Physical Graffiti -- return to the scene
From World of Wonder's WOW Report:
Artist Lou Cannizzaro went back to 96 St Marks Place in Manhattan 33 years after that location starred on the cover of Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti album.Physical Graffiti -- return to the scene
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Cool. Street maps view:
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=96+marks+place,+manhattan&ie=UTF8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&ll=40.732934,-73.9838&spn=0.011089,0.019312&t=h&z=16&layer=c&cbll=40.727368,-73.984758&panoid=xsSNA0j40zJP4aeb-kUvIQ&cbp=2,223.64145186285475,,0,-15.576894887486533
I don't get it. No information and a shitty picture that I could have taken with my iPhone. Wow, that's awesome.
Welcome to the world of uberblogging. Go take a better picture and put the link in your next comment. We ♥ original research.
Back in 2005, I made the trip to New York (from Montréal) to see Paul McCartney at Madison Square Garden.
Since we were going to be there most of the weekend, we booked a few other things: we planned on seeing Lennon: The Musical, but the show closed before we got there.
The other, and possibly coolest thing we did apart from the McCartney show was to take a "Rock History" walking tour of New York's East Village, going past such landmarks as (what used to be) the Fillmore East, the hotel where the Ramones used to live, Madonna's first apartment when she came to NY, and we ended the tour at CBGB's, less than a year before it closed.
Among the landmarks we stopped in front of was that particular building that was used for the Zeppelin cover, as well as the Rolling Stones' Some Girls cover.
One thing worth noting is that, in order to fit the building's picture on a square LP cover, one of the stories was cut out. Just take a look at the Google Maps Street View linked above, and count the rows of windows.
Funny story: my buddy and I both pointed out a particular building and said to each other: "that's gotta be the Physical Graffiti cover!" but it turned out we were one street away from the right building.
This is weird. When I searched out this building a few years ago I remember there being trees in the way from the sidewalk. Definitely you need to be inside the building across the street to get the picture to look like the cover, though. Trees or no.
Well kee-rap. I was hanging out on St Marks Place a lot during those years, but I had no idea the Physical Graffitti album cover was of a building I must have seen hundreds of times.
I'll go take a look when I get back to NYC in December...
The photographer was later arrested for trying to recreate the album cover to Zep's Houses of the Holy.
The landscape of California is so transient that it really makes me appreciate how the buildings in New York can survive the way they do. It looks like even most of the metalwork survived.
and how about some credit where credit is due...
the "Physical Graffiti" cover with the cut-out windows was designed by Peter Corriston, who also did the cut-out cover design for the Rolling Stones "Some Girls" and the brilliant "Tattoo You".
I clicked through to look at the site and midway through enlarging photos and swanning about I realized that I had "Kashmir" playing on my internal jukebox. Heh.
No surprise the building has aged well--it was already pretty old when they took the photo, and the East Village has been increasingly gentrified.
I actually think it looks better in the grittier B&W than it does in the newer color shot. With yuppie moms wheeling their spawn through Tompkins Square Park in thousand-dollar designer prams, it's not a surprise that this building's looking spiffy.
Holy crap. I lived across the street from that building for YEARS (at 87 St. Marks) and had no idea.
I got that album from Columbia House on 8-track (my first car had one).
Crap I'm old...
The Rolling Stones shot the video for "Waiting On A Friend" on the steps of this building.
COOL. I've walked by that building 500 times!
Damn. Give the building a guitar and some seed cash and I'll bet it could start its own musical career. =D
http://i35.tinypic.com/96c39t.jpg
Add me to the list of people who walk by that building every day and didn't have a clue. Daaamn.
Just a few doors away, 101 St Marks Place, onetime home of the poet Ted Berrigan (who memorialized the address in various poems). The poet W.H. Auden lived at 77 St Marks Place for many years.
And if you land on it, you owe the owner $200.
Freshyill: you're right, you don't get it. Furthermore, your suspicions are correct: everyone else in the thread is having more fun than you are.
On another day and another topic, you'll be the one having more fun. Until then, please try not to whine. It makes people feel like it's okay to kill you.
I love this album.
...You'd think they would have emptied the trash barrels by now.
#8 POSTED BY E0157H7 , OCTOBER 19, 2008 5:19 AM
Well, consider than an exception nowadays. NYC's real-estate development boom has really decimated tons of cultural venues. And if NYU owned this building (do they?) like they do the rest of the Village it would have been decimated years ago.
For example, the old Palladium on 14th Street that was where Madonna, the Beastie Boys & Run-D.M.C. performed historic shows? Torn down to make way for the Palladium dorms.
Around the corner, the old Variety theater was torn down for more development; more dorms I think. The Variety was a prominent player in the film "Taxi Driver". It's outside that theater on 3rd Avenue that Jodie Foster's character jumps into DeNiro's taxi. Now it's gone.
Oh, and as long as I am NYU bashing, "The Bottom Line" is a club that had tons of historic shows as well. Now it's some NYU lounge. Fillmore East? Ditto: It's an NYU satellite facility.
And NYU tore down a host that Edgar Allen Poe lived in. To paraphrase Chris Stein of Blondie, you'd think an educational institution like NYU would treasure and preserve a place with such a historic/literary history. Nope, they didn't.
So be happy things exist. But man, NYC is real estate crazy. And NYU & Columbua University are doing a "good" job of buying and gut-rehabbing this city's history one block at a time.
FWIW, Los Angeles has some historic places that have survived time as well.
The album cover image and the building from Google Street View:
http://tinyurl.com/5p2ro2
NYC is indeed real estate crazy.
They even want to tear down the New York Statler Hotel (the one that gave Statler from that famous heckling Muppets duo his name) to make way for office space.
(And yes I know, it is now called Hotel Pennsylvania, but still... it's a part of history.)
http://savethehotel.org/
So, anyone have any info about why that building was used for the album -- did it have any significance for Led Zep or did the designers just like the gritty look of the place?
Wikipedia has some info on this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Graffiti#Album_sleeve_design
I think the building was steam cleaned a couple years ago. It looks completely different now without the sweet patina.
#25 Joe Holmes
One thing that the Wikipedia entry neglects to point out --and you can't really see this on something as small as the CD booklet OR even on the Google Street View-- is the weird faces at the top of the windows. You can "kind of" see them but not clearly. The sconces are these ghoulish faces with open mouths. That's got to be at least a contributing factor to why they chose this particular building, I'd think.
In 1985, I lived on this block, myself (109 St Marks to be exact). When someone told me the "Zeppelin cover" was on my block, it was pretty easy to tell which brownstone he was referring to because of the faces.
And yes, the bar that the Rolling Stones walk into during the "Waiting on a Friend" video is the (late) St Marks Bar and Grill, one of the East Village's notorious local "dive bars" --you never knew who you'd see in that place. Long gone now, of course... probably a Starbucks!
@#28 POSTED BY RICHARD METZGER:
Good point, but have you ever been to the Brooklyn Academy of Music? The place is great but the outside is covered faces of screaming and wailing babies. Seriously.