Strange days album cover

[ensenada]

when i was at my mate's band rehearsal last night I came across an article (then wiped it) in an old music magazine about the people who featured on the strange days album cover. I will write it in word for word here as I have a bit of spare time

The Doors:
Strange Days (1967)
Cover stars; assorted (strange) people.

Joel Brodsky, who took the picture, explains the concept of the album's cover photo: "strange days and people are strange had been the two singles, and the group knew of a photo of a street circus by a famous french photographer, Cartier Bresson I think, so thats how it developed.
the shoot was in sniffin court on 36th street, between third and lexington, and not in london, as rumour has it. everyone who appeared on the sleeve was day worker and not really part of a circus troop. the strong man was the doorman at the friars, a theatrical luncheon club in manhatten, who was also a fringe actor and model; the midget was hired from a model agency; the trumpte player was a taxi driver who brodsky's wife, valerie, gave the job to when she was in his cab - "he said he wanted to be in showbiz, so i said, ive got just the job for you, do you want it?"
no records exist of their names, nor do the brodskys know anything of their subsequent lives.

the juggler, however, was frank kelloegy, brodskys assistant for 13 years, who moved on to interior design photography before capitulating to drugs and AIDS, dying in 1991. the girl on the back cover was valeries assistant at the time, zazel whilde, now a manhatten housewife and mother of two. "she said that the picture was her only proof to her children that she was ever hip," brodsky laughs.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Its like those over-rated cretins from Liverpool and that album with the zebra crossing.....
Must have been amazing to be featured ont he cover like that...I wonder if those on the cover listened to it and what they thought....
I remember reading a bit about the taxi driver in a magazine....beats the shit out of a tip.... ;D

[ensenada]

yes better than a tip! if i was that dude i would have shit! the guys probably wernt even doors fans! thought it was slightly interesting to know though.
the cretins from liverpool! i cant even listen to their music anymore, dont know why!?

[othercircles]

I just read in Johns book that the front and back cover is all one picture. They should have made it a gatefold cover then you think? Ah well.

I always thought the midget on the front was the same one on the back so it must be two pics.. But if you follow the front cover and look at the spine close and follow around to the back you see its all one picture.

[ensenada]

you know, i think i lost my original covers lolgot the cd's in my carry case..but dont know where the cd cases are...oh well...better buy em again on 2007 hey

[othercircles]

I take pictures of mine and piece em together into one pic tomorrow. Then post it here.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Q magazine here has a page on some of the background of the SD cover!
Nothing we have not heard before just a rundown on how Bill Harvey found all the characters who are on the cover but worth looking at while you browse in a newsagents. Its in the Rewind section of the mag....

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Classic Sleeves: Storm Thorgerson on




The Doors
STRANGE DAYS, 1967 DESIGNER: WILLIAM S HARVEY

The Doors are one of my very favourite bands. In 1967 the album cover for Strange Days was captivating in itself and like a breath of fresh air in a sea of mediocre portraiture. It was also wonderful music, at least to my ears.

Though The Doors were, I suppose, fundamentally a blues band I always saw Jim Morrison, their lead vocalist, as avant garde – an outsider, truly rebellious, half visionary, half punk.

The sleeve of their first album had, in fact, been a picture of the band, and Jim did not want to repeat that idea: “I hated the cover of our first album,” he said, “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.”

The Doors prevailed upon their art director, William Harvey, to concoct a cover that echoed Fellini, like a still from one of his movies, say La Strada – full of eccentric, circuslike characters including a strong man, midgets, acrobats, a juggler and so on.

The scene was shot in a cobbled mews in New York, with characters, so it is said, gathered from the neighbouring locale.

The back cover included a tall woman in a doorway as a nod to Morrison’s comments about including “a chick”.

Photographed by the late Joel Brodsky in a semi-documentary style and art directed by William Harvey, this image is derivative but I loved it. I thought it nifty that it wrapped round to the back cover and that the only reference to The Doors was a poster on the wall to your right.

Although I think it captures a degree of the Fellini-esque, I am not sure how much I would like it if it were not for loving the music…

Which brings me on to the big question this month, which is: does the music effect your judgment of the cover, or the cover effect your judgment of the music? Does the love of music make you critically unfocused? Because you love Radiohead or Buck’s Fizz, does it mean you like their covers a lot, more than if you didn’t care for the music?

Clearly, as a designer I hope that one’s enjoyment of say, the music of Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd is enhanced by the album cover images and by a scrutiny of their narrative. But in actuality I have no idea nor evidence that this is the case. I’m more inclined to believe that liking the music predisposes you to liking the cover, even for nostalgia’s sake rather than artistically. For example, I love Bonnie Raitt but find the cover dull.

