10 Things You Didn't Know About Famous Music Album Covers
7. Meat Is Murder - The Smiths (1985)
Morrissey's advocacy for a meat free food market has stretched back to the start of his career, with The Smiths plastering this sentiment all over their second album.
By appropriating an image of American Marine, Michael Wynn, the band boldly expressed Morrissey's feelings about a carnivore life style. The now infamous image, depicts a Marine at the height of the Vietnam War. The original words written on the young soldiers helmet had read "Make war not love": a slogan the Marine had himself taken from the anti-war protest slogan "Make love not war". Whether or not his version was meant as a stab at irony, given he was stuck in the middle of a senseless war, or whether or not he was in support of the war, is unclear.
Morrissey hoped the image would encourage a militant-type devotion to the cause of non-meat-based diets. Equating the decision to eat meat with the decision to wage war was certainly going to turn some heads, but Morrissey has never been a stranger to controversy. Unsurprisingly, Michael Wynn was never asked for his permission to use the photograph...