The Jethro Tull album “j-tull.com” had a phallus airbrushed away on the USA editon. The rest of the world got this
I remember seeing the original Blind Faith cover throughout my life; my public library even had it in the CD version they rented! I had no idea it had ever been replaced with other artwork.
Golden Earring’s Moontan album cover was baned here in the states. You can find it here if you click on Golden Earring. The US version is kinda dumb looking.
Not really banned, but pulled: The 2001 edition of Broadway Cares: Carols for a Cure was recorded on September 9 & 10, 2001 at St. John’s Lutheran Church in the Village. The original cover had a drawing of the World Trade Towers with lights at the top. :eek: They had to redo it, but put the drawing on the back cover as a tribute, and donated some of the profits to the WTC fund.
Would it make you mad if Christians wore a shirt with Charles Darwin burning in Hell?
I had the girl album cover from the get-go. I knew it was a bit controversial, but I had no idea they substituted something else.
There’s nothing inherently illegal (in the U.S.) about a picture of a naked minor. There has to be an additional element for it to be child pornoraphy (e.g. sexual activity or lewdness).
More like age 10 or 11, ISTM.
As to legal trouble… well, this would depend on where and when it was first published. The child-porn laws in many times and places in the recent past have not necessarily been quite as absolutist as we think – and mere nudity does not CP make. In many cases, you can still have an “art” defense, if you can convince the court that it is not a “lewd portrayal”. Good Luck, though, with something like this one.
Maybe it depended on your location. In any case, the girl cover eventually became the standard one, so a lot of people don’t realize the B cover exists.
I don’t know if that Scorpions’ cover is child pornography or not, but it’s definitely a “Holy Shit!” cover. No way would I buy anything with that picture on it.
How is that legal? 
While I know the model for the Blind Faith cover was only 13, I have a hard time believing the painting used for the cover shows that. The cover looks like it could be any random girl, aged 13-30.
Maybe it’s just me, but if I didn’t know the story I’d think the girl was closer to 30 than 13.
Haha, no… That’d be kind of cool actually. In my admittedly antisocial worldview, icons are made to be defiled. The coolest Tshirt I ever saw had a picture of Kurt Cobain with a shotgun in his mouth, with the caption “Nice Shootin’ Son”.
Not a banning, but the foreign cover for the Stroke’s “Is This It” is way racier than the US version.
They’re both cool though.
Uhh, no. No, not at all. Then again, most of the non-religious people I know aren’t nearly as violent as the religious people I know so I would be much more scared to wear a shirt of Jesus burning in hell then one of Darwin burning in hell.
Re: the OP: Has anyone seen the replacement cover for Tool’s Undertow? Wal-Mart banned the original and put one out that has a barcode on the front. Inside is a little message (paraphrased):
“Certain stores didn’t like our artwork so they refused to carry our new album. However, we want your money [crossed out] we want you to hear our record, so here is a different version of the cover.”
Very few Tool fans cared.
I absolutely love Tool for constantly throwing in their fans faces that they are not who their die hard fans think they are and the die hard fans are consistently too stupid to get it.
You missed the point. The dawrin burning is hell is what is going to be happening to him unless he did make a death bed conversian which I don’t think was ever proved.
OT, but Darwin wasn’t an atheist.
Regarding Virgin Killer by The Scorpions:
In answer to your last question: maybe because it’s NOT? That would be my guess. The definitions of what actually constitute child pornography aren’t exactly what most people think they are; nor (in my opinion) should they be. That is one aspect of society that we need to be more careful with than to simply throw the decision to the unwashed masses.
I read the description of this image before I had a chance to see it, and now that I have (seen it), my reaction is (surprisingly): “Meh.”
It’s a barely pubescent girl nude with her genitalia covered.
I am not a psychiatrist, but I’m thinking that if it stresses you out THIS bad, you need more therapy than I do. 
However, since the subject of minors and sex intrigues me (since I used to be a minor, and our response to it (at least in the USA) seems rather…insane and (to my mind) counterproductive and harmful), I thought I would address this particular image…just for the sake of debate.
I did NOT get from Winston’s description of the image that the Scorpions were trying to “glorify the sexual abuse of children”. Nor did I after having seen the image. I’m thinking that Winston is knee-jerking a bit, no matter how well-intended.
