20,000 Vinyl LPs 187: Blind Faith & Bob Seidemann

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Blind Faith by Blind Faith 

vinyl LP back cover detail 

photo by Bob Seidemann 

detail photo of album by Styrous®

      

      

The first and only album by Blind Faith was released fifty years ago today on June 22, 1969. They were an English rock group comprised of Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Ric Grech. The band was anticipated by the music press as a continuation of Clapton and Baker's former group Cream and Winwood's former group Traffic but they split after one album and a tour. 

The story of Blind Faith is not a pleasant one according to the memoir, Born Under a Bad Sign, by Johnny Black in Mojo Magazine and featured on the Ginger Baker website (link below). Black says the group should have been the "Golden Child" instead it was Rosemary's Baby. The group was doomed before it even started due to inexperience of the members and the indifference of Clapton.  

Blind Faith concert -1967

photographer unknown

          
The album drew controversy for featuring a photograph by Bob Seidemann of a naked prepubescent girl holding what appears to be the hood ornament of a Chevrolet Bel Air, which some perceived as phallic (what kind of phalluses were THEY referencing?), on the front cover, and it was banned in the United States.     

Blind Faith by Blind Faith 

vinyl LP front cover

photo by Bob Seidemann 

photo of album by Styrous®

       
The album was a critical and commercial success, reaching number one on both sides of the Atlantic and receiving mostly positive reviews.  

Blind Faith by Blind Faith 

vinyl LP back cover

photo by Bob Seidemann 

photo of album by Styrous®

  

On a list by Rolling Stone of "The 30 Greatest One Album Wonders", Blind Faith was at 14, while songs such as Can't Find My Way Home and Presence of the Lord were described as "incredible". Classic Rock Review spoke positively of the album, saying the critical acclaim it had received was "well-deserved". The German edition of Rolling Stone ranked the album as the 140th greatest of all time.          

         

Blind Faith - 1967 

photo by Bob Seidemann

Blind Faith was released on Polydor Records in the United Kingdom and Europe and on Atlantic Records in the United States. It topped the album charts in the UK, Canada and US, and was listed at No. 40 on the US Soul Albums chart. It has been certified platinum by the RIAA.       

Blind Faith by Blind Faith   

vinyl LP back cover detail 

photo by Bob Seidemann 

detail photo of album by Styrous®

The music

Winwood composed a lot of the music on the album. My favorite song is Had To Cry Today. It starts with a moderate speed tempo with a simple but dissonant feeling. As it progresses it gets more complicated with some fantastic guitar work by Clapton. At almost 9 minutes there is plenty of time to do some interesting experimenting.

Their cover of the Buddy Holly song, Well, All Right has some really nice piano and organ work by Winwood.

Presence of the Lord is a slow, stroll down a dreamy lane that picks up speed and gets a bit rowdy before settling back down again.     

Blind Faith by Blind Faith 

vinyl LP back cover detail 

detail photo by Styrous®

Side two consists of just two songs, one of them a 15-minute jam entitled Do What You Like. The violin playing by Grech in Sea of Joy is a very nice breath of fresh air.   

The band was able to produce two hits, Winwood's Can't Find My Way Home and Clapton's Presence of the Lord.      

         

Blind Faith by Blind Faith 

vinyl LP back cover detail 

detail photo by Styrous®

Blind Faith by Blind Faith 

vinyl LP , side 1

photo by Styrous®

Blind Faith by Blind Faith 

vinyl LP label, side 1

photo by Styrous®

Blind Faith by Blind Faith 

vinyl LP, side 2

photo by Styrous®

Blind Faith by Blind Faith 

vinyl LP label, side 2

photo by Styrous®

       

Tracklist:

Side 1:

A1 - Had To Cry Today, written by Steve Winwood - 8:49
A2 - Can't Find My Way Home, written by Steve Winwood - 3:17
A3 - Well All Right, written by Holly*, Allison*, Mauldin*, Petty* - 4:28
A4 - Presence Of The Lord, written by Eric Clapton - 4:56

Side 2:

