Writing Smile article for school paper - need help

[Don_Zabu]

For starters, what are my chances of being able to legally use Frank Holmes's Smile cover art in the article? I imagine they're pretty slim, but I'd like to double-check anyway. So what's the best way to contact him?

Also, what's the best way I could go about getting a photo of the band from the 60's that I could legally use in the article? Who could I contact over rights?

Thanks in advance.

[bgas]

You shoould write and ask Dave Beard (ESQeditor)to help you. He knows everything about this stuff, and has all the contacts too. 

[BJL]

As long as your image is unsuitable for commercial use, low-resolution (that is smaller than the actual album cover), and intended purely for educational/informational benefit of the reader, it falls under fair-use law and you can use it.  This applies to both album covers, which can be used to illustrate the recording in question,  and works of art, which can be used for educational purposes.  I'm not sure whether the smile art counts as an album cover or not, but in any event you can definitely include a picture of the smile artwork.  What you can't do is print a giant copy on the front of your paper and use it to sell newspapers.  Similar fair use rules probably allow you to use old promotional photos of the band as well, however, I'm not as sure about the law in that case.  An interesting way of learning about copyright law in these kinds of situations is to go to a wikipedia page, for example that of The Beach Boys, click on an image, and then below the image there will be an explanation of why wikipedia can use that image, including justification for fair use, etc., if the image is copyrighted.