ABSOLUT ALBUM COVERS

The Artists, The Art and The Albums

ABSOLUT ALBUM COVER >>>

ABSOLUT ALBUM COVERS. ABSOLUT JOHN AND YOKO.
Unfinished Music, No. 1: Two Virgins, 1968

At the time of its release, the album by John Lennon and Yoko Ono gained notoriety for its startling cover, a photograph that depicted the two standing before the camera, naked. The recording can also be described as naked; it contains no music that would interfere with one's ability to hear the normal sounds of life. The album is not unlike what you might get if you turned on a tape recorder for a random half hour in your home - snatches of inaudible conversation, footsteps, wind, etc.

John & Yoko recorded Two Virgins the night before the morning they first made love. After its release John Lennon noted, "It was midnight when we started 'Two Virgins,' it was dawn when we finished, and then we made love at dawn. It was very beautiful."

Jonathan Cott spoke with John Lennon and Yoko Ono for the March 1969 issue of Rolling Stone, he spent time talking with each in order to put the album in perspective. "'What I'm doing is the primitive avant-garde,' John Lennon said about his new art and music. Two Virgins is really a sophisticated multi-media ménage a trios: an incredible and now famous album cover, a reportedly lovely film, and an extraordinary piece of contemporary music…"

"The music for Two Virgins comes without clothes and without clichés," He added, "A music metaphor for two persons seeing each other for the first time and then seeing what's there. The naked album cover is actually and extension of the music, for it exemplifies the idea of confrontation, an interaction between John and Yoko - a real East Meets West album."

In an interview with Goldmine Magazine, Yoko Ono said of the album's controversial cover, "I immediately thought it [the photograph] was a great idea… John had somebody set it up so that he could [take the picture] automatically with a switch, and then he kicked everybody out, and we took off our clothes. We were shy people. And it's very strange to say, "shy" because we were about to show our nakedness to the whole world! So what is with kicking everybody out and taking the photo? But that's how we did it." She added, "John wanted to do it as the cover, so you can say it's John's idea…The concept of standing together naked, and being filmed in a way that we're part of nature or something like that…That was very good. I had a filmic idea about it, but I didn't think of putting it on the cover of the record!"

Two Virgins was the first of three experimental albums by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the others included Unfinished Music No. 2, Life With The Lions and Wedding Album.