I don’t know if Peter Blake and Brian Wilson are chums, but there’s little doubt that Peter Blake knows about Brian Wilson‘s music. One of Blake‘s earliest works was of the cover of The Beach Boys’ LP “Shut Down, Vol 2” in his 1964 print “The Beach Boys“.
Peter Blake’s 1964 print “The Beach Boys”
Actually, the image wasn’t taken from the album cover. but from a music paper advertisement for the album. Blake designed the cover for Brian Wilson‘s 2004 album “Gettin’ In Over My Head“.
Gettin’ In Over My Head cover.
In 2007 Brian Wilson put together an audio presentation called “That Lucky Old Sun” and toured with it. He released the music as his eighth full length the following year. The cover for the LP and CD was designed by Martin Venezky / Appetite Engineers and the art director was Tom Reccion.
Brian Wilson’s “That Lucky Old Sun” LP cover.
In 2009 Genesis Publications, in England, published a box set of the “That Lucky Old Sun” with a 56 page book pf interviews written by Harvey Kubernik with an introduction by Peter Blake, each book signed by both Brian Wilson and Peter Blake. The set, produced in an edition of 1000, includes twelve seriegraphs by Peter Blake each illustrating a song from the album as well as three facsimile sheets of music and a VIP pass and “one of the first pressings” of the “That Lucky Old Sun” CD .
Genesis Publications’ “That Lucky Old Sun”.
Now to my quandry–should this set be included in a collection of Peter Blake‘s record cover art? I have included the Genesis Publications’ “Limited Edition 24 Nights” box set with it’s book of Blake drawings from Eric Clapton‘s 1980 and 1981 concerts as the cover of the “24 Nights” album was actually by Peter Blake. However, in the case of the “That Lucky Old Sun” set, the record’s cover art was NOT by Peter Blake. To put you out of your misery, I have found a set at a reduced price. So I’ll add it to my Peter Blake collection.
Andy Warhol’s first international museum retrospective took place at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet from February 10th to March 17th 1968. A new exhibition entitled “Warhol 1968” was the museum’s way to remember this groundbreaking show on the 50th anniversary of the original.
By 1968 Warhol was already famous but remarkably there had not been any retrospective exhibitions of his work at any art institution. Pontus Hultén, then Moderna museet’s director, met Kasper König at a dinner party. At the time, König worked with Claes Oldenburg in New York and knew many of the New York artists of the period. He also knew Swedish ex-pat Billy Klüver, who acted as Pontus Hultén’s New York contact with American artists. Billy and Pontus were old chums, having met as students in a Student film club. König put the idea of an exhibition to Warhol. Hultén and art critic Ole Granath wanted it to be a multimedia event with paintings, Brillo boxes, helium-filled balloons and films and it seemed that Warhol agreed. There was just one little problem–Moderna Museet had very limited funds. Importing 500 of Warhol’s Brillo boxes would be too expensive, so Andy suggested Hultén had the boxes made locally, but even that proved beyond the museum’s budget. Finally the ordered 300 real Brillo cartons from the Brillo company and these had to be assembled upon arrival! Even the idea of the silver helium-filled balloons fell by the wayside as the balloons themselves were difficult to manufacture and the helium was prohibitively expensive–so the ingenious Hultén and Granath painted plastic garbage bags silver and filled them with air. They didn’t float like the helium filled balloons, and proved to become highly static and attract enormous amounts of dust! Also Warhol’s films never materialised. Apparently there was concern that showing the films in Stockholm might tarnish their reputation.
Hultén wanted Warhol’s “Cow” wallpaper to decorate the outside of the Museum, but hanging it in the cold of the Swedish winter wasn’t easy. In the end Granath had to set up scaffolding clad with hardboard and let the Museum’s decorator hang the wallpaper.
Kasper König was invited to Stockholm for the exhibition, but being young and unemployed he cashed in his plane ticket and stayed in New York. Andy Warhol made the journey to the exhibition as did Billy Klüver.