I (at first) only had the description of the image and the title of the album. MY first impression from those data points was that “Virgin Killer” referred metaphorically to a Rite of Passage or an Agent of Change/Growth (the Agent of the Destruction of the Pre-Experience, as it were). The image (as described) was a sexual pun on the album title: appearing to “kill” a “virgin” via a bullet (the “virgin killer”) into the vagina (the seat–or site–of said virginity).
Virginity is usually instantly associated with sex, but can be metaphorically extended to any experience that you haven’t had.
I, for example, am a bungee-jumping virgin. Thus, a bungee-jumping operation would be my “virgin killer” in that respect.
The usage of the sexual aspect of the metaphor was impactive because SEX GETS OUR ATTENTION.
The usage of an apparently pre-pubescent model (in my opinion) was because if they’d used an adult (or at least someone popularly considered “legal”), she wouldn’t subconsciously parse as a virgin.
The reason that the bullet-hole was aimed at her vagina is because they weren’t advocating killing her for being a virgin: they were portraying the killing of her VIRGINITY, which resided in her Naughty Bits.
Think about this: If all I’ve said is true, and you are choosing the model, and you’ve got one who’s a college student and you’ve got one whose in 5th grade, and you need someone whose image is going to scream “VIRGIN!!!”, which one are you going to pick?
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not particularly intrigued by the image (and to tell you the truth, it was MUCH tamer than people made it out to be); but if they were trying to get across what I think they were, and if the photo WAS meant to be a pun on the album title, then my opinion is:
It was a VERY SUCCESSFUL IMAGE. It was shocking, it was attention-rivetting, it was controversial, and it got people to pay attention to them…which, given what I’ve heard of their music, they needed.
My two cents.
Actually, the Virgin Killer era Scorpions were great. That’s when they had Uli John Roth on guitar and their music was way more creative and interesting than the hair metal pop rock they later became famous for in the 80’s and 90s.
They were forced to change the cover of the Lovedrive album (the album where the lame pop started rearing its ugly head) as well. The original had a picture which showed a guy pulling some gum off a womans naked boob, and the replacement cover just had a dumb drawing of a Scorpion. They also got in trouble for the cover of Animal Magnetism which featured a woman on her knees in front of some guys crotch, while a Doberman looked on.
And I’m thinking that perhaps you have no kids, or not much experience dealing with them, or you wouldn’t be so desensitized to the blatantly obvious overtones of child exploitation, which in this case is about as deliberate and in-your-face as it gets. But then, I keep forgetting it’s supposed to be an indicator of hipness and enlightenment when one can look at any image deemed offensive by the majority and go, “Meh.”
I am tempted to echo Dr. Frasier Crane here and ask, “Dijon, what color is the sky in your world?” If you don’t see the image of a naked child with a symbolic bullet fired into her privates and the title “VIRGIN KILLER” across the top as being indicative of child exploitation, I’d like to know what you would consider inappropriate. No, wait, on second thought I wouldn’t.
Riiiiiiiiight. Yeah, it’s all metaphorical. Rite of Passage. Agent of the Destruction of the Hoo-Ha. Zen and the Art of Bungee Jumping. Yup. And I’m sure the reason the girl is light-haired is a subtle reference to golden-haired goddesses of Greek mythology, symbolic of mankind’s struggle to come to terms with our desires/inability to master nature and open childproof medicine bottles. I don’t know why I didn’t see that before. :rolleyes:
I see. Then, they’re not really talking about sex at all. They’re trying to communicate a much deeper meaning, yet because we in the audience are the “unwashed masses,” they are forced to resort to imagery that resembles child pornography. What a shame that we are so ignorant that artists such as the Scorpions must appeal to our baser instincts in order to get their important message across.
So it’s perfectly okay to celebrate the deflowering of young girls, as long as we don’t advocate actually killing them? Now, that can’t be what you meant.
Actually, you could do even better with a shot of, say, a naked five year old. Much more likely to be a virgin than a 12 year old, I would think.
What, you mean that wouldn’t be appropriate? Whyever not?
Yes, I’m sure it was very successful. Shocking, controversial, etc. And it would be even more so if they’d have gone with a hard core child porn shot. So why not do so? Maybe because there are other considerations to think of than just the “success” potential of the image?
Or maybe the fact that they would have been thrown in jail was the only thing stopping them.
Sorry, Dijon, but I’m a callin’ “Bullshit!” on your whole post. 
Some of your arguments may hold water in other cases, but we ain’t talking about Nabokov here . . .