More Album Cover Outtakes

The timeless allure of The Smiths’ album covers resonates to this day, and were often as inspiring and mysterious as the music they represented.

The passage of time has not withered the wit and power of these magnificent records, nor their accompanying retro-chic imagery. In keeping with the tortured loneliness and self-doubt expressed in the lyrics, The Smiths’ album covers were always as mysterious and challenging as the music they represented. Here at The Press, we have compiled the original photographs and stories behind the images that graced the classic Manchester band’s four striking studio and original compilation album sleeves.

---

For their hotly-anticipated debut album, The Smiths (1984), the band used an heavily cropped still of the actor and late-60s heartthrob Joe Dallesandro, an Andy Warhol protégé who played a New York City street hustler in the Paul Morrissey directed film, Flesh (1968). Dallesandro would go on to star in several more Warhol-sponsored horror movies, Flesh For Frankenstein and Blood For Dracula, and it was his bulging, denim-clad crotch adorning the cover of The Rolling Stones’ Warhol-designed Sticky Fingers (1971) that caused even more controversy. He was also the ‘Little Joe’ referred to in Lou Reed’s ‘Walk on the Wild Side’. 

---

The band’s first compilation album on Rough Trade, Hatful of Hollow (1984) comprised the best of The Smiths’ much-sought after BBC Radio 1 sessions, along with a smattering of standalone singles and B-sides. Designed by Morrissey, the cover featured a cropped photograph by Gilles Decroix, extracted from a 1983 issue of French culture magazine Libération, of Fabrice Colette sporting a tattoo inspired by a Jean Cocteau drawing. The shade of blue used on the cover was also taken from the magazine, originally appearing as a colour bar at the top right corner of the article.

---

For The Smiths’ next album, Morrissey appropriated the now iconic image of Marine Cpl Michael Wynn from Emile de Antonio’s Vietnam War documentary In The Year Of The Pig, but with a twist: Wynn’s helmet was originally emblazoned with the slogan ‘Make War Not Love’, but Morrissey cleverly changed it to match the title of their next LP: Meat is Murder (1985). Wynn didn’t know about the album cover let alone give permission for its use, saying, “I first learned of it when my sister happened to see the album while she was shopping. I wasn’t real happy about The Smiths changing the wording.”

---

The Smiths’ masterpiece, their third album, The Queen Is Dead (1986), came packaged with an image of prominent French actor Alain Delon from the 1964 noir thriller L’Insoumis (The Unvanquished). Delon plays a deserter from the French Foreign Legion, and the image is taken from the final scene where his character lies dying on the floor. Morrissey once again designed the sleeve with it’s pink lettering and a green tinge. In the regal gatefold, photographer Stephen Wright’s famous image captured the band outside the graffiti-splattered brick walls of the Salford Lads’ Club. 

---

Stop-gap compilation album, The World Won’t Listen (1987), featured all of The Smiths’ singles from 1985’s ‘Shakespeare’s Sister’ through to the band’s then latest, ‘Shoplifters Of The World Unite’, along with their respective B-sides. The cover image was taken by photographer Jürgen Vollmer, a friend of The Beatles during their sojourns to Hamburg during the early 60s, and was originally published in Vollmer’s 1983 book, Rock’n’Roll Times: The Style And Spirit Of The Early Beatles And Their First Fans. It depicts anonymous young men at a funfair in the 1950s. Morrissey was again heavily involved in the design process.

---

Released by their American record company Sire Records hot on the heels of The World…., the double compilation album Louder Than Bombs (1987), used an image of Salford-born dramatist Shelagh Delaney, one of Morrissey’s most significant early influences. The photo originally accompanied a feature on the author in The Saturday Evening Post in 1961, and a Peel session version on the album of the classic track ‘This Night Has Opened My Eyes’, was lyrically based on Delaney’s 1958 play, A Taste Of Honey. A different image of her also adorned the cover of the ‘Girlfriend In A Coma’ single released the same year.

---

Originally intended to use a Harvey Keitel image (see below) from Martin Scorsese’s 1967 film Who’s That Knocking at My Door, the striking image adorning The Smiths’ final album, Strangeways, Here We Come (1987), was cropped from a photo of Richard Davalos on the set of the 1955 film East Of Eden, with lead actor James Dean, seated. Morrissey’s admiration for James Dean led to the iconic film star adorning the cover of The Queen Is Dead’s lead single, ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’. The final image for Strangeways… was so heavily cropped it resulted in a blurry image of Davalos’s face looking at his co-star – but it worked. 

---

Released 12 months after the split, the band chose to adorn the cover of their one and only official live album “Rank” (1988), with an alluring image of Sussex-born actress Alexandra Bastedo. The image from photographer John D. Green’s Swinging Sixties London-era book Birds of Britain, was chosen by Morrissey, and the layout once again credited to long time collaborator Caryn Gough. The album captured the band at their peak at London’s Kilburn National Ballroom on the The Queen Is Dead tour of 1986.  

---

A very Un-Happy Birthday to Moz!