Billy Klüver was an engineer interested in art and helped artists make mechanical art works. In March 1963 he interviewed the eleven artists involved in the Popular Image exhibition which was to run at the Washington Gallery of Art from April to June 1963. Klüver produced an LP record of the interviews. He then suggested to Andy Warhol that they silkscreen covers for the records and together they made Warhol’s “Giant Size $1.57 Each” record covers. They made five variations, the “Giant Size” motif silkscreened in black on plain white covers as well as on covers spray painted red, green, yellow and orange. It is not known how many covers they printed. They were not used at the exhibition. Instead a catologue with cover image by Jim Dine, who was probably a bigger name than Warhol in 1963, was used on the envelope that contained both catalogue and record. It seems, however, that Billy Klüver had stored the covers in his cellar and some of the white covers (unsigned and unnumbered) were sold at the Moderna Museet retrospective in 1968.
Andy Warhol at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet, 1968.
Warhol 1968 — the 2018 exhibition The exhibition was curated by John Peter Nilsson and ran from 15th September to 17th February 2019. This was not intended to be a Warhol retrospective but a reminder of Warhol’s first international retrospective. Various works were on show–Brillo boxes with an explanation of Pontus Hultén’s reproduction boxes made in 1990 for a series of European exhibitions. The story of these “fake” boxes can be read here. New boxes made specially for this show were on display. Original artworks included Warhol’s self portrait,
His portrait of Russel Means
Russell Means by Andy Warhol.
A Brillo silkscreen
There was even some of the original 1968 “Cow” wallpaper from the Museum’s facade outside the exhibition hall.
A digital copy od Chelsea girls was running in a screening room
Obviously, I went looking for record covers! There were eight on show as one left the exhibition. These were from the collection of Susanna Rydén Dankwardt.
Record covers. Seven by Warhol (the East Village Other cover is not by him).
Before the official opening of the exhibition, there was an introductory talk by Moderna Museet’s current director Daniel Birnbaum and Kasper König (who made it this time) telling the story of the 1968 show. Afterwards, John Petr Nilsson, the exhibition curator gave a talk about the current show and asked Ole Granath about details of the original 1968 exhibition. Ola Granath then opened the exhibition. Drinks and snacks were on sale at the preview–there was a very nice wrap with a chanterelle salad wrapped in silver foil and sealed with a “Cow” sticker.
The exhibition is on until 17th February 2019, so I suggest you go and see it.
Klaus Voormann celebrated his 80th birthday on 29th April 2018. He has given his many fans a belated birthday present in the form of a book reviewing his more than 60-year career as a graphic artist. He calls the book “It Started in Hamburg” and is available from his website.
The slipcase for the limited edition of “It Started in Hamburg”.
The cover for the limited edition of “It Started in Hamburg”.
Klaus Voormann‘s career started at art school where he obviously developed a special interest in record sleeve design, making–as he states in “It Started in Hamburg“–with a fascination for the cover art of Blue Note Records. The book features a number of mock ups of record sleeves by jazz artists including Sonny Rollins, Jimmy Guiffre, Sonny Stitt, Bob Cooper and Bud Shank.
Voormann was truly the right man in the right place in 1960s Hamburg. Together with Astrid Kirchner he stumbled on The Beatles playing Hamburg’s Star Club, befriended them and showed one of his record cover designs to John Lennon. He played in the German group The Eyes, designing the cover of one of their singles and designed the cover for British band The Typhoons‘ German release of The Ventures hit “Walk Don’t Run“.
The Eyes “She / Peanut Butter” single cover drawn by Klaus Voormann.
In 1962 he was asked to design the covers for a series of twenty jazz EPs called “Pioneers of Jazz” on Deutsche Grammophon’s German subsidiary Coral Records. At about the same time he drew the cover for an LP entitled “Ver nie in Bett Programm gemacht“, said to be a recording of a radio programme.
