REVOLVER:'THE IMAGE IN the cover of an album should be more than a glossy marketing device – it should entice, provoke, challenge and engage," says Gavin Friday of the cover shot on his new album, Catholic.
It’s a striking image that distils a lot of this country’s running sores – politics, nationalism, religion, war. Whatever comment/offence/debate it engenders will only become apparent when Catholic is released next month. But Friday is probably well aware that while any amount of “tits and guns” are allowed on album covers, controversy invariably ensues once you edge your way into the realm of “art”.
Two years ago Manic Street Preachers fell foul of this double standard when the cover of their Journal for Plague Loversalbum was banned by major supermarket chains. The cover (a portrait by noted artist Jenny Saville) depicted a girl with a prominent birthmark on her face. But Tesco, flexing its art appreciation muscles, said the cover depicted an abused child and banned it from open display in its stores.
As the Manic’s James Dean Bradfield said at the time: “You can have lovely shiny buttocks and guns everywhere in the supermarket on covers of magazines and CDs. But you show a piece of art and people just freak out.” Indeed, in certain US retail stores you can actually buy a gun, but an album cover that features an image of gun has to be covered up.
Gavin Friday's album cover, snapped by photographer Perry Ogden, takes on an added resonance when you consider its title and release date – Good Friday, April 22nd. The flag and the crucifix have had a sanctified place in Irish history and culture, and are inextricably linked with the military uniform Friday is wearing in the shot. If anything, the total image is like a visual representation of the best song to ever deal with Ireland's various historical and religious malaises (The Radiators' Song of the Faithful Departed).
“It should entice, provoke, challenge and engage,” says Friday of the album cover. Which is all well and good if you’re showing such images on the walls of a culturally fenced-off gallery space. But when these images concern the world of pop music and are for sale in Tesco, you run up against befuddled notions of “decency”.
When U2 released Boy, their first album, Bono wanted to get away from the prevailing trend of "putting tanks and guns on the cover of an album, so we put a child's face instead". While the image was supposed to signify youth and innocence, the band's US label took one look at the photograph of a young boy naked from the waist up and immediately switched it for a band shot.
As they scan album covers for instances of moral turpitude, people can even see things that aren’t actually there. Recall the famous case of US vocal group The Five Keys causing a storm in 1957 with their album cover standard group shoot. “Concerned Parents” believed that singer Rudy West’s forefinger was actually his penis in full, open view.
Even Bruce Springsteen couldn't avoid censorious voices on the release of Born in the USA. His label was inundated with people complaining that the album cover image depicted Springsteen urinating on the Stars and Stripes.
Mixedbag
* “What the fuck is an R K Fire?” – the off-mic remark by a broadcaster covering the Album of the Year award at last week’s Grammys.
* Funny how any hoary old award from a corrupt music industry makes even the most studied indie cool bands behave like excitable X Factorcontestants.
