A man has spent nearly five years trying to track down the location from the iconic Bob Dylan album cover Blonde on Blonde, and now he has finally found it.
In a detailed account at popspotsnyc.com, Bob Eagen has finally worked out the exact location of where the famous shot was taken. He reveals it to be located in Greenwich Village at 375 West Street at Morton Street, outside a building that has since been replaced with apartments.
The classic 1966 record, which was pretty much the first ever double album in music history, features Dylan on the front in a jacket and scarf, yet he is slightly out of focus, giving the shot a blurry aesthetic.
There have been numerous discussions over the years about the reasons behind the style of the shot, with many settling on it attempting to represent the drug fuelled haziness of the times. However, last year, the man behind the lens Jerry Schatzberg cleared it all up when he stated that the effect was actually just an accident and a consequence of the freezing cold temperatures outside.
In an interview with Bob Eagen, he explained, “It was pretty cold outside. It was February, [Dylan] was wearing just that jacket, and I was wearing something similar, and the two of us were really cold.”
During the same interview Schatzberg told of how the shot was one of numerous taken during the session, and said the setting was vaguely “the meat-packing district downtown [in New York].”
However, he insisted that the precise location would be close to impossible to find due to the general “gentrification” of the area. But now Eagen has finally located the setting from years of detailed researching and exploring.
Blonde on Blonde was Dylan’s seventh studio record and was recorded in New York during the middle of the 1960’s up until early in the year of 1966. It bookmarked a consecutive run of rock albums by the previously acoustically driven songwriter, initially started by 1965’s Bringing It All Back Home. It has been regularly revisited since its release and has been cited by critics and publications worldwide as one of the greatest albums ever recorded.
Watch an interview with Schatzberg about the shoot below:
Image: Jerry Schatzberg