All twenty of Coral Records series “Pioneers of Jazz” released in 1960 with cover illustrations by a young Klaus Voormann.
Voormann moved to London in the mid sixties. In March 1966 John Lennon phoned him and asked him to design the cover for The Beatles’ album “Revolver”, for which he was to win a Grammy. Besides graphic design, Voormann continued his musical career joining Manfred Mann‘s band in 1966 when Paul Jones left and Mike D’Abo took over the role of singer. He designed the cover for the band’s 1966 album “As Is“, released in October that year.
“It Started in Hamburg” summarises Voormann‘s career. The 221 pages are divided into two sections: open the book one way and the text is in English. Turn the book over and you can read it in German. However, there does not seem to be any duplication of pictures. A few of Voormann‘s early attempts at producing jazz covers (see above) are included along with thirty-four of his published covers. There are pictures of the covers of ten of the “Pioneers of Jazz” series, along with one of the two Bee Gees covers (“Idea“)he designed and details of how cover art for The Beatles “Anthology” series came about. The limited edition comes with a USB with excerpts from Klaus’s film “Making of The Beatles “Anthology” artwork”, and little additions like an original drawing from the serial “Revolver–Birth of an Icon” and some film negatives.
His poster design and the design for his recent book “Revolver–Birth of an Icon“, about the design of the cover for “Revolver“, are also represented. His graphic self portrait and portrait of John Lennon remind me of some of Chuck Close‘s portraits, graphically breaking down their faces.
Voormann’s 2017 self-portrait for Zeit magazine.
Voormann’s portrait of John Lennon.
“It Started in Hamburg” is an important addition to any collection of Klaus Voormann’s art–my copy of the limited edition of turned out to be No. 3/80. I offer my sincere congratulations to Klaus on his 60 years of art and music. May he continue for many more!
I have been searching for record covers designed by Peter Blake for several decades, but never come across this one before. Advertised on Ebay with a starting price of £0.99, was a CD titled “Colours” by a trio calling themselves A Stranger Shadow. Never heard of them, and apparently nor have many others as I can find no information on Internet music sites such as Allmusic, Discogs or Rateyourmusic. A Stranger Shadow are/were Paul Wilby (bass guitar, piano, vocals), Diana Jones (acoustic guitar, vocals) and Anne Harris (violin, percussion, vocals). They seem onlyto have recorded this one fourteen-track album, released in 1995. Discogs lists a 1984 7″ single by Paul Wilby titled “Nobody Needs You/Animosity Crept in” but that’s all I have found.
The booklet cover, is a sort of collage, and is signed at lower right by the artist. But how did this unknown group manage to get Peter Blake to design the cover? Was their record label — Mixed Bag Records — involved?
It would be wonderful if this album had also been released on vinyl, but I suppose record companies assumed in 1995 that vinyl was dead.
Andy Warhol was born in Pittsburgh, U.S.A., on 6th August 1928. Today he would have been 90 years old. His art is still a major influence on graphic design.
I haven’t had any reason to write about Peter Blake‘s art recently. As far as I have been able to find out, he hasn’t done any record covers since Eric Clapton‘s “I Still Do” album—which was not actually designed by Peter Blake, but Clapton chose to use one of Blake‘s 2015 portraits of him as the cover art.
At last I have something to add to my collection. I saw a print of Peter Blake‘s “Live at Leeds 2” for sale on Ebay and made an offer, which was accepted. The print was an artists’ proof (No. viii/xxv).
Sir Peter Blake’s “Live at Leeds 2” silkscreen print.
Some background: As everyone knows, The Who played the Leeds University Refectory on Valentine’s day 1970 and the 3-hour concert was recorded and released only 3 months later on 16th May 1970 as The Who’s “Live at Leeds” album. During preparations for The Who’s upcoming 2006 tour, Andy Kershaw, an alumnus of Leeds University—and who had had a hand in booking the band to play that historic 1970 concert managed to persuade the two remaining original band members to return to the Refectory as part of their planned 2006 tour.
