EDUCATION | EXHIBITIONS: ONE LP@LOUD & CLEAR, EDINBURGH: Guy Webster: Photographer

The Mamas and The Papas: 

If You Can Believe Your Eyes And Ears 

“I designed and did all the graphics for album covers for Mamas and Papas and the Stones, The Doors and all that. 

There’s a Doors cover that’s really famous – this one here (shows ‘The Doors’ ) was the original Doors cover, that’s one of my most famous covers, it was nominated for a Grammy along with a Byrds cover that I did. 

You have to understand these covers are repops of the originals – they reproduced them later to make the graphics larger to sell them in the bins (racks) and things like that  

That Doors (The Doors) cover there – was very elegant when it first came out,  

And then later on the (print) runs got trashier and trashier, the colours were off, they could be off register even. 

William: Would you say that the albums you’ve mentioned represented a milestone in your career? 

Guy: The milestone of my career was the Mamas and The Papas in the bathtub. 

That put me on the map, I’d already become successful - but I wasn’t ‘a known’ photographer. 

That particular one - I loved the music, I was really close friends with the Mamas and the Papas until most of them died I was a major friend, and I still have one left Michelle is still a good friend she comes to visit, we do things together. 

So those are the ones (albums) I would say are monumental for my career, but after Mamas and the Papas, I travelled with them, they were my best friends,  

I never stopped working for 30 or 40 years, 50 years, busy every day. That is big! 

Dylan – I shot him but never stayed friends with him or anything like that.” 

Guy Webster: In his studio, Venice, Los Angeles, CA, 7th May 2013 

The Mamas and The Papas: If You Can Believe Your Eyes And Ears released 1966 

Guy Webster