Sweden Rock Magazine (SRM) is a brilliant Swedish metal magazine founded in 2001 and publish 11 issues per year. They write about the current scene, but never forget its roots and publish a lot of amazing stuff from the 80's.
The magazine is written in Swedish, but here is an article translated to English for you.
SAXON
You can hardly imagine a sharper contrast than that between what Saxon singer Biff Byford points out as the band's two most talked-about album covers. On the one hand, »Crusader« (1984), a painting laden with medieval battlefield romance: bald knights, bloody corpses and a fluttering banner. On the other hand, the sequel »Innocence is no excuse« (1985) with its on-paper, directly tame studio photo. Yet the image appears strangely provocative through the undercurrent of oral-fixated lolita sensualism. An odd, even startling aesthetic for a heavy metal band of the time.
– The idea itself was to try something different, says Biff. All metal, especially British metal, had lost popularity so we looked at several new presentation ideas. We could have done something more heavy metal-like, a bondage cover with heroes and slave girls in the spirit of Manowar. Instead, we went from heavy metal to something that I guess was more pretentious. We all liked this idea, simply.
An idea that, by the way, did not come from any of the Saxon members.
– Our manager at the time, Nigel Thomas, had been involved in some daring album covers, for example one with Tubes where toothpaste was sprayed over a girl's chest. He was the one who came up with the spread with the girl and the apple. Nigel himself went over to the modeling agency to check out possible girls. He chose one who I think was only 18 years old and had just started working professionally.
To carry out the actual photo shoot, Gered Mankowitz was engaged, a versatile photographer who had previously created covers for Jam and Gary Moore, among others. This particular request took him by surprise, however.
– I'm not a heavy metal fan, but I knew of Saxon as a famous band in the genre, says Gered. Unlike my friend Ross Halfin, I didn't photograph many hard rock bands. Creatively, I found it quite unsatisfactory, as I couldn't relate to the aesthetics. I was much more specialized in studio portraits, which few hard rockers asked for. However, this assignment came from EMI, who were one of my regular clients. The reason they asked me was probably because I was quite established as a fashion photographer and they wanted something striking and a little challenging. I didn't think much about how heavy metal or not the cover appeared. When I look at the image now, it literally screams advertising billboard.
The photo session itself was completed quickly and generated about twenty images that are now, according to Gered, gathering dust in EMI's archives. Incidentally, the image that now adorns the cover exudes a much more subtle eroticism than the image that Saxon originally chose.
- In the original image, white apple juice ran down the girl's chin, says Biff. The record company didn't like it, because it was too suggestive. I liked it, however.
– We tried all sorts of variations, Gered recalls. With juice, without juice, showing more of her teeth or the whites of her eyes – anything we thought would work.
The connection between the cover motif and the album title is so striking that no one seemed to understand the underlying point of the phrase »Innocence is no excuse«, Biff notes.
– We were in the middle of a lawsuit with our previous record label Carrere, who had sued us for breach of contract. Our innocence was apparently no excuse. That is the explanation for the title and the s from our logo, which can be seen on the apple. The girl taking a bite of Saxon is another example of symbolism.
EMI also failed to get their intended point across. The group's new record label wanted people to understand that the girl was a murderer by looking at the album cover and the black and white photos that Gered then took for various editions of the single »Back on the streets«. Few people made this connection, however, because it is very difficult to recognize her in the single images.
– It was a strange session in the park of Hampstead Heath, not far from my studio, says Gered. It was the first and only time I met Biff. I never met the other band members. The picture I took of the girl walking along a brick wall was quite sadistic. She was wearing a very tight, metal-plated, goth-like dress and gloves in black. Very sexy, but she was dragging a man in a suit with a paper bag over his head and an apple falling out of his hand. On the back of the single there was a color picture of the apple, with the Saxon s: bitten off. Another picture was apparently supposed to be a Wilhelm Tell paraphrase. The same man was tied to a tree with an arrow in his skull and the girl was chewing on the apple – she had shot him instead. Finally, there was a rural scene with a picnic in the green, but the man was lying dead on the canvas with a butcher knife in his back. I don't remember who came up with all these ideas. In fact, I hardly know what I was thinking that made me agree to shoot them. The scope of what you can do is of course very large in the music industry and that's why it's such an attractive sphere. This is also a commercial job. Someone presents a concept to us and we will make a plan for how it will be implemented, is responsible for the props and gives the artist – in this case Biff – everything they need to get the campaign together.
Neither Gered nor Biff can remember the name of the apple-munching girl, even though the singer ended up meeting her again.
– We had her on stage with us. We invited her when we were in Birmingham, where she lived, and then took her to the Hammersmith Odeon. It went down very well with the male part of the audience. She got on in a very short miniskirt and I introduced her with the words »this is my wife«. The audience went crazy and I continued »okay, she is not my wife«. She didn't want to be, Biff concludes with a sad tone of voice.
Like the music on »Innocence is no excuse«, the cover has been the subject of strong emotions from the beginning. It is found on top lists of both the best and worst album covers in history, depending on whose website you visit. Biff has subsequently joined those who dislike the image, just as he dislikes so much else connected to ex-manager Nigel Thomas (who, incidentally, died of a heart attack in 1993).
So what does Gered Mankowitz himself think of his creation? Well, he is primarily surprised that the cover for »Innocence is no excuse« would have any buzz factor at all. For him, it just represents a job assignment, and one that he has not had reason to give a thought to in the past quarter of a century.
– I have never received any response to it and I do not have the faintest idea how high it ranks among Saxon's album covers.
As I said, the latter depends on who you ask. However, the fact that the cover is and remains Saxon's most discussed is a fact.
ERIK THOMPSON