Stories Of Some People Who Are On Album Covers

David Fox



He was that 12-year-old boy in that red jumper tugging his cheeks on the cover of Placebo's 1996 debut album.
Now David Fox, an unemployed chef from Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, is set to sue the Britpop band for damages arguing that he never consented to the image being used.
The 28-year-old claims the album's success caused him to be bullied at school and ostracised from his peers. He took a year out of school, eventually dropping out of his GCSEs as a result.
His cousin called Mr Fox a month later to say he was going to be on the cover of a rock album, remarking: 'Isn't that cool?'
Instead it turned Mr Fox's life into a nightmare. The album sold phenomenally well and reached number five in the charts. Mr Fox's face was everywhere.
'It was in Virgin, it was in HMV, it was in Tesco, it was all over the place,' he said. 'I was watching EastEnders with my mum and I saw one of the billboards by the Tube station and it had my face on there.'
Mr Fox, who had been popular at school, was teased by his classmates and slowly edged out. 'Nobody wanted me on their side or anything like that,' he said. 'Even the teachers used to pull me aside and ask me about this CD cover.'
In the end the bullying got so bad that Mr Fox's mother had to drive him home from school every day so he could avoid the pupils waiting for him at the gates.
He took a year out and then dropped out completely. Mr Fox then trained as a chef but was made redundant in the recession.
He claims the knock-on effect of the album cover disrupted his whole life and is now using his mother's savings and scraping together every spare bit of money he has to file a lawsuit against Placebo next month.
The band's agents, Riverman Management told The Times yesterday that Mr Fox's case should be directed against Virgin, the label that put the album out, rather than the band themselves.
Placebo went on to release five studio albums and sell more than 10 million records worldwide.

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Ann Kirsten Kennis



The preppy-looking girl on Vampire Weekend's 2010 album is former model Ann Kirsten Kennis in a Polaroid from 1983. The band loved the image but it came as a surprise to Kennis who only discovered her face was being used after her daughter bought the album home. The then 53-year-old who lives in Connecticut, sued photographer Tom Brody and the band for $2million. The band later settled out of court.

Vivian Nicholson



A miserable looking Vivian Nicholson appeared on the cover of The Smith's 1984 single Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now. Nicholson became famous when she received £152,319 (around £3million in today's money) on the football pools. She announced to the press that she would 'spend, spend, spend' and spend she did until she became bankrupt in the 1970s. This photograph of Nicholson is believed to have been taken before her big win. The Smith's ascertained that by 1984 she was definitely miserable now.

Janine Lindemulder



Janine Lindemulder had been a porn star when she starred on the cover of Blink 182's 1999 album. In 2002 she married Jesse James - who later married and cheated on Sandra Bullock - but was arrested for assaulting him after they split. Later she went to prison for four months for tax evasion and was reportedly in trouble last year for assaulting Jesse again.

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Stefan and Samantha Gates



The cover art for Houses of the Holy was inspired by the ending of Arthur C. Clarke's novel Childhood's End. The cover is a collage of several photographs which were taken at the Giant's Causeway, Northern Ireland, by Aubrey Powell of Hipgnosis. This location was chosen ahead of an alternative one in Peru which was being considered.

The two children who modelled for the cover were siblings Stefan and Samantha Gates. The photoshoot was a frustrating affair over the course of ten days. Shooting was done first thing in the morning and at sunset in order to capture the light at dawn and dusk, but the desired effect was never achieved due to constant rain and clouds. The photos of the two children were taken in black and white and were multi-printed to create the effect of 11 individuals that can be seen on the album cover. The results of the shoot were less than satisfactory, but some accidental tinting effects in post-production created an unexpectedly striking album cover. The inner sleeve photograph was taken at Dunluce Castle nearby the Causeway.

In February 2010, Stefan Gates presented a half-hour BBC Radio 4 documentary entitled Stefan Gates's Cover Story, about his part in the making of the album cover. Gates claimed in the documentary to have felt there was something sinister about the image, although his sister disagreed. He also admitted never having heard the album. The programme ended with Gates returning to Giant's Causeway and listening to the album on a portable player, after which he claimed that a great weight had been lifted from him.

Stefan Gates today:

Carter Helm



You may recall the somewhat controversial album sleeve, created by Margo Z. Nahas, for Van Halen’s ‘1984’, which featured a painting of a smoking angel-baby. Though it’s a painting, it’s actually based on a photograph of four-year-old Carter Helm (not a picture of David Lee Roth as a baby, as many people often think).
At the time, Nahas’ husband Jay Vigon was a designer and art director who was helping a friend at Warner on the album release. According to Nahas, the original concept centred around an image of four dancing chrome women, but the realities of creating it were more complicated than anticipated, and she declined. But when the band spotted the original photograph of Margo’s friend’s son in her portfolio, they decided that was the picture they wanted to represent ‘1984’.

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Marcus Priest



Snapper Neil Prime-Coote told that the little boy, who came from a British family that had just moved to Toronto, was the son of his aunt’s boss. “I wanted a ginger-haired kid,” he said. “I shot about seven different kids, but none of them worked well. I had diner with my aunt who told me her new boss had two ginger-haired kids. I shot both of them together and apart, but the band felt the single shot worked well.”

And what does Marcus remember from the day?

My brother and I simply turned up. I think the photo shoot was in a local park, we wore some crazy clothes and messed around in pirate hats. My brother and I were more excited about the $50 we received for the photo shoot.

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Spencer Elden



It’s probably one of the most iconic album covers ever – but at the time, photographer Kirk Weddle hadn’t a clue who Nirvana were, or what a success the band and their album would become. Kirk tells me that, “I knew this would be a great cover because the concept was so strong, but I had no idea the band would be so good or get so hot.”
So how did he get involved in such an iconic photoshoot? Not many photographers at the time were shooting underwater commercially, and that was his specialty back then. “They found me in a source book. I immediately fell in love with the concept of a naked baby underwater, with no air, going after a dollar on a fish hook,” he says.

And it was pretty much just that – a four month old baby, with no air, underwater. “It's hard to shoot a four month old under water,” says Kirk.
They can't talk, you can't bribe them. They can't breath when you are shooting. It was his first time in the water and he wasn't swimming, he was drifting. I set up a camera in an underwater housing on a tripod. I did per focus and pre light using a baby doll. Spencer's mom dunked him in and he drifted into the zone of the camera. I shot about 10 frames and Spencer’s dad pulled him out. We did one more pass and he started to cry and I called it. The shoot lasted about 5 minutes. Shot 1/2 a roll of film.

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