B1 - Sea Of Joy, written by Steve Winwood - 5:22
B2 - Do What You Like, written by Ginger Baker - 15:20

Personnel:       

• Steve Winwood – keyboards, vocals, guitars; bass guitar on "Presence of the Lord", autoharp on "Sea Of Joy"
• Eric Clapton – guitars; vocals on "Do What You Like"
• Ric Grech – bass guitar, violin on "Sea of Joy"; vocals on "Do What You Like"
• Ginger Baker – drums, percussion; vocals on "Do What You Like"

Production personnel

• Jimmy Miller – producer
• George Chkiantz, Keith Harwood, Andy Johns, Alan O'Duffy – engineers
• Alan O'Duffy, Andy Johns, Jimmy Miller – mixing
• Stanley Miller, Bob Seidemann – cover design and photography
• Chris Blackwell, Robert Stigwood – executive producers
• Margaret Goldfarb – production co-ordination
• Bill Levenson – reissue supervision
• Suha Gur – remastering
• Vartan – reissue art direction

Companies, etc.

    Manufactured By – Polydor
    Marketed By – Polydor

Credits:

    Arranged By – Chris Blackwell, Robert Stigwood
    Artwork [Cover Art] – Stanley Miller (2)
    Photography By [Cover] – Bob Seideman*
    Producer – Jimmy Miller

Notes:

1st catalog number RS-1-3016 on labels and spine.
2nd cat# 2394 142 in smaller print & in brackets on labels and back cover.
3rd cat# RS 1-3016 on back cover.

Girl on the cover
"Manufactured & Marketed by Polydor 810 Seventh Ave./N.Y., N.Y. 10019" on back cover and labels.
Also the song list is similar to this version, see photo's: Blind Faith (2) - Blind Faith
         

Blind Faith (2) ‎– Blind Faith
Label: RSO ‎– RS-1-3016, Polydor ‎– 2394 142, RSO ‎– RS 1-3016
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue
Country: US
Released: 1977
Genre: Rock
Style: Classic Rock
         

        

         

            

Viewfinder links:             
        
Ginger Baker         
Eric Clapton           
Ric Grech           
Janis Joplin                   
Bob Seidemann          
Steve Winwood         
       
Net links:
        
Ginger Baker ~ Born Under a Bad Sign         
RollingStone ~ Banned in the U.S.A.: 20 Wildest Censored Album Covers     
Miss Rosen Presents ~  
       Jiani Jenny Chen Shot Rock & Roll’s Hottest Photogs     
Vintage Everyday ~ 
       Mariora Goschen: Girl on the Blind Faith album Cover             
       
YouTube links:           
           

Can't Find My Way Home - London's Hyde Park, 1969         

Do What You Like         

Had To Cry Today           
        
         
           
Styrous® ~ Saturday, June 22, 2019            

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Bob Seidemann & Blind Faith

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Bob Seidemann 

 date & photographer unknown

Bob Seidemann was an American graphic artist and photographer who was born on December 28, 1941, in Manhattan, New York, and grew up in Queens. He graduated from the Manhattan High School of Aviation Trades and apprenticed with photographer Tom Caravaglia in NYC before heading west to San Francisco. There he collaborated with David Getz, Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley, Big Brother and the Holding Company, George Hunter, The Charlatans, Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead to create photographic images at the forefront of the popular and revolutionary culture of the time. His 1967 portraits of a semi-nude Joplin earned him wide acclaim.

Janis Joplin - 1967 

photos by Bob Seidemann

Seidemann photographed The Grateful Dead a number of times during their peak, both for posters and album liners, as well as designing the covers for the debut solo album of Jerry Garcia, Garcia, and the Dead's Wake of the Flood with Rick Griffin illustrations.

 Jerry Garcia ~ Garcia

vinyl LP album cover

art work & design by Bob Seidemann

Seidemann took the Grateful Dead to Daly City, Calif., south of San Francisco, for a shoot. The five band members, all dressed in black, stood in the middle of a suburban street of look-alike houses, their faces illuminated eerily by light reflected from mirrors pointed at them by assistants.     