In February 2005 Peter Blake opened a unique gallery dedicated to his music artwork at Leeds University’s School of Music. Among the prints on permanent loan to the gallery are ”Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, Band Aid’s ”Do They Know It’s Christmas”, The ”Live Aid” poster design, Paul Weller’s ”Stanley Road” cover art, The Who’s ”Face Dances” as well as albums by Eric Clapton, Brian Wilson and Ian Dury.
I haven’t been able to work out exactly how Sir Peter Blake became involved but suspect that Pete Townsend—a long-time friend of Blake’s—might have suggested that the artist design a poster for the return concert and Blake turned to the cover art of the original “Live at Leeds” album for inspiration. The gatefold cover of the original “Live at Leeds” album was designed by Graphreaks (Wikipedia credits Beadrall Sutcliffe with the design). Blake took the cover design and added the date of the original concert (14.02.70) at the top and that of the return (17.06.06) at the bottom and a large red “2” at bottom left.
Peter Blake made a limited edition print of the design–a silk screen using 14 colours plus glaze in an the edition of 250 + 25 artist proofs–and published in 2006. Peter Blake donated a copy to Leeds University’s collection of his prints.
Back to my print. The seller in the U.K. sent the print rolled, inside a large sheet of 200 g paper and wrapped in bubble plastic all put inside a wellpapp outer. There was no poster tube to prevent crushing and—not surprisingly—the package arrived crushed with the print considerably creased. After email discussions with the seller, I was advised to lodge a ”damaged item” report with Ebay, which I did sending photos of the packaging and the damaged print. And to my total amazement, the following day Ebay refunded the total cost of the print and shipping! So the print has cost me nothing!
My collection of Peter Blake prints. The ”Live at Leeds 2” print joins my collection of Peter Blake prints started in 1968 when I bought ”Babe Rainbow” at Gear in Carnaby Street for, I think, 30/- (£1.50 to those of you who don’t remember predecimal currency). Wikipedia says it cost £1.00, but I think I paid 30/-.
I went to the Tate Gallery Peter Blake retrospective in 1983 and bought the catalogue which contained a limited edition print of the ”Owl & the Pussy Cat” print, which comes in an envelope stating ”Each reproduction has been signed by the artist”! The print was only included in the first 12,000 copies of the catalogue.
In 2009, when Jan Wimander, then director of Piteå Dansar och Ler Festival, and I decided to put on an exhibition of Peter Blake’s record cover art, called ”Peter Blake ’Pop’ Art” at Piteå Museum. We wanted to show LP covers but two of Blake’s covers–The John Peel compilation album ”Right Time, Wrong Speed, 1977-1987” and The Blockheads’ ”Staring Down the Barrel” were only available on CD so we wanted larger images for the show. We found a copy of Peter Blake’s portrait of the late John Peel that he created for Warner Brothers Music for the cover of Peel’s CD on Ebay. This was a limited edition of 45 copies–we got No. 5. I also approached The Blockheads to try to get hold of a promotional poster for their 2009 album ”Staring Down the Barrel”. I was told they didn’t have one, but referred to Peter Blake’s printers The Coriander Press and after month or so an artist proof of the cover art, signed by Peter Blake, arrived just in time for the exhibition.
In 2010, the late Daniel Brant, director of the A and D Gallery in London’s Chiltern Street, contacted me and asked if I would like to display my collection of Peter Blake’s record covers in the Gallery that would be hosting the launch of a new series of Peter Blake’s prints ”I Love London” and ”I Love Recycling”. John Wimander and I both flew over for the opening and met Sir Peter, who signed my ”Babe Rainbow” print as well as a book and the catalogue of our Piteå exhibition. We were both given prints of the ”I Love London” and ”I Love Recycling”!
So now my collection contains
– Babe Rainbow
– The Owl & the Pussycat
– John Peel
– The Blockhead’s ”Staring Down the Barrel”
– I Love London
– I Love Recycling, and (finally)
– Live at Leeds 2
A further Blake record cover art.
