Blues and rock band consisting of Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Steve Winwood and Ric Grech.
Probably the only band in the history of popular music that was guided to its name by a record-sleeve – or rather the photo on the sleeve. The cover in question, designed for the then still untitled album of Clapton & co, only showed a photo of a naked, pre-adolescent girl holding a futuristic looking airplane.
Photographer Bob Seidemann was commissioned to provide the cover photo. In the London underground he approached a 12 year old girl that looked just right, and after he had contacted her parents – who had libertine views and had no objections – he got to work with an uncooperative model.
As it was, the girl, Sula Goschen, backed out. Whereupon her one year younger sister, Mariora, cried out ‘Oh Mummy, Mummy, I want to do it, I want to do it’. Problem solved. When asked what she wanted in return for her posing session, Mariora replied ‘A little foal’.
Seidemann took his photo and aptly entitled the shot ‘Blind faith’. Clapton found it marvellous, so good even that he named his super group after it. The album was released and all hell broke loose in England, at the time still rather Victorian – it was an outrage. The record company wanted to withdraw the album, but Clapton’s firm belief in the concept prevented that.
In 1994, more than a quarter of a century after her one-off photo shoot, a 36 years old Mariora Goschen said in an interview: ‘By the way: I’m still waiting for Eric Clapton to call me about the horse.’
Active: 1968-1969, GBR
4 comments:
"…all hell broke loose in England, at the time still rather Victorian — it was an outrage." Come on, Victorian in 1969? It would be greeted with considerably more outrage were it to be released in the USA today.
Yes. The US morality scolds would freak out. I wonder if you put an assault rifle in her hands, though.
In America it was released with a picture of the band on the cover, both LP and CD and still is. The UK issue of the CD is now different in it's current run, but originally mimicked the LP on it's release in the 80's and in the 90's I bought the CD in an independent record store as it was no longer carried by HMV and Virgin's image was squeaky clean. If it were re-released with the original cover art in most of the western world now it I suspect it would be an issue. People wouldn't see it as the height of technology meeting innocence as was intended. Not sure Nirvana's Nevermind cover art would fare any better currently. In any event, the cover controversy aside, this is an excellent example of Clapton when he was willing to take risks and vary his style a little. Been a long time since he sounded like this. It could as easily be Rory Gallagher playing!
Um, considering the girl in the photo was 11 at the time, distributing this in the U.S. would very clearly be labeled as child pornography and banned immediately, with severe consequences for the distributors.
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