The idea is that there are people on album covers that at various times in your life you really wanted to look like.
I will happily admit that when I was about 18, I'd have gone down to the crossroads at midnight and signed on the dotted like to look exactly like this;
24 comments:
Any of the members of Ultravox circa Vienna, but especially Warren Cann.
The lady on the front of Surfer Rosa. Wow. But Tanya Donelly would be fine too, from Beautysleep. Or Julieanne Regan from the cover of the first All About Eve lp.
I'm not sure I should share this but when I was a teen and first started exploring black music, I became a huge fan of Eubie Blake and started trying to be cool like him. Not what middle class white boys usually aspire to, but hey. Mostly I think I still wanted to be smoking when I was 100 like him.
But I quit smoking and am on pace to look more like this guy.
Amazingly, I look exactly like the 'bloke' on the cover of Trout Mask Replica!
It's a replica?
But, Toffee ... ? What happened to you between All Bow Low and then? Too many drug benders with StripeyBrat???
Me? When I was 16 I fancied I could've been Pete Way (2nd right) on UFO's No Place To Run.
http://www.vinylrecords.ch/U/Ufo/No-Place-DE/ufo-no-place-10.jpg
At twice that age, I'd have definitely seen this as an improvement (and this was my first thought when I read the thread):
http://home.parks.lv/raimondsk/isaak/liel_baja_sessions.jpg
I would've given my student grant to look like Patti Smith because so many of the cool dudes fancied her. I thought she looked a bot odd, but I still wished for it. I really wanted Farrah Fawcett's hair.
Part of me always wanted to be Paul Simenon on the cover of London Calling. The more effete side of me, however, has, at various stages of my youth, affected the haircuts of David Bowie on Low, David Sylvian on Tin Drum and Morrissey, had he actually appeared on any Smiths sleeves. And been blond.
In more recent years I have tended to favour the "Bernard Sumner From New Order".
good one Carole!
Richard Hell for me, I love this cover....
http://www.soundstagedirect.com/media/richard_hell_blank_generation.jpg
Riki Lee Jones, I think the album was 'Pirates' - or Judie Tzuke, 'Welcome to the Cruise' (from memory). They were playing Judie Tzuke over the tannoy in the bus station on Friday night - it was like entering a time warp.
Good choice from alimunday there. For me, no contest - Kate Bush on the Lionheart album (I can do the hair if I have a rough night) and, in more maturer years, the back cover of Hounds of Love. Hell, any Kate Bush album would do me. Nice topic, Carole!!
Sally Grossman on the cover of Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home for me. How on earth did ugly Albert Grossman manage to get a wife that cool?
Those are some pair of boots!
@ AliM - Huddersfield Bus Station IS a time warp!
Aphex twin Richard James looks a bit like me (I'm a year older - I was first to look like this)...
when I lived in the south I had a massive music chat with an owner of a bookshop and a couple of customers.. 20 minutes into the conversation I realized they all thought I was the aphex twin.. a fair amount of funny smoking was going on.. so I twisted their melons by mentioning the Windowlicker video...
late night Music TV sessions had to be stopped if I was in the room and it came on as well.. one weird trip for me I can tell yer!
Prince, probably from the cover of Controversy, failing that David Bowie from Low. I am girl, but being a pretty boy has always had some appeal.
Excellent topic, Carole :-)
I did used to aspire to look like Bob Dylan circa 1965, even tried to capture that look - in 1983!
The other look I spectacularly failed to pin down (owing particularly to the fact that I haven't a Slavic bone in my body) was Tom Verlaine on the cover of the Adventure album. Much later on, I realised nearly every bloke in Russia would probably resemble him in the right pair of pipe cleaner trousers and with a long/short haircut if you were to shove a Fender Jaguar into their mits.
How about one of these on LP covers we've lusted over? I can think of a few, and not all of them predictable either...
Carole: You prompted me to pull this one and play it for the first time in umpteen years, I could only deal with side one! Back it went. It's no longer my kind of music, if it ever was; pristine copy going to the highest bidder.
What I remember about her at that period was that the university where I worked had an annual event, the Banjo. Fiddle and Guitar Festival, she was booked as the headliner. Right about then one of her songs shot up the charts and so did her fee, we could no longer afford her so she was cancelled. Not sure why I bought this album unless her 'hit' was on it.
Not something I've really thought about, but an interesting question, Carole. When I was a bit younger, somebody told me I looked like Bowie on the cover of Hunky Dory.
Miles Davis' In A Silent Way would suit me just fine.
No takers for 'album sleeves we've lusted over in our youths'? ..off the top of my head, my top three would probably be:
1) Anne and Nancy Wilson (Dreamboat Annie, Little Queen, Bebe le Strange covers)
2) Kate Bush - (The Dreaming, main pic)
3) Chaka Khan (Rufusized - inner-gatefold)
Coming in from the outside would probly be Stevie Nicks on the cover of Buckingham Nicks; more recently would certainly be Nina Persson on Super Extra Gravity
Jim Morrison as on the back of the album 'American Prayer' (his famous 'crucifix' pose).
Or, for a cool pose, the silhouette of Paul Rodgers on Free's final album, 'Heartbeaker'
I have to say that I also wanted to look like Patti Smith on the cover of Horses. Actually I still do.
Jackson Browne. Back cover of 'Running on Empty'. There. I said it.
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