The idea is appealing: a legendary record cover made in a spare ten minutes on some ordinary patch of pavement. The documented history is a little different. I couldn’t find reliable evidence that any famous cover was shot in a literal driveway.
The better stories are about ordinary places and quick, loose sessions, such as streets, stoops, alleys, and even a pool. This gallery sticks to the records that can be backed up, and it says so where the details run thin.
The Beatles, Abbey Road (1969)
The cover was taken on August 8, 1969, outside EMI Studios, and photographer Iain Macmillan had just 10 minutes to get the shot. He stood on a step ladder while a policeman held up traffic behind the camera. It’s the clearest case of a famous cover made in a rush.
Macmillan took six photographs, and McCartney later studied them with a magnifying glass before choosing. The location was a zebra crossing on a public road, not a driveway. Still, the ten minute claim holds up.
Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited (1965)
The cover shows Dylan in a motorcycle T-shirt, and it looks like it could have been taken backstage. The PopSpots researcher who tracked it down found something simpler. The location was the front steps of 4 Gramercy Park West in New York City.
The photographer was Daniel Kramer, who later shared his memories of taking the shot. A residential stoop is about as close to a driveway as this list gets. I haven’t verified an exact shoot duration, so I won’t put a number on it.
David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust (1972)
Bowie’s cover is a quick, grainy night scene in a back street. It was taken outside 23 Heddon Street, a small, block-long dead end street in central London. The doorway and the lit sign behind him are part of why the picture feels so lived in.
Photographer Brian Ward shot it, and the cover was later hand tinted. A dead end lane is a believable stand-in for the idea of a random spot. As with Dylan, I can’t confirm a ten minute limit.
Bob Dylan, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963)
Dylan walks down Jones Street in Greenwich Village in winter, arm in arm with his girlfriend Suze Rotolo. The photographer was Don Hunstein, and the session was casual, taken on a snowy New York street in early 1963. Nothing about it was staged in a studio.
The cover has influenced a long line of imitators. The location was a public street, and I haven’t found a verified account of how long the shoot lasted.
Nirvana, Nevermind (1991)
This one isn’t a driveway either, but it belongs in a gallery of simple, low budget ideas. Photographer Kirk Weddle shot the baby underwater in a swimming pool in Pasadena, California. A dollar bill on a fishhook was added afterward.
The concept was plain and the setting ordinary. Reports about how long the baby was actually in the water vary, so it’s safest to treat any exact timing as unconfirmed.
Ramones, Ramones (1976)
The band’s debut cover is four leather jackets against a wall, with no gloss at all. Roberta Bayley, who worked the door at CBGB and photographed for Punk magazine, took the picture. It was reportedly done for a very small fee, which fits the record’s stripped down spirit.
The shoot was outdoors in Manhattan, not in a driveway. Accounts of the exact length differ, so a ten minute figure can’t be stated with confidence.
The Beach Boys, Pet Sounds (1966)
The band posed feeding goats at the San Diego Zoo, in a session that looks relaxed and a little silly. Photographer George Jerman made the picture. It’s an offbeat cover for an album now ranked among the greatest ever recorded.
The setting is a zoo enclosure, not a driveway. Details of how quickly it was done aren’t well documented, so I’m leaving that open.
Bob Dylan, Blonde on Blonde (1966)
The blurred cover is famously imperfect, which is much of its charm. One researcher says he has still not found the long lost location of the cover shoot. That makes it a fitting last entry, because the actual spot remains uncertain.
Jerry Schatzberg took the photograph on a cold New York day. Its exact location and the shoot’s length aren’t confirmed, and no source I found calls it a driveway.
