On this day in music history: March 30, 1967 - The album cover photos for The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” are staged and photographed in London. With the “concept of Sgt. Pepper” set, the next issue is what to put on the album cover. The main idea comes from Paul McCartney, who initially sketches some pictures of The Beatles in uniform receiving keys to the city by the mayor flanked by a group of famous people behind them. McCartney discusses his ideas with his friend, art dealer Robert Fraser who puts him in touch with graphic artist Peter Blake and photographer Michael Cooper. Once the wheels are set in motion, Blake gets right to work on the project. He asks the band what persons they would like to be in the collage behind them. They make their choices along with Blake. The bands roadies Mal Evans and Neil Aspinall go to various libraries around town and find prints of the various people in books, which Blake has blow ups made of, and then hand tints each one. A few of the subjects including Adolf Hitler and Mahatma Gandhi are not included in the final product. It will take Peter Blake and his wife Jann Haworth eight days to assemble the collage and other props for the actual photo shoot. The photo session takes place at Chelsea Manor Studios at 1-11 Flood Street in the Chelsea district of London. With The Beatles wearing their satin military styled band uniforms (designed by British theatrical costumers M. Berman, Ltd. of London), the photos for the cover, center spread and back cover are taken by photographer Michael Cooper. The cost of the staging and photo session comes to £3,000 (approximately $10,643.00 USD today), which in 1967 is considered an extravagant amount since EMI normally would budget album cover art at the time at around £50 (approx. $76.00). Upon its release, the album cover becomes an instant pop cultural icon, and among one of the most copied and parodied of all time. In 1968, Peter Blake and Jann Haworth win the Grammy Award for Best Album Cover Graphic Arts.
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| Jann Howarth |
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| Peter Blake and Jann Howarth with a Jann sculpture |
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| Artist Jann Howarth |
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| Peter Blake and Jann Howarth working on Pepper cover figures |
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| Pepper photo shoot with Mike Cooper |
A military building forming part of the British Army's defensive strategy to control the landscape and people of Northern Ireland and known to the British army as 'Borucki Sanger', after Private James R Borucki, 19, 3 Para, was killed here by a 5lb remote controlled bomb left on a bicycle.
Operation Rectify, the rebuilding of Crossmaglen security force base beginning in April 1994, involved the largest British air-mobile operation since D-Day. More than a thousand troops descended on the town, 1400 tonnes of building supplies were moved by the Royal Logistics Corps in huge vehicle convoys along secured routes; another 30 tonnes of equipment were moved by air. The work on the base was carried out by 180 Royal Engineers using 39 pieces of heavy plant, including seven cranes which were double crewed to enable the work to continue 24 hours a day. There were five IRA attacks within the 10 weeks it took to rebuild the base; on one occasion a sapper was injured by a mortar bomb but work was underway again within two hours.
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| Pablo Picasso - Portrait of Dora Maar |
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| portrait of the real Dora Maar artist photographer and muse - Man Ray |
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| perhaps my favourite Picasso - 'Guernica' - in response to the Spanish Civil War |
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| rolling out the finished work |
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| Vincent - Self Portrait |
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| Van Gogh - the last painting |
