Sweden Rock Magazine (SRM) is a Swedish metal magazine founded in 2001 and publish 11 issues per year. It’s written in Swedish, but here it is translated to English for you.
Horns, fangs and pentagrams. These were the kind of elements you should have on your album cover if you wanted to be in the right place in 1983. Examples of this are Black Sabbath's Born again, Mötley Crüe's Shout at the Devil, Helix's No rest for the wicked (the man's horn-studded pajamas do take the coolness out of it a bit) and Ozzy Osbourne's Bark at the moon. One of those who got the most attention was Dio, who on Holy Diver had his demon mascot Murray rise up over a mountain massif and lower a chained priest into the sea. In Düsseldorf, Germany, the thinking was different. In 1982, an image of two burning Flying V guitars had served as the cover of Accept's breakthrough album Restless and Wild, but now the band's manager Gaby Hoffmann wanted something in a completely different style. Gaby, who then went by the pseudonym Deaffy, is married to Accept guitarist Wolf Hoffmann and was also the band's lyricist for many years.
- She had read an article in Kerrang where a journalist had described our music as "all out balls to the wall", remembers Wolf. The line had stuck in her head. We were terrible at English and didn't understand what "balls to the wall" meant, but thought it sounded like a heavy and a good title for our fifth album.
Much later, Wolf found out where the expression came from.
- It's an aviation term. Fighter pilots have a throttle that is shaped like a bullet and when they have full throttle it is called "balls to the wall". It's actually the same expression as "pedal to the metal", but for pilots. But of course it has a double meaning. I'm thinking of… my own bullets, you know.
Gaby suggested that the cover be in black and white and sketched out an idea that required them to hire a male model.
- One of the requirements was that the model should have strong leg muscles, says Wolf. The photographer we hired, Dieter Eikelpoth, found a boxer who had massive thighs.
Gaby got him involved in the project and unfortunately, for the members of Accept, the guy made a living as a personal trainer. She had begun to sense a certain physical decay in the five members and therefore expanded the superman's scope of work, which now also included getting the lazy guys in shape.
- I've forgotten his name, but I'll never forget the time when we were in his clutches, recalls guitarist Herman Frank. He was a real tough guy. Every single day we had to jog a mile. That was just the warm-up! Then there were different training programs, jumping rope and everything. It took its toll on us and every night we were supposed to be able to do a gig. Everyone in the band was complaining and had pain in every muscle and bone.
- It was too brutal, too much and too fast, agrees Wolf. It could have worked if it had been done gradually, but he almost wore us out. Two weeks after the cover photo shoot, we had enough and fired him.
Wikipedia says, completely incorrectly, that Herman Frank is the underwear model.
- My thighs look like that now, though, after 30 years of hard training, laughs Herman. Maybe I should start taking my pants off at our gigs.
Dieter Eikelpoth was a well-known name in the German fashion world and the photographer had also taken many album cover photos.
- Accept, however, was the first hard rock band to hire him, says Wolf. I don't even think he knew us at the time. The reason we chose him was because he had a style we liked. The fact that he lived near us in Düsseldorf was also an advantage.
During the cover shoot, the members of Accept were also allowed to take off their clothes, as they were photographed shirtless for the inner envelope.
- We felt comfortable with the concept so we had no problem taking our clothes off, says Wolf. Our families actually thought the photos of us were nice, but it was difficult for me to explain the album title and the cover itself to my mother.
I just said »Mom, you wouldn't understand« and then I tried to change the subject.
»But what does that mean?« she insisted. »Nothing, Mom, nothing.« Otherwise, we have always thought that anything controversial is good. It is better to have a cover like that than a simple one that is boring. The same goes for lyrics. Rather something controversial that arouses emotions and debate than some meaningless nonsense. To this day, people ask me what it is that the man on the cover is actually holding in his hand.
What do you usually say?
- It's a round stone that looks like... well, it could be a lot of different things.
Please report dead links!The whole cover can be interpreted in a million different ways. Maybe that's why everyone remembers it. When we played in France, the promoter had covered a giant wall with hundreds of "Balls to the wall" posters. One leg went into another leg that went into another leg and so on.
The whole thing became a strange pattern and it actually looked like a man putting his hand on another man's penis. It was the repetitions of the image that made it look that way. I stood there thinking:
"Wow, this is really weird."
The reactions from fans and media in Europe and the US were drastically different. On our continent, people liked the, for being hard rock, odd style. A certain part of the American audience and the press thought, as Wolf himself describes it, that "it looked too gay". The "London leather-boys" song hardly softened that impression.
- Rumors that Accept were homosexuals began to abound, says Wolf. People in the USA were afraid to buy the album: "Uh, I don't want an album where a hairy man's ass dominates the cover." The funny thing is that the "Balls to the wall" cover has been voted both one of the best and one of the worst covers in the history of hard rock.
I don't remember which magazine did the voting, but it was a major metal magazine. It's safe to say that there were many divided opinions about the cover.
Despite a lot of whining from homophobes, "Balls to the wall" was a success. The album is actually the only one by Accept to reach gold status in the USA.
- When we played in San Francisco on our first US tour, we did it at a big club with a capacity of 3,000 people and it was sold out, recalls Accept's former singer Udo Dirkschneider. An estimated 70-80 percent were homosexuals, which we had never experienced at any gig before.
That is my strongest memory linked to the »Balls to the wall« cover. Incidentally, »London Leatherboys« was not about gay guys but about a motorcycle gang, but I can only say that it was a misunderstanding.
- The gay rumors didn't immediately diminish when Udo looked the way he did and we wore leather clothes, says Wolf. Some people still think we are gay, so it's a rumor that has been hard to get rid of. Not that we tried hard...
The similarity between Accept's cover image and the black-and-white photographic artwork »Patrice«, which the American photographer and artist Robert Mapplethorpe did in 1977, is striking. Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS at the age of 42 in 1989, attracted a lot of attention in his homeland as his images often had homoerotic elements. »Patrice« shows a man with a clenched right hand, a leather jacket and a hairy thigh, just like on the cover of »Balls to the wall«.
- »Balls to the wall« was the first in a long line of Accept covers that I came up with the idea for. Regarding the similarity with Mapplethorpe's image, it is a pure coincidence, claims Gaby. I simply wanted to make a »repulsive« play with the most sacred of things: the man's balls. It was much later that I discovered that Mapplethorpe had thought the same thing. It came as a shock. In 1983 I only knew his name, if at all, and had not seen his art.
JONAS GRANVIK