While researching the “Live at Leeds 2” print I came across another collaboration that I probably should have included in my collection of Peter Blake‘s record cover art. In 2007 Brian Wilson recorded his “That Lucky Old Sun” album and in 2009 Genesis Publications produced a lavish box set including a CD of the album, a book signed by both Brian Wilson and Peter Blake and 12 limited edition Peter Blake prints illustrating the songs. This deluxe production was produced in an edition of 1000 copies.
Genesis Publications limited edition “That Lucky Old Sun” by Brian Wilson and Sir Peter Blake.
I shall have to start saving my pennies to get hold of a copy.
A year ago, in June 2017, I saw a picture of what I thought must be a previously unrecognised Warhol cover in the book “Adman–Warhol Before Pop”, the catalogue of an exhibition held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2017.
Nicholas Chamber’s exhibition book published by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Page 97 in “Adman-Warhol Before Pop” with a picture of the cover slick for an recording of an NBC radio programme called “Voices and Events”.
I saw that the picture had to be a slick for a box set like the elusive “Night Beat” box owned by renowned Warhol collector and author, Paul Maréchal. His copy of the “Night Beat” box, first shown at the “Warhol Live!” exhibition in Montreal in 2008, was thought to be the only one in existence.
Having previously made mock-ups of the “Night Beat” box, I knew how I could make similar mock-ups of the, as yet undiscovered, “Voices and Events” box pictured in the “Adman–Warhol Before Pop” book.
So I started a search for RCA EP boxes to use as the basis for the new set of boxes. It took several weeks to find a seller, but I finally managed to find a record store in Minneapolis that had many and was willing to sell them. I had photographed the slick from the “Adman” book and my local printer had printed ten slicks and within days of the arrival of the boxes I had made a limited edition of the “Voices and Events” box.
The “Voices and Events” box set.
In March 2018 I was contacted by Lou Mancini, in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, who said he had found a couple of rarities and wondered what they might be worth. He attached photos of the “Voices and Events” box and said the other rarity was the “Night Beat” box. I was stunned! I replied that I had no idea of the value of the boxes–they were the rarest of the rare!
Lou Mancini with the “Voices and Events” and “Night Beat” boxes that he found.
Lou promised med photos of the “Voices and Events” box, so that I could verify the accuracy of my mock-up. They seemed identical! In addition Lou later sent a photo of the insert inside the lid of the box, which I also managed to copy.
The boxes are complete with records and all packaging intact. A fantastic find by Lou. They are now going to be added to Guy Minnebach’s magnificent Warhol collection.
I still have two of my facsimile copies of the “Voices and Events” box if anyone would like to buy one.
The great thing about having a blog is that readers often find covers that I haven’t discovered. Super collector Stefan Thull reported that he had recently found a copy of German band Fools Garden‘s album “Who Is Jo King?“, with its “Revolverish” Klaus Voormann cover, on vinyl. I already had the CD, but I had to find copy of the vinyl. It was listed on Discogs, but there wasn’t a copy on sale there, so I took a chance and Googled Fools Garden‘s official site to see if they sold copies. Sure enough! So I ordered it. Apparently there are only 250 copies, so it is quite rare!
The “Who Is Jo King?” vinyl album cover.
Then another of my record collecting friends, Thorsten Knublauch, reported that there was a 7″ single “O, Come All Ye Faithful/Jingle Bells” taken from the Les Humphries Singers‘ album “Seasons Greetings“. I’m not really wild about Christmas carols and songs but the single’s cover is a reduced copy of the Klaus Voormann‘s cover for the LP. The cheapest copies were on Ebay, so I ordered one of those, too. While searching Discogs, I noticed that there are, in fact, two variations of this cover. The one Thorsten told me about (on the left below) was the German pressing, but there was also a Belgian pressing with “Jingle Bells” as the A-side which has a blue cover.