Grateful Dead -1967 

When Eric Clapton formed his new band he commissioned Seidemann to create the cover for their album. Seidemann photographed a nude 11-year-old girl to create what would become his most famous and controversial work, titled Blind Faith. Not only did it become the cover and title of Blind Faith the album, but the name of the band as well.

Blind Faith by Blind Faith

vinyl LP front cover

photo by Bob Seidemann 

photo of album by Styrous®

Seidemann explained:

"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 spaceship 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 spaceship would be the fruit of the tree of knowledge and the girl, the fruit of the tree of life.

The spaceship could be made by Mick Milligan, a jeweller 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?" 

Seidemann wrote that he approached a girl reported to be 14 years old on the London Underground about modelling for the cover, and eventually met with her parents, but that she proved too old for the effect he wanted. Instead, the model he used was her younger sister Mariora Goschen, who was reported to be 11 years old. Mariora initially requested a horse as a fee but was instead paid £40.

In 1994, more than a quarter of a century after her one-off photo shoot, 36 year old Mariora Goschen said in an interview: “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.”

Mariora Goschen - 2014

photo by Tom Pilston/The Times    

More than 40 years later, when Who Shot Rock & Roll, a touring exhibition of 175 pictures, went to the Columbia Museum of Art in South Carolina, a group demanded that the Blind Faith cover be removed. “It stayed in,” Gail Buckland, the exhibition’s curator, said in an interview. “But it was still pushing buttons in 2011.”   

From 1974 till 1984 Seidemann produced more than 60 record album covers in Los Angeles, among them Late for the Sky, by Jackson Browne, and On the Beach (1974) by Neil Young.       

Neil Young ~ On the Beach

vinyl LP front cover

design by Gary Burden 

photo by Bob Seidemann

From the late 1980s till 2000, Seidemann produced a portfolio of 302 aviation-themed photographs entitled Airplane as Art. Striking abstract photographs of all manner of aircraft and environmental portraits of aircraft engineers, designers, and pilots make up the collection.    

The fighting machine is the clearest example of form following function. Commercial aircraft users are not interested in hard diving inverted turns. Rather they would prefer uneventful journeys. As a consequence all commercial aircraft look virtually alike. It is the military flying machines that display extraordinary and varied shape. It is the blend of exterior form and interior mechanism, electronics, and human interaction that creates "living" kinetic sculpture.          

Airplane As Art is in included in the Getty Museum Photography Collection, McDermott Library at The University of Texas, Dallas, and The Boeing Corporate Collection.   

 SR-71 reconnaissance jets
Lockheed facility
Palmdale, Calif., 1998

photo by Bob Seidemann

  

His 1969 Blind Faith flush-mounted and signed chromogenic photo print (#17 of an edition of 30), sold at Sotheby's in New York City on June 24, 2014, (lot 20), at $17,500.        
        

    

Bob Seidemann - 2014

photographer unknown

 

Bob Seidemann died on Nov. 27, 2017, at his home in Vallejo, Calif. His wife, Belinda Seidemann, said he had Parkinson’s disease. He was 75 years old.    

Viewfinder links:                      
          
Blind Faith & Bob Seidemann       
Jackson Browne            
Eric Clapton       
Jerry Garcia        
Grateful Dead              
Janis Joplin       
Bob Seidemann      
Neil Young           
          
Net links:                      
    
Bob Seidemann website                      
gragroupblog ~ End of an era: the passing of photographer Bob Seidemann      
MSR Institute ~ Airplane as Art
NY Times obit     
Print Magazine ~ Bob Seidemann’s Provocative and Heavenly Photos   
TRPS ~ The Rock Photographer Who Set His Artistic Sights Higher   
Vintage Everyday ~ Mariora Goschen: Girl on the Blind Faith album Cover  
Washington Post obit          
       

“To be honest with you, I wasn’t very interested in the music, 

it was the scene, you know?"

                ~  Bob Seidemann

        
     

Styrous® ~ Friday, June 21, 2017        

          

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