A strange connection between the Be Here Now album cover and the Playboy Empire has been shared by the man behind the photograph.
Oasis‘ third studio album may have been a burnout of the Britpop era, but its links to The Who and the Playboy Empire are hiding in plain sight. The album cover is a tremendous showcase of Oasis at the time, following the quick succession of their two studio albums. Michael Spencer Jones, the photographer behind the photo shoot, took to Twitter and shared facts from behind the scenes to celebrate the album’s twenty-eighth anniversary. Be Here Now released on August 21, 1997, and with the band currently touring, there has never been a better time to engage Oasis nostalgia.
The Live ’25 Shows proved a major success across the globe, and fans are keen to learn all they can about behind-the-scenes moments from the present and the past. Michael wrote: “It was 28 years ago TODAY! – Thursday 21st August 1997, when Be Here Now was released – I shot the cover at Stocks House in Hertfordshire – It was a shoot I’ll never forget – all questions welcome.”
Michael was asked a series of questions about the cover, and would go on to share whose idea it was to submerge a Rolls Royce in the pool, a nod to Keith Moon of The Who. According to legend, Moon drove his car into the pool of The Holiday Inn in Flint, Michigan, during his twenty-first birthday party.
Though Jones and the team placed the Rolls Royce in the pool, one suggested the way it was fit into the water makes it look edited in. They wrote: “Why does the Rolls Royce in the swimming pool look like a photo shop when I believe you actually did put the car in the water? Is it just the lighting/exposure?”
Jones replied: “Interesting – possibly because it was ‘perfectly’ placed.” Elsewhere in the thread, the veteran photographer said Oasis were “open to everything” though did draw the line at a change of clothes.
He shared: “They were pretty open to everything, although I think they might have had something to say if I had brought in some clothes stylist or make up artist, which some photographers do.” Noel was also “very much” involved in suggestions for the album cover.
The Rolls Royce in the swimming pool was apparently an idea given to the crew by Bonehead, Oasis’ rhythm guitarist who left the band in 1999. He returned to the group for the Live ’25 shows. The inspiration for the Rolls Royce, Jones says, is “based on a story abotu Keith Moon driving a car into his swimming pool.”
It was not smooth sailing for the photo shoot, with Jones saying the “crazy and surreal” day was filled with firefighters, gins and tonics, and “anarchy” in the hotel. He wrote: “It was a very crazy and surreal day – a lot went right but a lot went wrong as well.
“Struggling to fill the pool in time for the band’s arrival – we had to call out the Fire Brigade and open up a nearby hydrant, meaning the hotel had no water for the guests, so anarchy in the hotel-band becoming paralytic on G&Ts – generators blowing up, fans invading the shoot etc.”
Another fan asked if there were any links between Oasis and Stocks House. There aren’t, but Jones wrote: “No links to the band, but the house was owned by Victor Lownes, who headed up the European Playboy Empire – an interesting character you may want to Google… before that it was a Catholic girls’ school.”
Lownes moved to the UK in 1963 at the request of Playboy magnate Hugh Hefner, establishing the firstr British Playboy Club oin Hyde Park. Regular parties thrown at his house included a star-studded guestlist, including The Beatles, George Best, Warren Beatty, Michael Caine, Judy Garland, Sean Connery, Terry Southern, Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate.”
