The Beatles: Abbey Road 1969 LP cover
The iconic LP cover photo of The Beatles crossing Abbey Road is more than 40 years old. The original zebra crossing has been moved several feet 30 years ago and may be reconstructed.
The street crossing, popularly used by fans re-enacting the shoot is to be grade II listed along Abbey Road studios for its cultural and historical importance, following recommendations by English Heritage in an effort to recognize more popular and recent sites as heritage material.
Save Britain´s Heritage criticizes EH for this ostentatiously middle-brow decision while neglecting Ringo Starr´s birth place, Madryn Street, which is often referred to in his music and part of an area scheduled for demolition under the Pathfinder scheme.
Burzum: Aske 1992 EP cover
Meanwhile the listing of the site of another iconic LP cover image in recognition of its importance in music history seems more unlikely.
Restoration of the material fabric of the now reconstructed Fantoft stave church to the period of its greatest cultural influence would infer its reconstruction as a ruin of smouldering cinders.
The burning of Fantoft stave church on June 6, 1992 was the beginning of a series of arsonist attacks on more than 50 church buildings by persons associated to the Black Metal scene in Norway.
Many of the targeted structures were historical churches constructed in tarred timber. To great public outrage these heritage buildings were singled for arson attacks out as symbols of the subjugation through christianization of a pagan Viking Norway. In the same way as the remains of ship burials discovered in Viking grave mounds, stave churches were instrumentalized during the nation building process after the secession from Sweden and reinforced as physical symbols of a shared Norwegian cultural heritage.
Varg Vikernes of the band Burzum, marked out as "the most notorious metal musician of all time" was a suspect in the burning and is rumored to have taken the photograph of the burnt out ruins for the LP cover himself. Heeding his self-created image, he went on to murder fellow musician Øystein Aarseth and embrace a cornucopia of fascist ideologies during his imprisonment. (cf Goodricke-Clarke, N. 2003. Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity)
