The “Super-Group” Blind Faith released their one and only self-titled debut album in August of 1969. The short lived band featuring Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Ric Grech and Ginger Baker caused a huge controversy because the cover of the album featured a topless young girl holding a plane.
Here’s what the photographer Bob Seidemann said about his vision for the album cover and the reason behind using such a young girl.
“I could not get my hands on the image until out of the mist a concept began to emerge. To symbolize the achievement of human creativity and its expression through technology a space ship was the material object. To carry this new spore into the universe, innocence would be the ideal bearer, a young girl, a girl as young as Shakespeare’s Juliet. The space ship would be the fruit of the tree of knowledge and the girl, the fruit of the tree of life.”
“The space ship could be made by Mick Milligan, a jeweler at the Royal College of Art. The girl was another matter. If she were too old it would be cheesecake, too young and it would be nothing. The beginning of the transition from girl to woman, that is what I was after. That temporal point, that singular flare of radiant innocence. Where is that girl?”
Seidermann approached a 14 year old girl on the London Tube about modeling for the cover. When he met with her parents she proved to be too old for his vision and he ended up using her younger sister Mariora Goschen who was 11 years old at the time. Mariora initially requested a horse as a fee but was instead paid £40. Here is a photo of her now.
“The nudity didn’t bother me. I hardly noticed I had breasts. Life was far too hectic. I was mad about animals and much taken up with family and friends. But now, when people tell me they can remember what they were doing when they first saw the cover, and the effect it had on them, I’m thrilled to bits. She added, “By the way, I’m still waiting for Eric Clapton to ring me about the horse.”
The U.S. record company issued it with this alternative cover as well as the original cover.
Thanks for sharing your part in this beautiful spark of Pop/Art history. I love the album, melt whenever I see the cover, and am still searching junk yards for that hood ornament. Personally I always interpreted the meaning as humanity pondering technology & considering nature as a better alternative. Oh well, a-holes & opinions…CHEERS!!
The hood ornament looks like one from a ’55 chevrolet, look it up on ebay