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Iconic Photographs: Jim Morrison (The Young Lion)

   

The "Young Lion" photographs of Jim Morrison are indelible. The mere mention of the singer's name conjures the image of a bare-chested Morrison, arms stretched out at both sides as if he is sacrificing himself for his music, staring directly into the camera - dark, mysterious and brooding.

In 1967, a young photographer from Brooklyn, Joel Brodsky, was under contract with Elektra Records to photograph an up and coming rock group from Los Angeles, The Doors. Two memorable photo shoots yielded highly iconic images of the band and its leader, Jim Morrison.

The first photo shoot produced the Grammy nominated back cover photograph that is used on the band's debut album, The Doors.

           

The second photo shoot gave birth to the legend of the Lizard King. Brodsky took several photographs of the entire band before spending a fair amount of time with its inebriated lead singer.

Brodsky recalled the unforgettable photo shoot many years later: "The Doors were among the brighter groups I'd shot at that point. They had a visual orientation and seemed to understand the potential of a good photo session. Initially, there seemed to be a little jealously that Morrison was being put so up front in the photos, but basically the others understood that Jim was the sex symbol and an important visual focus for the band."

The series of black and white photos of Jim Morrison would later be known as the "Young Lion" photo session. This particular collection of photographs has been used as covers for compilation albums, books, and other memorabilia of The Doors and Jim Morrison.

Brodsky remembered photographing the Lizard King: "I always thought it was sort of funny that the pictures of Morrison from that session were the most used. Jim was totally plastered. The session started out normally....The shot on the inner sleeve of the Greatest Hits album was pretty near the end, I think. By that time, he was so drunk he was stumbling into the lights and we had to stop the session. He wasn't a wild drunk - actually he was kind of quiet - but his equilibrium wasn't too terrific. Still, he was great to photograph because he had a very interesting look."     

                       

One of the photos taken from the "Young Lion" sessions was published in the Village Voice and apparently the publication was inundated with requests for the picture. Joel Brodsky wasn't a fan of the music he shot, but he knew that his photographs of Morrison were indeed iconic: "You know, Morrison never really looked that way again, and those pictures have become a big part of The Doors' legend. I think I got him at his peak."

His son-in-law Sid Holt, a former managing editor of Rolling Stone, said, "I never actually heard him listen to the music he shot. He didn't particularly like The Doors."

Along with his legendary photographs of The Doors - the award winning cover of Strange Days, and the jackets of The Soft Parade and the Greatest Hits album - other memorable photographs taken by Joel Brodsky include: the cover for Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, MC5's Kick Out the Jams, and the debut albums from The Stooges and KISS.

Iconic Photographs: The Band

  

The Band's second album, the eponymous The Band, features a photograph of all five musicians looking a bit rustic on the cover. Elliott Landy's photograph is the image most closely associated with the group.

Landy, who began his career photographing the anti-Vietnam War movement and the underground music scene in New York City, was the official photographer of the Woodstock Festival and then became The Band's official photographer in the late 60's.

Landy spent a great deal of time with the group at their home in Woodstock, Big Pink: "The guys in The Band were different from the other musicians I had been around....They knew about life and about people. You couldn't fool them. They had been around and had seen it all with a really deep comprehension. I liked all of them a lot and felt really comfortable around them-like a kindred soul." 

In 2009, the National Recording Registry preserved The Band which is considered "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or informs or reflects life in the United States."

Iconic Photographs: Queen II

               

In our second chapter of Iconic Photographs - the initial photograph being "The Million Dollar Quartet" - we pay homage to one of rock's great photographers, Mick Rock, and rock royalty, Queen.

According to Mr. Rock, the band hired him for the "glam sensibilities" he displayed in his work with David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed. Queen's first album didn't sell particularly well, so for their second effort they desired a memorable cover photograph that might draw attention to their music. 

Mick Rock was inspired by a photograph of actress Marlene Dietrich in the 1932 film Shanghai Express, but Queen nearly rejected the photograph, thinking that it was too elaborate. Rock convinced them otherwise: "It made them look like much bigger a deal than they were at the time, but it was a true reflection of their music." 

This particular photograph of Queen would later become the band's most iconic image, and used again for the video of their 1975 single Bohemian Rhapsody as well as 1986's One Vision. 

                    

Iconic Photographs: Million Dollar Quartet

  
On December 4, 1956 Carl Perkins was recording at Sun Studios when a few of his famous buddies stopped by.

Sam Phillips, owner of Sun Records, invited his most recent signing, Jerry Lee Lewis, to play piano on Perkins' sessions, and later that day Elvis Presley with girlfriend Marilyn Evans and Johnny Cash dropped in on the recordings. 

At some point, Elvis left the control room, entered the studio, sat at the piano and eventually a jam session began. "Cowboy" Jack Clement, who was engineering, recorded at least four songs, while Sam Phillips saw an opportunity for some publicity and called the local newspaper, Memphis Press-Scimitar.

The next day, an article was published under the title "Million Dollar Quartet" accompanied by the famous photograph of Elvis seated at the piano surrounded by Lewis, Perkins and Cash. The uncropped version of the photo below includes Marilyn Evans, sitting atop the piano.

            

 

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