THE DEVIL'S IN THE DETAILS

AFTER PHOTOGRAPHER Michael Cooper’s success shooting the sleeve for The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, he had a problem of sorts: how to follow the most impactful (and expensive) album package to date and please his more regular clients, The Rolling Stones? “Typical Michael – he wanted to take it a step further,” relates Cooper’s son and curator, Adam. Hearing of a studio in Mount Vernon, New York with a camera that could take 3D images, he urged the Stones’ management to book it for September 13-14, ’67, only to find that studio time, flights and hotels were about the only thing Allen Klein was happy to pay for. “The Beatles got the red carpet treatment with their cover,” says Adam. “EMI gave them what they wanted. Whereas ABKCO said to the Stones that if they wanted this cover they were going to have to build it themselves. A big difference in attitude.” So the Stones approached the psychedelic set DIY style – getting busy with saws and bottles of glue and dashing into town on a Sunday to raid theatrical costumiers who’d opened specially. Repaying The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper sleeve shout-out (the WELCOME THE ROLLING STONES sweater worn by the doll, bottom right, belonged to the young AMdOamJO), the Stones inserted oval photographs of The Beatles’ heads in among the flowers in the foreground. The camera, running on a semi-circular track, took multiple images – which were combined to produce the lenticular panel by US company Vari-Vue. Cooper had hoped to deliver movement (Jagger’s hands are crossed over his chest, then held up; Charlie and Keith look at each other, so do Brian and Bill) and 3D before it was explained to him that you could have one or the other. The movement still ‘worked’ but the clarity of the shift was necessarily compromised. And hardly anyone acquiring Their Satanic Majesties Request got Cooper’s ideal cover – with a 12”x12” lenticular – because ABKCO blanched when they saw the cost over a full run. “There were only about 500 made,” says Adam Cooper, “a limited edition that ended up mostly with friends and family. Michael was frustrated, because the work wasn’t properly seen.” Michael Cooper had graver disappointments in store. As the promise of the ’60s gave way to the reality of the ’70s the sensitive and troubled photographer, fighting addiction and dejected by the way the world was turning, took his own life in 1973. His ’60s work, full of verve and invention, is his legacy.