Cover Art
The album's cover, photographed by Daniel Kramer with an edge-softened lens, features Sally Grossman (wife of Dylan's manager Albert Grossman) lounging in the background. There are also artifacts scattered around the room, including LPs by The Impressions (Keep on Pushing), Robert Johnson (King of the Delta Blues Singers), Ravi Shankar (India's Master Musician), Lotte Lenya (Sings Berlin Theatre Songs by Kurt Weill) and Eric Von Schmidt (The Folk Blues of Eric Von Schmidt). Dylan had "met" Schmidt "one day in the green pastures of Harvard University" and would later mimic his album cover pose (tipping his hat) for his own Nashville Skyline four years later. A further record, Françoise Hardy's EP J'suis D'accord was on the floor near Dylan's feet but can only be seen in other shots from the same photo session.
Visible behind Grossman is the top of Dylan's head from the cover of Another Side of Bob Dylan; under her right arm is the magazine Time with President Lyndon B. Johnson on the cover of the January 1, 1965 issue. There is a harmonica resting on a table with a fallout shelter (capacity 80) sign leaning against it. Above the fireplace on the mantle directly to the left of the painting is the Lord Buckley album The Best of Lord Buckley. Next to Lord Buckley is a copy of GNAOUA, a magazine devoted to exorcism and Beat Generation poetry edited by poet Ira Cohen, and a glass collage by Dylan called 'The Clown' made for Bernard Paturel from coloured glass Bernard was about to discard.
Dylan sits forward holding his cat (named Rolling Stone) and has an opened magazine featuring an advertisement on Jean Harlow's Life Story by the columnist Louella Parsons resting on his crossed leg. The cufflinks Dylan wore in the picture were a gift from Joan Baez, as she later referenced in her 1976 hit "Diamonds & Rust".
The black and white pamphlet lying across Time magazine with President Johnson on the cover is a publication of the Earth Society, then located on East 12th Street in the East Village. The Earth Society saw its mission as protecting earth from collisions with comets and planets. Their pamphlet interprets Immanuel Velikovsky’s notion that life on earth was so deeply affected by near-collisions of Venus with Jupiter and Mars that the impressions and interpretations of observers found their way into myths and semi-historical documents of peoples of many cultures. The pamphlet also claims that the Ark of the Covenant is a representation of a comet, which is what the white shape in the center of the pamphlet cover is intended to represent.
Read more about this topic: Bringing It All Back Home
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