from the let it be photo shoot
Bob Mehr
September 2 at 7:18 PM
·
Like most of you I'm stoked to get the forthcoming box set on The Replacements “Let It Be” album -- this time I'll be enjoying one of these projects in the 'Mats recent reissue series purely as a fan, which is nice.
The official Rhino/Replacements accounts have been teasing some contents of the box along with excerpts of Elizabeth Nelson's liner notes (which I'm excited to read). As Elizabeth's notes point out, one of the defining elements of "Let it Be" is its very famous rooftop band cover shot. While it is examined pretty thoroughly in my book, “Trouble Boys,” there were some details that were left out that might be interesting to some folks.
By now, most people know the story of how the band comically and offhandedly decided to name the album “Let it Be” after the Beatles song. But getting the album's iconic rooftop photo was actually a fairly involved process.
After the ripped-up punk rock imagery of “Sorry Ma," the hand-stamped utilitarianism of “Stink” and the brazen theft of “Hootenanny,” the general feeling was to try something more conventional for “Let It Be,” to put a proper picture of the entire band on the LP cover. In fact this would be the only time all four members of the band were fully visible on the cover of any Replacements album.
Twin/Tone had recently hired local music writer, and sometimes caustic ‘Mats critic, Dave Ayers to help around the office, and he would coordinate the cover effort. At first, the band wanted to keep the cheeky Beatles theme going. Photographer Greg Helgeson was dispatched to the Stinson house and made some images of the Replacements crossing Bryant Avenue single file. “We went through an entire shoot of us walking across the street ala the [Beatles’] ‘Abbey Road’ cover,” recalled Westerberg.
Ultimately it would be another of the band’s key visual chroniclers, Daniel Corrigan, who would be responsible for the “Let it Be” cover. Corrigan had been shooting music pictures for the Minnesota Daily, including several previous sessions with Replacements. He’d gone to high school with Ayers and worked with him at the Daily. Ayers called him up pitching a portrait shoot with the band for the album art, a gig that paid $250.
Corrigan’s first attempt came that May, before a Replacements show at Coffman Memorial Union on the University of Minnesota campus. Corrigan happened to be dating the Coffman’s night manager and knew the building well.
“The Replacements were always super squirrely,” said Corrigan. “I wanted to get them in an enclosed space -- there was no other way to get them together and keep them together. I basically tricked them into the Coffman’s elevator with a promise of coke -- which I didn’t actually have. But I said, ‘We can’t do it here, but there’s an office on the top floor, let’s go.’”
Corrigan, an assistant armed with a flash unit, and the band got into the lift. Stopping the elevator between floors he managed to pop off a dozen frames of the ‘Mats mugging and jostling with each other in close quarters.
“But they were too raucous – the bell was ringing and the elevator was totally shaking, so we gave up,” said Corrigan. Most of his images were washed out by bad light, but one of them -- with Paul and Bob facing off animatedly and Chris and Tommy watching in the background -- stood out when Corrigan developed the roll. “That’s actually the one I thought should be the album cover,” he said.
For whatever reason, Twin/Tone wasn’t sold on Corrigan’s photo – though it ended up being used by the label for a series of promotional posters and postcards. Instead, Corrigan went over to the Stinson house the following week and took some shots of the band rehearsing in the basement. Then, he suggested they try something else.
For some months, Corrigan had been exploring a series of conceptual setups he called “danger shoots” -- taking bands and putting them in precarious positions. He’d done several with groups hanging off the side of railroad trestles, posing in the middle of condemned construction sites, or perched atop tall buildings. Corrigan felt these heightened conditions brought out something unguarded and more real in a band’s demeanor.
Unfortunately, there weren’t any dangerous set-ups nearby – “and getting the Replacements anywhere was always an incredible hassle,” noted Corrigan -- so he suggested they try the closest thing at hand: climbing the second-story roof of the Stinson house (edit: lots of folks here have suggested that this was intended to reference the Beatles' "Let It Be" rooftop concert, but the roof was far too steep to set up and play on and besides the suggestion was Corrigan's - the band had abandoned the idea of a Beatles referencing pic by this point anyway).
The ‘Mats made their way out of Lisa Stinson’s bedroom window – where her softball and volleyball trophies were prominently displayed -- and onto the dirty, white-tiled landing. The band stood around for a while, teetering on the edge and goofing off, beers in hand, while Corrigan, standing on a van parked below on Bryant, snapped away. At one point, the Stinson family dog – Benji, I believe -- was brought out and they posed with him.
Eventually, Corrigan joined the band. Crouched in the far-left corner of the roof, he took a couple shots of the ‘Mats sitting down together with a wide lens. Then he moved closer and fired off a dozen more shots. It was this set of snaps that would yield the “Let It Be” cover.
The photo – given a cyan-toned treatment by sleeve designer Bruce Allen of The Suburbs – seemed to capture something ineffable about the band: the four of them clad in denim and sneakers, sitting in staggered fashion, with Westerberg aloof, looking away from the camera, Stinson sleepily cool, wiping his eyes, Bob craning his neck curiously, and Mars peering guardedly into the lens.
Over the next four decades Corrigan’s image would be bootlegged, imitated, and paid homage to. It would be the subject of numerous theories and readings dissecting the meaning behind its composition.
One critic suggested the “roof on which they’re perched seems the refuge of a heart-on-his-sleeve would-be romantic who escapes out his bedroom window to peer up at the stars on lonely nights.” Another would claim the image was a “commentary on rock’s promise of reinvention, that stardom can elevate the ordinary kid from the basement to somewhere overlooking the world.”
“It’s amazing how much that picture has been analyzed and the things people read into it,” said Corrigan. “I don’t know what to say about all that. It’s just those guys on the roof and me trying to line up some angle so that it’s visually pleasing to the eye. I don’t think it was anything more than that.”
Like so many things in the Replacements story, the simple idea behind the “Let it Be” cover would take on a larger, almost mythic significance.
Funnily enough, when he saw it, Twin/Tone’s Dave Ayers wasn’t enamored of the shot, but was overruled by others at the label. “I didn’t love the roof picture, I preferred the elevator one,” he said. “I just thought it was a weird context. It was a great candid photograph but happening in a completely contrived circumstance. It was like the rock video in the woods where everyone’s got a guitar. My question was ‘Why would they be up on the roof?’”
In fairness, it is worth noting that while living in the Stinson’s first Bryant Avenue house, the Replacements precursor band Dogbreath would sometimes point their amps out the windows and play standing on the house’s flat roof.
And now you know the rest of the story…
