DAISY: Everybody has their hands up but Graham and Billy. And then Graham put his up, too.
I looked at Billy in the back. I said, “Six against one.” He nodded at me, at everybody, and he walked away.
EDDIE: We recorded it without him.
ROD: It was time to think about how we were going to market this album. So I set the band up with a photographer friend of mine, Freddie Mendoza. Real talented guy. I played him a couple of the early tracks from the album just to give him a sense of what we were going for. He said, “I see it in the desert mountains.”
KAREN: For some reason I remember Billy saying he wanted to shoot the cover with us on a boat.
BILLY: I’d thought we should do a shot of the sunrise. We’d already decided the album should be called Aurora, I think.
DAISY: Billy had decided the album should be called Aurora and nobody could really argue with him. But it was not lost on me. That this album I worked my ass off on was named after Camila.
WARREN: I thought we should shoot the cover on my boat. I thought that would be cool.
FREDDIE MENDOZA (photographer): I was told to get a picture of the whole band with Billy and Daisy as the focus. Really no different than any other band photo shoot, right? You have to be keenly aware of who you’re featuring and how to make it seem natural.
ROD: Freddie wanted a desert vibe. Billy said it was fine. So that was that.
GRAHAM: We all had to be at this spot in the Santa Monica Mountains at the crack of dawn.
WARREN: Pete was something like an hour late.
BILLY: I looked at us all, as we were standing around waiting for the photographer to set up the shot, and I sort of stepped outside of myself a bit. I tried to see us as others would see us.
I mean, Graham was always a good-looking guy. Bigger than me, stronger than me. He’d grown a little rounder over the years we’d been living high on the hog but it looked good on him. And Eddie and Pete were gangly guys but they dressed well. And Warren had that mean ’stache that was cool back then. Karen was gorgeous in an understated way. And then there was Daisy.
KAREN: We’re all gathering up there and we all pretty much just have on jeans and a T-shirt. That’s what Rod said, “Just wear what you’d normally wear.” And then Daisy comes in and she’s wearing cutoffs and a white tank top with no bra on. And she’s got her big hoop earrings, the bangles up her arms. Her shirt was thin, and white, and you could see her nipples clear as day. And she knew that. And suddenly it was crystal clear to me: This cover is gonna be about Daisy’s chest.
DAISY: I’m not apologizing for shit having to do with that album cover. I dress how I want to dress. I wear what I feel comfortable in. How other people feel about it is not my problem. I said that to Rod. I said that to Billy before. I had a lot of talks about it with Karen. [Laughs] She and I have agreed to disagree.
KAREN: If we want to be taken seriously as musicians, why are we using our bodies?
DAISY: If I want to walk around topless, that’s my business. Let me tell you, when you’re my age, you’re gonna be glad you took a picture of them then, too.
GRAHAM: Billy and Daisy hadn’t really spoken, that I could see, since “Regret Me.”
BILLY: There was nothing to say.
DAISY: He owed me an apology.
FREDDIE MENDOZA: Billy had this denim-on-denim look, right? And then Daisy had on a shirt that was barely a shirt. And I knew that was the photo. His denim and her tank top.
I put the band along the road, against the guard-rail that stood between the pavement and the steep drop-off of the canyon. There was a huge, looming mountain, a hundred feet behind them. And the sun was coming up.
Between the seven of them standing there, all in their various poses, I could tell we were getting something great. I mean, it was just so much Americana in one photo, right? You got the road, and the dust and dirt. You’ve got this band on a cliff—half of them scruffy, half of them beautiful. You’ve got the desert and forest of the Santa Monica Mountains, with just a little bit of trees cropping up in the pale tan ground. And you’ve got the sun, shining down on all of it.
Then you’ve got Billy and Daisy, right?
They had each veered to opposite ends of the group. But I kept trying to get everyone to mix it up. And at one point, I watched as Daisy leaned forward. She was looking at Billy. I just kept shooting. I always try not to call any attention to anything. I try to hang back and let people do what they are going to do. So I just kept snapping as Daisy was looking at Billy. And everyone else is looking at me, at the camera. And then, for a split second, bam, Billy turns and looks at Daisy just as she’s looking at him. And they locked eyes. And I caught it.
I thought, That’s good enough to be an album cover. As soon as I think I have something good, I immediately feel freer, right? I feel ready to try stuff and move people around and I feel like I can push people a bit further because if they get mad at me and walk off, it’s not a problem, right? So I said, “That’s great, guys. Now let’s go to the top of the mountain.”
BILLY: We had already been out there in the hot sun taking photos for an hour or two by that point. I was ready to go.
GRAHAM: I said, “We’re driving up. Not walking.” And the photographer and I went back and forth a few times and finally it was decided that I was right.
FREDDIE MENDOZA: We ended up in the perfect spot.
Billy and Daisy got out of the car and they stood there on top of this mountain. With just a clear blue sky behind them, right? And the rest of the band lined up, and they started standing in between Billy and Daisy and I said, “Let’s do Billy, Daisy, Graham…” So I finally got Billy and Daisy next to each other and their body language was like they didn’t want a single atom of their bodies in contact. I tried to make conversation to loosen them up. I said, “How did Daisy come to join the band?” Because I didn’t know the story and I figured it would be easy to talk about.
Billy and Daisy both started talking at the same time and then they looked at each other again. I took a few shots and then I zoomed in on Billy and Daisy’s torsos, their chests, as they were talking to each other. They were angled in, and there was so much…the negative space between them felt…alive somehow. Electric. There was so much purpose behind the not touching, right?
I could tell as I was looking through the viewfinder. I knew it was a great shot.
DAISY: When we were up there on top of the mountain, the guy put Billy and me next to each other and asked us some dumb question and immediately—Billy and I have barely said five words to each other in days—the first thing out of Billy’s mouth is some dig at me.
BILLY: It’s some nerve, coming into my band and taking over my album and being at the center of my album cover and then interrupting me when I’m trying to answer the guy’s question.