David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust cover was shot as monochrome and vividly coloured afterwards but it’s of a real location can you guess the place and for the locations for seven other iconic album covers
Fans were stunned when American pop-rock band Haim featured a photo of themselves on Portland Street near Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens on the front of their new single, Take Me Back.
They are far from the only band to put a UK street firmly on the uber-cool place map by using it on a record cover.
The Beatles did it, as did Oasis, The Clash, The Jam, The Streets and Madness – to name but a few – as this great gallery of album covers shows.
Now it’s time to put your musical and geographical knowledge to the test. Take a look at the album covers and the photographs and see if you can name that street!
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1. Manchester’s Oasis went down south to film the cover of this iconic album, which celebrates its 20th anniversary. The setting was a popular location for record shops in the 1990s.
2. The Jam’s 1977 masterpiece This Is the Modern World shows Paul Weller, Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler, lurking under an overpass. That same year The Clash refers to the same road in their song about a certain city burning.
3. And pigs might fly … according to Pink Floyd’s 1977 Animals album cover. But where is the landmark, that has recently had a very impressive facelift?
4. David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust cover was shot as monochrome and vividly coloured afterwards. The K West sign that hung above a furrier in 1982 has now been removed, but it remains an iconic street for Bowie fans
5. In 1977, The Clash released their debut studio album with a cove true to the spirit of punk rock—in a bohemian area popular with rebels young and old and home to iconic music venues like The Roundhouse.
6. The Beatles made this zebra crossing famous worldwide when it was used on the cover of their1969 studio album. Fans still flock here to recreate the image, outside the recording home of the Merseyside beat. But where is it?
7.Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 Pimp A Butterfly album cover was shot in atmospheric monochrome and features a large group of black men and children, plus a baby cradled by Lamar himself on this US lawn, belonging to possibly the world’s most famous house.
album cover
(Image: INTERNET)
8. English rapper Mike Skinner from The Streets chose this building in East Anglia for his 2011 Computer and Blues album after playing a student gig here.
Answers:
- What’s The Story Morning Glory, Berwick Street. Soho, London.
- The Westway, West London
- Battersea Power Station
- 23 Heddon Street, Soho, London,
- Alleyway directly opposite the band’s ‘Rehearsal Rehearsals’ HQ in Camden Market, North London
- Abbey Road, near Abbey Road Studios, North West London
- The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.
- Norfolk Terrace halls of residence at the University of East Anglia.