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‘That Evil Kind of Feeling’: The Inside Story of Black Sabbath’s Iconic Cover Art:
For the look of the cover[*], [designer Keith Macmillan] used Kodak infrared aerochrome film, which was designed for aerial photographs and gave the portrait its pinkish hue. (You can see a similar look on the first album cover he designed, Colosseum's Valentyne Suite.) Later on, he did "a little bit of tweaking in the chemistry to get that slightly dark, surrealistic, evil kind of feeling to it." Since it was sensitive film, he'd boil it and then freeze it, to make the image grainy and undefined.
He decided the shoot should take place at the Mapledurham Watermill, a 15th-century structure in Oxfordshire, about an 80-minute drive from central London. He'd found it with one of his college girlfriends, who lived near it, and had remembered taking a walk around it. "Nowadays it's very much more modernized, beautified, and touristed," he says "Then, it was quite a run-down and quite spooky place. The undergrowth was quite thick and quite tangled, and it just had a kind of eerie feel to it."
He contacted a London model agency, asking for a woman who could portray the ominous figure he'd envisaged for the shot, and picked out Louisa Livingstone. "She was a fantastic model," he says. "She was quite petite, very, very cooperative. I wanted someone petite because it just gave the landscape a bit more grandeur. It made everything else look big."
[*] Here's a link to a picture of the cover.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday February 17 2020, @07:53AM (3 children)
I also think they managed to find a sweet spot. The gothic/horror vibe in the more visual media was painfully schlocky in the 50s/60s, and the doom/black/death metal scene got visually even schlockier in the 80s onwards. Apart from Party Cannon, that is.
I still have a soft spot for the minimalism of their Born Again cover (1983). Were I to cover my walls with my album covers, that would probably be one that I'd chose. Probably put it next to Blind Faith, so we can more seriously question the innocence of youth.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by driverless on Monday February 17 2020, @11:59AM (2 children)
I always thought it was Ozzy. The pic is so grainy you can barely make out any details, just outlines of a face and long hair.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday February 17 2020, @02:28PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by arslan on Monday February 17 2020, @10:22PM
haha yea me too!
That cover really completes the music. It actually sets your mood into the right frame to evoke all the various feeling you get when you dive into the music. Crazy stuff.