So, that’s three more additions to my collection of Klaus Voormann covers. Now I only need the “Wer nie im Bett programm gemacht” album cover to complete my collection.
If any reader can tip me off on where to find one of these, I’d be able to complete my collection of Klaus Voormann covers.
Antony Genn and Martin Slattery, former members of Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros, formed a new band, The Hours, in 2004. The Hours released five singles and two full-length albums and then disappeared–releasing no new material under The Hours moniker since 2009.
From the start, Damien Hirst was involved in designing the cover art for The Hours‘ releases. I haven’t found out how he came to be involved, but a clue could be that Hirst had designed the cover for Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros‘ “Rock Art & the X-Ray Style” and three singles, “Yalla Yalla“, “Tony Adams (the Morning Sun)” and “Bankrobber 99” (well, I don’t suppose Hirst “designed” the cover for the latter, as it was a bootleg recorded at Sweden’s Hultsfred’s Festival in 1999. The cover was simply a black & white copy of the design on the “Rock Art & the X-Ray Style” cover).
Rock Art & the X-Ray Style LP cover.
Damien Hirst and Jason Beard are credited with the cover designs. The Hours‘ first four singles, “Ali in the Jungle“, “Back When You Were Good“, “Love You More” and a second version of “Ali in the Jungle” were all taken from their first album “Narcissus Road” (sadly, only released on CD).
Narcissus Road CD cover.
There were two promotional CDs for “Narcissus Road”; one in a normal CD card sleeve and a three-inch, four-track CD in a booklet.
Promo CD for Narcissus Road.
Promo 3″ CD in book.
The four singles from the album were released on CD and as limited edition 7″ vinyl. All came in sleeves decorated with more of Damien Hirst‘s signature skulls:
And each had a slipcase and the first “Ali in the Jungle” (with the yellow cover) also included a 7″ sticker with the cover image. Also available from Damien Hirst‘s web shop was a three dimensional skull that was meant hold the CD:
Damien Hirst’s 3D skull to hold the CD.
I don’t have one as it cost a cool £4,000 and my budget isn’t that elastic (anyway, where would I put it?)
The Hours‘ second album “See the Light” was released on 20th April 2009 this time on double vinyl and CD. The LP also included a booklet with more Damien Hirst art. Once more the design was a skull, but this time as one of Hirst‘s Spin Paintings.
The cover of the “See the Light” LP.
The promo for this album came as a USB in the shape of a skull (what else?)
The “See the Light” promotional USB in its box.
A beautiful double 12″ was released with six remixes of the title track “See the Light”. There were autographed copies for sale from The Hours‘ website, but I missed out on one of those, but managed to find one much later (and considerably more expensive.)
The final 7-inch single was “Big Black Hole” and, as far as I can see, the rarest of The Hours‘ five 7-inchers.
There were also several other promotional CD EPs and singles released. A card sleeve promo of the “See the Light” album, a limited edition CD only available from HMV shops and three CD-r singles from the “See the Light” album all with similar artwork to the double 12″ of remixes.
There were three promotional CD-rs released prior to the “See the Light” album. Two contained the track “See the Light” and the third had Calvin Harris remixes of the song.
Three promotional singles for the “See the Light” Album.
There was also a digital single with yet more skulls.
The Hours’ digital single cover for “It’s Not How You Start, It’s How You Finish”.
The original Poor Little Rich Girl film (not the 1987 film of the same title) featured Andy Warhol’s 1965 muse Edie Sedgwick (April 20, 1943 – November 16, 1971). she would star in eighteen of Warhol’s films in just one year before they fell out.
Her story is real tragedy. She was born into a rich aristocratic American family, whose roots could be traced back to the Pilgrim Fathers. Her father was mentally unstable married to her shy retiring mother. Edie was the next youngest of eight siblings. Edie lost her virginity when she was twenty and got pregnant and had an abortion. She received a trust fund of $80,000 from her grandmother and moved in with her in New York, moving to her own apartment a few months later. In 1964 two of her brothers died. Minty committed suicide aged 25 and Bobby, aged 31, killed himself by crashing his motorcycle into a bus. Edie was experimenting with drugs and alcohol.
