Description

One of the most famous rock covers of the 1980s is a picture of a man's back. Annie Leibovitz photographed Bruce Springsteen from behind, standing against the red and white stripes of an American flag, in a white T-shirt and worn blue jeans. A red baseball cap hangs from his right back pocket. Leibovitz herself was never fond of the shot and called it a "grab shot", but it became the defining image of Springsteen's biggest album.

The details are personal. The cap belonged to the father of Springsteen's friend Lance Larson, who had recently died. The flag was there because the record opened with "Born in the U.S.A.", a song about a Vietnam veteran abandoned by his country, and because the album gathered themes Springsteen had been writing about for years. Designer Andrea Klein built the sleeve around the photograph, making it one of the few Springsteen studio albums without his face on the front.

The pose started rumours that Springsteen was urinating on the flag. He shrugged them off, telling Rolling Stone there was no secret message and that "the picture of my ass looked better than the picture of my face." Like the title song, which was widely misheard as a patriotic anthem, the cover was read in opposite ways at once, and that ambiguity is part of why it lasted. Billboard and Rolling Stone both placed it in their lists of the 100 best album covers.

Credit

Photography by Annie Leibovitz; design by Andrea Klein