The Specials - Front Cover - Coventry 1979
I have to thank my friend Elvis Costello for suggesting us to Jerry Dammers, he was producing the First Specials LP and thought we would get on well together. There are few people who I would describe as genius, but it applies to both Jerry and this Band. Seven very individual people, and one of the best bands I ever worked with. Jerry had both the locations and ideas worked out for their first LP sleeve, he showed my some LP's that he liked visually, one of them was the Who's My Generation. Although taken in colour the band is shot from above, and with seven people in the band, group shots are never usually easy. We went to a location Jerry suggested at the Canal Basin in Coventry, these guys took direction really well, but, they also knew how to hold their own in a band this big, each had his own personality and it shows, if only all groups were this easy to deal with, I might have continued doing it. For the LP cover we cut out the band members with a pair of scissors at Jerry's request, he wanted it to look cheesy, then we stripped it onto a white background, but here, for the first time you can see the actual photograph as it was originally taken. There were only ten frames done of this pose, the last two on the roll were used for the back cover, and that's a slightly different story.