Blind Faith - Album Release and Controversy

Album Release and Controversy

Upon its release, Blind Faith topped Billboard's charts at the No. 1 spot for Pop Album in both the U.S. and the UK, and peaked at No. 40 on the Black Albums chart – an impressive feat for a British rock quartet. The album sold more than half a million copies within the first month of its release and was a huge profit-making device for both Atlantic Records (on their Atco label in the U.S.) and for Clapton and Baker (Blind Faith sales were helping to stimulate demand for Cream albums, also distributed by Atco).

The release of the album provoked controversy because the cover featured a topless pubescent girl, holding in her hands a silver space ship designed by Mick Milligan, a jeweller at the Royal College of Art. Some perceived the ship as a phallic symbol. The U.S. record company issued it with an alternative cover which showed a photograph of the band on the front. In the UK an alternate cover was also issued simultaneously with the topless one, a thin and laminated cover with the back and front consistent with the inside of the foldout version. The original record number on the alternate cover is the same but ends with a "B" (583 059B). The record is the same and, since this was only issued for a short time, always had early matrix numbers and mothers.

The cover art was created by photographer Bob Seidemann, a personal friend and former flatmate of Clapton, who is known primarily for his photos of Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead. Rumours about the girl's relationship to the band fuelled the controversy; among them were that she was Baker's illegitimate daughter, and that she was a groupie kept as a slave by the band members. Actually, the young girl was a London suburbanite, who posed upon consent by her parents and for a fee, as described in Seidemann's mini essay about the origins of the Blind Faith album cover artwork.

The cover was nameless – only the wrapping paper told the buyer who the artist was and the name of the album. Though initially banned in some countries, the original artwork was quite popular and collectible. It also became available later in the 1970s on the RSO label worldwide. Under licensing agreement during the mid-1980s, the Blind Faith album was remastered to high definition vinyl and gold compact disc by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab. During 2000 the entire album was remastered and re-released as a two-CD deluxe edition release from Polydor that includes alternates, out-takes and studio rehearsal versions of the band's music created during the early months of 1969.