Abbey Road defiled !

Only in America !

What a bunch of PC crazed zealots !

Those responsible for this cultural vandalism should be dumped on an island and made to listen to Kenny G , Celine Dion etc, for eternity !

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/2681219.stm





Below is the pre-censored picture.

 

I am one of the most vigorous anti-smoking folks around (i.e., my father and best friend from college both died from lung cancer and were heavy smokers), but this attrocity makes me extremely upset. As an artist I consider it even worse than censorship a'la John Ashcroft's covering of a statue because it has defaced the original art (i.e., for those who consider professional photography original art) or at least the public's ability to see the original art/photography as it was conceived. It's tantamount to airbrushing the pipe out of a famous Van Gogh painting like "Still Life and Onions," or how about digitally removing all cigarettes from a famous film like Casablanca. IMHO, there is a legitimate place for PC, and this kind of vandalization ain't it!

Someone will probably move this too off-topic because it isn't specifically about music, but as an aficianado of both music and the artwork which adorns it, I think this is a perfectly appropo music discussion topic.

Cat -- on second thought, ... ...moving in the direction of...

 

The REAL original picture...

They've doctored the real image for years. It's all a big conspiracy!

 

What an f**king joke. Luckily it was just a poster and NOT the album cover. I'm glad to see Apple didn't authorize it.

What's next, airbrushing Thelonious Monk covers?

 

They've been doing this for several years. At least two examples I can think of where the offensive ciggies have been airbrushed out:

1. Cover of the Real Love CD single: Ringo.
2. Cover of Simon & Garfunkel's "Old Friends" box set: Paul Simon.

 

Re: The REAL original picture...

LOL!

"The Surgeon General has determined that smoking a cigarette while walking across Abbey Road is hazardous to your health."

 

Wasn't a pack of cigarettes airbrushed out of the cover photo for the Bruce Springsteen Tracks box set too?

 

I'm also very anti-smoking, but airbrishing classic photos is ridiculous! When are these PC do-gooders going to realize that kids don't pay attention to famous people smoking or images. They watch their friends and family smoke.

 

It never fails to surprise me at how many rock stars (especially those from the UK) had cigarettes dangling from their fingers (usually at their sides) in photographs from the 60's and 70's.

One example that comes to mind is the photo of Humble Pie on the back of the recent 20th Century Millennium collection CD...

 

Totally PC

The original British album cover of "The Rare Sinatra" saw Sinatra sitting on a chair with a lit cigarette in his hand - which they edited out for subsequent issues of this album.

To me, this is changing history. Even if it only affects a tiny little detail - the next thing would probably be erasing references to someone who is no longer considered honorable. If Capitol or Reprise is ever going to release the 1973 White House concert, I can almost hear someone say: "Now cut out any mention of former italian president Giulio Andreotti. He's just been sentenced to 20 years and we don't want him to be associated with our product."

Arne

 

Re-writing history, it just supports the idea that "history" doesn't exist, it's all a comment on the present.

What about the Robert Johnson stamp? same thing

 

Re: The REAL original picture...

Great work, but I think the scale's a bit off. That Bug's almost the size of a UPS truck!

I've said it before, but secretly altering photos is despicable (except when Claviusb does it).
Photos are documents of history. Keep this crap up and the fake altered version will eventually be confused for the real thing. There's no reason for it at all and it's dangerous!

Dan C

 

BTW, I have the poster hanging in my room and Paul's got a smoke. As an ex-smoker with kids it doesn't bother me. It's history and it should be left alone.
Dan C

 

Yes, they did the same thing to the cover of Springsteen's "Tracks" box set -- in that instance, I think a pack of cigarettes was airbrushed off a table.

I'm as anti-smoking as you can get. I'm allergic to the stuff and can barely enter a restaurant's smoking section or bar while still breathing. (Vacations or business trips in California are bliss because I can eat anywhere.)

But this is just silly. Censoring history to suit an agenda (even something as relatively trivial as this) only succeeds in making the censor feel better. Doing this won't save any lives or make the world a better place.

As someone who hates smoking, I'd rather leave the cigarettes there so future Beatle fans will know the Beatles smoked, and make the connection to Harrison's death. If you remove half of that equation, the lesson is lost.

Ryan

 

History should be left alone no matter how unsightly it is. No need to glorify bad things and deeds but what is fact is fact and to change the record for complete political correctness is terribly wrong.

 

This is all the poster complanies have to worry about? What a joke.

 

This is not even close to the first time Beatle pics have been retouched. The "school" binder that came out very early had the cigarette air-brushed out of Paul's hand and the Avedon (spelling?) photo on Love Songs had Paul moved to the front rather than John.

mud-

 

In the case of Paul Simon's missing cigarette, "they" removed it because Paul Simon himself requested it. I also think Bruce requested that the cigarette pack be removed.
I've heard rumours that Mona Lisa used to smoke a pipe.

John

 

Hey...wait a minute!!! I was smoking a cigarette on my avatar over there to the left....what happened to it????

 

I struck again, Ted.

Dan, I was originally looking for a picture of a truck to run over Paul and had no luck (with a little luck we can make this whole damn thing work out), so I decided to use a radiation-enhanced Bug (we all know from old 50's sci-fi movies that radiation increases the size of bugs, right?)

 

I can see other more disturbing forms of censorship on the horizon. Did anyone notice that the remastered series of John Lennon albums skipped straight from Plastic Ono Band and Imagine to Mind Games? Whatever happenend to Some Time in New York City? I guess no one at Capitol wants to deal with the potentially explosive "Woman is the n****r of the World" in this politically correct moment in time.

"Woman is the n****r of the World" featured on John's 1975? hits collection Shaved Fish. It's not included on the most recent comp "Lennon Legend".

Go to Capitol's Hollywood and Vine website. Check out the John Lennon page. There's a list of all of John's solo albums, but one is missing. Can you guess which one?

If Capitol remasters Walls and Bridges and Rock and Roll but never gets around to Sometime in NYC, that will be much more disturbing to me than airbrushing a cigarette out of Paul's hand on Abbey Road.

 

I do find that kind of censorship very disturbing indeed. All I can think of is the opening of the movie 1984: He who controls the present controls the future. He who controls the past controls the present.

 

BTW, The fact that I also am allergic to cigarette smoke and have asthma keeps me out of most nightclubs, and the casinos! I don't need to gamble because the predisposition to this addiction runs in my family, and I am the only one who doesn't gamble at all.

Besides, there's nothting worse than coming home smelling like a damn ashtray with a headache and dry throat!

 

Gee, that sounds like the end result of some of my fondest memories.

 

Glad I'm not the only one who's grossed out by that. When I get home after being someplace smoky, I can't get to the shower fast enough.

Ryan