Days.’ Was that your original title for the movie or did someone at the studio decide to go with that? Since the Doors are my favorite band, I have to ask.”
He said, “Yeah, I came up with the title when I wrote it. But, we couldn’t get the song for the movie.”
“It was in there,” I said. “It’s just a really weird version. You can barely tell it’s the same song.”
Cameron replied, “Oh, yeah, I guess we did finally. For the longest time, we couldn’t get the rights. It was Point Break. We wanted to call that Riders on the Storm, but they were doing that Doors movie, so nobody else could get any songs.”
“So, it sounds like you’re a big Doors fan,” I said.
“Yeah, when I was in high school, they were the band.”
www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2008/apr/23/iron-jim/