Classic Album Covers: SCOTT 3 (1969)

Released in March 1969, SCOTT 3 is I think my favourite album by the late great Scott Walker. 

I have often wondered whose heavily mascaraed eye it is on the front cover, the dilated pupil reflecting a pensive Scott in a clever Photoshop-before-Photoshop effect. I did interview Scott myself once – but the question of whose eye it was staring out at us from the cover of his third solo LP was low down in my list of priorities and of course was never asked.

Scott Walker photographed on 21 March 1969, just as Scott 3 was released

Scott “more or less” designed the sleeve himself, according to an interview he gave the NME in March 1969, to promote the album. Although the sleeve notes credit it to Linda Glover, Philips’ in-house design director. Either way it is certainly a female eye: presumably the model who allowed the camera to peer at the window to her soul was someone known to Scott? One might conjecture that it was his then girlfriend, Mette Teglbjaerg, whom he later married and lived with in the Danish capital, Copenhagen (inspiring the eponymous song on side one of the record). But, it seems not.

After some research, it turns out to be the pale blue eye of a British model, Pamela McCarthy. According to the credits on the inside gatefold, the image was taken by John Kelly, although I have read elsewhere that it was actually by celebrated music photographer David Redfern, who had already worked with Scott on several occasions. Perhaps Redfern oversaw the session?

Pamela McCarthy’s was a name to watch in the modelling world in 1969. She was also the fiancée of Barry Holt, a promotion man at Philips/Fontana, who worked with Bowie and other artists. “I remember going to Blinkers in Manchester, where Pam gave a demonstration of the latest dance moves together with a display of London fashion. George Best was in attendance,” Barry told Mojo magazine in 2016.

Philips was Scott’s label so it was possibly through Barry then that Pamela was put forward for the photo shoot. Barry’s book Star Breaker describes his relationship with Pamela, but says little about Scott Walker. It does though include a montage of modelling shots of Pamela. 

From Star Breaker: And the Show Went On by Barry Holt (2016)

The session for Philips, which would result in the photograph used on the front cover of SCOTT 3, would have been one of many for Pamela around this time. This photograph of her was taken not long after that session, in May 1969. Her eyes were certainly a feature she used well in modelling shots.

I don’t know a lot more about Pamela, although her image can be found in and on various magazines and fashion collection publications from the 1969-1972 period. 

Tragedy struck in May 1972, however, when Pamela McCarthy was killed in a horrific air crash. She was flying from a modelling assignment in Rome when the Alitalia DC8 jet airliner she was travelling on struck Mount Longa while on approach to Punta Raisi Airport near Palermo, Sicily. All 108 passengers and seven crew perished. The cause of the accident was put down to pilot error: the crew had apparently deviated from approach procedures. It remains Italy’s worst single-aircraft disaster.

Sunday Mirror, May 1972

 

There's a butterfly circling the beach

Searching the rocks where you are

He chooses your hair, and that's where he belongs

For he's lost like a star

Head down, reluctant and warm

You give your thoughts to the sea

Dark rivers your eyes belong to no-one

Like a star

Like a butterfly