Abraxas is a great image and Agharta is also a great cover, but neither Santana nor Miles Davis at that time moved me hugely. The question of cross-influence may not be deeply important in the grand scheme of things but is nonetheless interesting to those involved. My suspicion is that it works more one way than the other, regretfully.

I wish it were more true the other way round. But then I am a cover designer.

Classic Rock Magazine April 2009

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The Strange Days cover was inspired by film director Federico Fellini.


The woman pictured on the back of Strange Days, Zazel Lovèn, went on to be a writer for Country Living Gardener magazine. Lovèn later remembered meeting Morrison at a party. “He stood in the corner and threw food at everyone,” she says. “He had his own reality.”

“I hated the cover of our first album, so for Strange Days I said: ‘I don’t want to be on this cover. Put a chick on it or something.”
Jim Morrison

Classic Rock Magazine April 2009

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

When Joel Brodsky died in March this year at the age of 67, he left behind him one of the most thrilling portfolios in rock photography. A native of Brooklyn, New York, who set up his first studio there in 1966, Brodsky will be remembered for the album covers he shot for successive generations of bands, starting with Eric Andersen’s ’Bout Changes And Things that year. But it was his work with The Doors that secured his position among the greats.

Brodsky met The Doors when the band arrived in New York as the latest signing to Elektra Records.

He took the shots on the back of the band’s selftitled 1967 debut, and they called him again for the cover of its follow-up, 1967’s Strange Days.

Over the years that followed, and even after the band’s demise in 1972, Brodsky earned repeat commissions for The Doors, taking photos for the cover of 1969’s The Soft Parade and 1979’s An American Prayer, and also the now iconic ‘Jesus Christ pose’ shots of frontman Jim Morrison.

When it came to the cover of Strange Days, however, the singer didn’t want to play ball. “Originally the band were going to appear in a mirror carried by the two dwarves,” Brodsky recalled in 2005, “but Morrison was adamant he didn’t want to appear on the sleeve.” (Ultimately the band appeared on a discrete poster.)

Instead, taking inspiration from Federico Fellini’s 1954 film La Strada, Brodsky decided to people his chosen location (a quiet residential Manhattan mews called Sniffen Court) with an oddball collection of circus performers: strongman, a juggler, acrobats and a pair of dwarves (one on the front, one on the back).

In reality only the acrobats were genuine.

With the summer circus season in full swing, Brodsky had to hire the dwarves from an acting agency; the strongman was the bouncer from a New York club; the trumpet player was a passing cab driver who was paid $5 for the job. The juggler was later revealed to be Brodsky’s assistant, Frank Kollegy, whose inability to keep more than two balls aloft meant the shoot was constantly interrupted when the photographer chased the balls down the street.

While genuine, the acrobats were not much better: “They were terrible,” Brodsky said. “The guy underneath could only hold up his partner for a few seconds. It took us hours to get it right.”

Classic Rock Magazine July 2007

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

I find the story of the sleeve of Strange Days to be one of the most interesting stories as it gives you a great insight into Jim Morrison and also destroys Tom DiCillo's pathetic view of Morrison in his awful documentary When You're Strange.
If Jim was a preening self obsessed fame junkie why then did he feel angry at the cover of the debut LP which featured him so prominently?
Surely such an inadequate narcissistic kind of person would want to be featured prominently on the follow up now that the band was becoming a household name in the US.
But of course we know that was not what happened and the reality flies in the face of the made up person in WYS.
Sometimes what is left out of a documentary tells you a lot more than what is actually in it.
Here we have a perfect example of that.

[porawrwi]

With the summer circus season in full swing.


gclub

[capaldip]

Feb 24, 2005 17:02:40 GMT ensenada said:

yes better than a tip! if i was that dude i would have shit! the guys probably wernt even doors fans! thought it was slightly interesting to know though.
the cretins from liverpool! i cant even listen to their music anymore, dont know why!?

Turns out The Doors did actually have a couple associations with The Beatles,
”in 1969 in Toronto, Canada, the Plastic Ono Band performed just before the headline act: The Doors. John Lennon did say that that he was honored to be a part of a concert featuring The Doors. It was clear that he had the highest regard for them and their music.”

”at an early session in November 1968, Beatles guitarist George Harrison dropped by, telling the band that what he heard reminded him of Sgt. Peppers as a compliment”

“first photographed The Doors at a small New York club, close to the 59th Street Bridge, called Ondine’s, which was a favorite place for out of town bands to come and play residencies.
It was the winter of 1966 and I was down there with some friends to see a Los Angeles band that Elektra Records had recently signed. I had my camera with me and started taking pictures of them as they played.” - Linda McCartney 
that’s all I could find really.