Andy Warhol’s superstar “Baby Jane” Holzer had been 1964’s Girl of the Year and on March 25th, 1965 film producer Lester Persky hosted a party for Tennessee William’s birthday and, knowing that Andy was looking for 1965’s Girl of the Year introduced him to Edie. As Lili Anolik writes in the December 2017 edition of Vanity Fair (the whole article is beautifully written and worth reading:
“They were one of the great romances of the 1960s. Pop art’s golden couple, even if silver was their signature color. Romeo and Juliet with kink. Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick. The two were opposites. Were, in fact, radically, diametrically, almost violently opposed. So how could the attraction between them have been other than irresistible? She was the beauty to his beast, the princess to his pauper, the exhibitionist to his voyeur. They were also, of course, opposite sexes, which should have made their pairing all the more inevitable, only it did, well, the opposite since he preferred the same. As impediments to heterosexual unions go, homosexual impulse is a biggie. Edie got around it, though, no problem because she intuited that Andy’s gayness was incidental. Fundamental was Andy’s narcissism. No, fundamental was Andy’s frustrated narcissism. He was the boy who didn’t like what he saw when he gazed into the pool, and thus was doomed, in a permanent state of unfulfilled desire. Edie’s method of seduction was to take her shoulder-length dark hair, chop it off, bleach it a metallic shade of blond so that it matched his wig, and dress herself in the striped boatnecked shirts that had become his uniform. In other words, to turn herself into the reflection of his dreams. At long last—oh, rapture! oh, ecstasy!—his self-love was requited.”
Edie and Andy had begun to fall out towards the end of 1965. She had met Bob Dylan in the autumn and they had a brief relationship which Edie thought was serious and believed that Dylan was going to get his manager Alan Grossman to sign her for a professional film career. When Edie told Andy that she was leaving the Factory to sign with Grossman (and hopefully continue the relationship with Dylan), Andy coldly told her that Dylan had just got married–which Edie hadn’t heard. She was devastated!
In 1967 Edie started filming her story with producer David Weisman but the filming broke down. Weisman made a second attempt in early 1971 with Edie recounting her life story and the film was finally released in 1972, just weeks after Edie had died of a barbiturate overdose.
The soundtrack of the film was released as a limited edition (3000 copies) coloured vinyl LP for 2017’s Record Store Day with Weisman’s portrait of Edie on the front cover.
Soundtrack LP “Edie Sedgwick: Ciao! Manhattan”.
I didn’t recognise this photo but assumed it was taken at the Factory from one of Warhol’s screen tests or from a still from one of Warhol’s films. I should have looked at Edie’s hair in this picture, which is dark with strands hanging over her forehead. In her Factory days Edie had died her hair blond and had it combed back off her forehead. So this photo obviously wasn’t a Factory image.
The LP cover photo was the same one as The Cult had used on their 1989 single “Edie! Ciao Baby”, sort of Warholised with a coloured aura round her head. You can listen to it here.
There was also a 12″ version with a more “artistic” version of the cover image.
The cover of the limited edition 12″ with the hologram slip case.
Some Ebay sellers try to sell the “Edie! Ciao Baby” singles as Warhol covers, but now I know they definitely are not Warhol portraits at all but photos from the “Ciao! Manhattan” sessions.
The “Ciao! Manhattan” LP, pressed on red/white vinyl, comes in a gatefold sleeve and includes a 20-page booklet with more photos of Edie from the film sessions.
The gatefold’s inner spread has yet another alluring photo of Sedgwick.
The gatefold album’s inner spread.
The French music magazine “Les Inrockuptibles” issued a compilation CD together with their January 2017 magazine with DAvid McCabe’s famous photo of Warhol and Sedgwick on the cover.
Les Inrockuptibles CD “Le New York d’Andy Warhol”.
recordart 