The Girl in the Jacuzzi

I was a huge Deftones fan growing up - Around the Fur was in heavy rotation. That album cover always stuck with me. Eerie, provocative, something happening that you couldn’t quite figure out.

This week I stumbled on a video where someone tracked down every person involved in making it.

What I found was a story about serendipity, artistic instinct, and a woman who spent 28 years not really thinking about the fact that her face was on one of the most recognizable rock albums of the ’90s. It made me genuinely happy.

The Photographer: Rick Kosick

The photo was shot by Rick Kosick, who was shooting for Big Brother magazine at the time. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because he’d later become one of the main cameramen on Jackass.

Rick had become friends with the Deftones and they invited him to Seattle during the recording of Around the Fur. No assignment to shoot a cover. Just hang out, take photos, stay in your lane.

“I had no idea that this would make it to the album cover at all,” Rick said in the video. “Maybe that’s why it worked, you know, because there was no intention.”

The band was in their party phase. They went back to the condo they’d rented during recording, and there was a girl hanging out in the jacuzzi. Rick went up and took two photos. That’s it. Walked away.

A few weeks later, he got a call from the label asking him to come see something.

He wasn’t even looking through the lens when he shot it. Just hung over the jacuzzi doing his bulb technique, firing on instinct.

“It’s lightning in a bottle,” he said. “You can only get one.”

The Art Director: Kevin Reagan

Kevin Reagan was the art director at Maverick Records, the label Madonna ran. He’d worked on albums for Prodigy, Sonic Youth, Tupac. When the Deftones project landed on his desk, he wasn’t super familiar with the band.

But when he saw Rick’s photo, he jumped.

“There was nothing close,” Kevin said. “I was like, hm, this is an eye opener.”

The image was a long vertical, which isn’t typical for album covers. But Kevin knew there was a story in it. And then he noticed the feet at the bottom of the frame (they were Rick’s feet), adding another layer to the composition.

“If you take that out, it becomes good,” Kevin explained. “But it’s definitely not the same dynamic of like, who is that? It starts to tell a story and god knows who else is in the picture.”

Then came the decision that I think made the cover what it is. The photo had imperfections. A blemish. A tooth catching the light at an odd angle. Kevin had to decide how much to retouch.

“If this was Madonna, definitely would have cleaned up a lot of this,” he said. “But I decided to leave it on. I’m going for it. I’m going to have less retouching.”

The imperfections added to it. The rawness. It all contributed to what Kevin called the image’s ability to get under your skin.

“It’s like, what’s the fuck going on there?”

Rick has shot thousands of photos, he helped create Jackass, but the Deftones cover? That’s the only album cover he’s ever done.

“I’ve only done one. But hey, I guess that’s all I need to do.”

The Woman: Lisa

This is where the video went from interesting to something else entirely; they actually tracked her down.

Twenty-eight years later, Lisa still lives in Seattle. She met up at a local skate park, vinyl in hand. She’s been signing copies for her daughter’s friends lately.

Back in ‘97, she was just a girl from Auburn who knew a lot of people around the area. She’d go to after-parties after the bars closed because she never wanted to go home.

She wasn’t tracking who the Deftones were. She’d just run into them at parties, and this one happened to be at the pool at their apartment.

“I was kind of oblivious of who they were,” she said. “To me, it was just a bunch of people there and we’re just having fun.”

Her drink of choice at the time: vodka and peach schnapps. She and her friend called it “silk panties.” It’s in the glass at the bottom-left of the frame.

When the album came out, her life didn’t really change. Her friends knew it was her, but she wasn’t announcing it. She got some cool opportunities. The band would invite her to shows. But she kept it quiet.

About ten years ago, someone asked if she ever looked herself up online. She hadn’t. When she did, she found articles calling her a groupie.

So she started a page just to set the record straight. “So people know that I’m Lisa. I’m just this awesome chick from Auburn and I like to have fun. And there’s no groupie action going on here. Just me having a kick-ass time.”

People have pointed out the blemish on her face over the years. She doesn’t care.

“Who gives a shit? I’m a human being. I’m not a model.”

The Location

The video ends with Lisa taking the creator to the actual spot where the photo was taken. She hadn’t been back in years, but her memory was sharp.

After a bit of searching, they find it.

Standing on the same ground where Rick Kosick hung over a jacuzzi with his camera 28 years earlier, not looking through the lens, capturing a moment that would become one of the most recognizable album covers in rock history.

“What’s really happening is someone having a good time, living their best life in their 20s,” Lisa said.

That’s the whole story. A photographer who wasn’t trying to shoot a cover. An art director who trusted his gut and left the imperfections in. And a woman who was just out having fun with her friends.

Sometimes the best work happens when nobody’s trying to make anything happen at all.