Banned Record Covers: Blind Faith

 Image source

The release of that album (Polydor Records U.K/Canada, Atco Records U.S.) provoked controversy because the cover featured a topless pubescent girl, holding in her hands a silver space ship designed by Mick Milligan, a jeweler at the Royal College of Art. Some perceived the ship as phallic.  That was too much for the U.S. and orders were quickly cancelled. A quick reprint had the back cover photo (see below) of the band on the front, the naked girl banished from sight. Within a week of the change, the album was a gold record.

  Image via Wikipedia

The cover art was created by photographer Bob Seidemann, a personal friend and former flatmate of Clapton who is known primarily for his photos of Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead. Bizarre rumors both fueled and were fueled by the controversy, among them that the young girl was Baker’s illegitimate daughter or, alternatively as a fantasy, was a groupie kept in the meadowlands as a slave by the band members!

Actually, the young girl was a London suburbanite, Mariora Goschen. Seidemann wrote that he approached a girl reported to be 14 years old (Sula Goschen) on the London Tube about modeling for the cover. Later he met with her parents, David and Angela Goschen, at their home in Mayfair, finding them wealthy, distantly related to royalty, friendly with Allen Ginsberg and with Bohemian sympathies. They gave their consent, but in the end, it was Sula’s 11-year-old sister, Mariora, who posed. She asked for ‘a young horse’ as payment but instead received 40 pounds from Stigwood, Clapton’s management organisation. “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. By the way, I’m still waiting for Eric Clapton to ring me about the horse.” Said many years later Mariora.

Sula had been proved too shy and also old for the effect Seidemann wanted. He wrote: “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”….”I called the image “Blind Faith” and Clapton made that the name of the band”

One other interesting note about the cover is that it was nameless, only the wrapping paper told the buyer who the artist was and the name of the album.  According to Seidemann, “It was Eric who elected to not print the name of the band on the cover. This had never been done before.” In fact, this had been done previously for  The Rolling Stones 1964 debut album, Traffic’s self-titled 1968 album, and The Beatles’ albums Rubber Soul (1965) and Revolver (1966).

Though initially banned in the U.S. the original artwork was quite popular and collectible. Also became available later in the 1970’s on the RSO label worldwide, and in the USA as a “JEM” import item.

See also:

• Banned Record Covers: Rolling Stones “sticky Fingers”
• Banned Record Covers: The Beatles “Yesterday and Today”