Who is your favorite?

P.S. did they ID that girl who posed for the Blind Faith album?

The space ship could be made by Mick Milligan, a jeweler at the Royal College of Art. The girl was another matter. If she were too old it would be cheesecake, too young and it would be nothing. It was the beginning of the transition from girl to woman, that is what I was after. That temporal point, that singular flare of radiant innocence. Where is that girl?


I was riding the London Tube on the way to Stigwood's office to expose Clapton's management to this revelation when the subway doors opened and she stepped into the car. She was wearing a school uniform, plaid skirt, blue blazer, white socks and ball point pen drawings on her hands. It was as though the air began to crackle with an electrostatic charge. She was buoyant and fresh as the morning air.


I must have looked like something out of Dickens. Somewhere between Fagan, Quasimodo, Albert Einstein and John the Baptist. The car was full of passengers. I approached her and said that I would like her to pose for a record cover for Eric Clapton's new band. Everyone in the car tensed up.


She said, "Do I have to take off my clothes?" My answer was yes. I gave her my card and begged her to call. I would have to ask her parent's consent if she agreed. When I got to Stigwood's office I called the flat and said that if this girl called not to let her off the phone without getting her phone number. When I returned she had called and left her number.


Stanley Mouse (Miller), my close friend and one of the five originators of psychedelic art in San Francisco was holed up at the flat. He helped me make a layout and we headed out to meet with the girl's parents. It was a Mayfair address. This was a swank part of town, class in the English sense of the word.


Mouse and I made our presentation, I told my story, the parents agreed. The girl on the tube train would not be the one, she was shy, she had just passed the point of complete innocence and could not pose. Her younger sister had been saying the whole time, "Oh Mommy, Mommy, I want to do it, I want to do it." She was glorious sunshine. Botticelli's angel, the picture of innocence, a face which in a brief time could launch a thousand space ships.


We asked her what her fee should be for modeling, she said a young horse. Stigwood bought one for her. I called the image "Blind Faith" and Clapton made that the name of the band. When the cover was shown in the trades it hit the market like a runaway train, causing a storm of controversy. At one point the record company considered not releasing the cover at all. It was Eric Clapton who fought for it. It was Eric who elected to not print the name of the band on the cover. This had never been done before. The name was printed on the wrapper, when the wrapper came off, so did the type.


This was an image created out of ferment and storm, out of revolution and chaos. It was an image in the mind of one who strove for that moment of glory, that blinding flash of singular inspiration. To etch an image on a stone in our cultural wall with the hope that the wall will last. To say with his heart and his eyes, at a time when it mattered, this is what I feel. It was created out of and a wish for a new beginning. It was created out of hope and a wish for a new beginning. Innocence propelled by BLIND FAITH.

After advance orders of half a million, the "Blind Faith" Album was released in August. The cover of a naked pubescent girl* garnered widespread complaints and was replaced by a very conservative cover with a photograph of the band in rehearsal. It was risque in 1969 but these days is viewed as an artistic interpretation of what 'Blind Faith' was about. Ignoring the sensational promotional aspects, it does visually encapsulate the fragility of the band's music.

The original album cover was perhaps legendary, originally featuring Ginger Baker's then-eleven-year-old daughter topless and holding an airplane. Prudish interests prevailed, and the cover was soon replaced with a simple photo of the band and some (presumably) hastily conceived artwork.