Following on from Part One earlier this week, we take our second look at some of music's most iconic album art and tell you exactly where it came from.

 

The Doors - Morrison Hotel (above)

During the recording of their 1970 album (which went on to be called The Morrison Hotel), the band stumbled on this hotel which was on South Hope Street in Los Angeles. Sensing a great photo opportunity, Jim Morrison and co. went inside and asked politely if they could pose for a photograph through the window. Of course, the hotel refused. So, waiting outside until they figured no one was looking, The Doors raced inside and snapped one photograph and ran back outside. The picture they took would go down as one of the most iconic images of the 1970s.

U2 - The Joshua Tree

The album cover for U2's pivotal release 'The Joshua Tree' is among the most well known images in all of Irish music. A Joshua Tree is a slow growing shrub native to the US southwest and gained its usual name from a band of Mormons who decided that its outreaching branches resembled a Biblical story of Joshua reaching out into the sky. This particular photograph was snapped by Anton Corbijn and, according to Larry Mullen Jr., was the oldest living thing in the desert. Incidentally, the tree toppled over and died in 2000 but has since been replaced with a shrine by U2 fans.

The Velvet Underground & Nico 

Velvet Underground cohort Andy Warhol was the prime influence between the now famous image which adorns the cover of the band's record of the same name. The image, a silkscreen made from black and white acetate film, invited you to peel the banana which would then reveal a flesh coloured (and very phallic) fruit. The banana image has become synonymous of the era and band, and can be seen on many a t-shirt. Most people just don't know that the album cover was essentially an Andy Warhol dick joke.

Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run

It looks like an spontaneous, 'off the cuff' shot of The Boss but you probably didn't know that the shot that made the 'Born To Run' cover was one of more than 900 pictures taken by photographer Eric Meola. The black and white shot shows Springsteen leaning on the shoulder of the late saxophonist Clarence Clemons. The shot is perfectly composed and framed and is perfect in its simplicity - just it may have been slightly more choreographed that you might have known.

Rage Against The Machine - Rage Against The Machine

The cover of RATM's 1992 debut album forever set the tone for Rage Against The Machine. A powerful blend of political awareness and raw viscera, the album cover showed Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc self-immolating in 1963 in protest of oppression towards his religion and it couldn't have represented RATM's brand of incredibly loud, politically conscious music any more concisely.