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The Art of LP Cover
The idea for this topic I had some time ago, when the question came up again: which music medium is now the better one: the LP or the CD? A question that the wise King Salomo might have answered as follows: don’t listen to your mind, listen to your ears.
What actually makes the LP so fascinating and attractive? Is it that endlessly rotating black (or colorful) disc on the turntable? Or is it the exciting moment when the tonearm is lowered and the needle slowly touches down on the first grooves of the LP? That moment reminds a little of the moon landing, when the Eagle touched the unknown terrain of the lunar landscape with his landing feet. Because that’s what LPs used to be for me: unknown, exciting new territory waiting to be discovered. In times when not everything was published in advance on the Internet. But what really fascinated me about the classic LP were those big bulky cardboard slipcases which are actually far too beautiful to gather dust in an LP rack. Each LP cover is an individual piece of art and contemporary history. Neatly lined up in the music store next door. Arranged by alphabet or genre. I remember it like it was only yesterday: every time I had saved enough pocket money I was there, in the music shop of my trust. Flipped through the long rows of cardboard sleeves until I found the object of my desire and then take my loot home full of expectation.
To make a long story short: Which LP cover do you particularly like or have you grown fond of over the years? Beautiful, interesting or funny. Maybe in combination with an audio sample of the respective album. As you like it. I’m curious.
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119 Replies
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An LP Cover that I personally like very much belongs to the second Deep Purple album “The Book of Taliesyn”. Named after the historical book of the same name by Welsh bard Taliesin, it was designed by English illustrator John Vernon Lord. The artwork was painted with pen and ink. The specification was: it should have a fantasy-medieval touch. Lord received £30 for the design. Minus the 25% for the music agent. Perhaps one of the reasons why this was the first and last album cover he designed. Similarly fantastic as the cover is the music.
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Hey, Juergen.
Because it’s so goofy, I like the Mamas and Papas album cover with the interchangeable faces. If you’re not familiar with that, the front of the jacket has two layers. The top layer is “hinged” on the left side, and has a left-to-right split going all the way across the middle, so that you can flip over the upper half and the lower half separately like pages of a book to reveal the bottom layer.
What’s the point? Each layer has a photo of the faces of all four members, but they’re arranged in a different order. So if you flip over one half but not the other, you see the upper halves of the faces paired with the lower halves of different faces!
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Hi David,
thanks for posting the album cover by the Mamas and Papas. I don’t know the album but it sounds interesting. I used the „links“ you sent and then I understood the whole thing. Funny. This reminds me of my childhood. There were small pictures made of cardboard, on which different figures were printed. For example, an elephant, a rabbit and a lion. The whole picture in turn consisted of three movable, horizontal cardboard strips. On the uppermost one the head was shown. On the middle one the body and on the lower one the feet. These three strips could be moved, so that the rabbit suddenly had elephant legs, or the elephant a lion’s head, and so on. Unfortunately I don’t remember the name of these pictures. I had already forgotten that these existed. I remember these came as an accompaniment to certain chocolate bars. As a child, I found these sliding pictures always very entertaining.
By the way: there was this LP by the Stones named „Sticky Fingers“. The cover had a working zipper. The design was by Andy Warhol. Since I’m not a Stones fan, I never owned this album. Too bad. A crazy idea back then, now an investment. The existing albums turn up at art auctions from time to time and then are traded at very high prices.
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Sticky Fingers is one of the very few albums I bought right when it was released. I remember walking from my high school, through the park and into downtown and going to a Federal’s department store and buying it. It’s one of my favorite Stones albums.
I just tried to find Their Satanic Majesty’s Request album, since the copy I have has the 3D cover so it seemed appropriate for this thread. I’m sure both of those Stones albums are in that stack of vinyl somewhere…but I haven’t found them yet.
An investment? I know the 3D cover version of TSMR is worth money, maybe $100. Didn’t know SF was valuable too. Interesting.
But it’s kind of like having Mona and Lisa autograph their albums. It’s nice, and I like it. But the only reason for me to like the price of them appreciating is because it means they’d be getting the fame they deserve. I’m not ever going to sell them.
Edit: Okay, I got more serious about it and found them. My SF does indeed have the zipper. Here’s TSMR with the 3D plastic on it. And the web says SF with the zipper is worth around $100 too.
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Hi Chris,
congratulations. You have two very nice collectibles from the Stones. Thank you for posting the cover picture of “Their Satanic Majesty’s Request”. I was not aware of it. The idea to design this as a 3 D cover is extraordinary and it fits well into the Power Flower era.
When I wrote about LP’s and investment, I meant it in a figurative sense, the ideal value of a collector’s item. The rarer something is, the higher its ideal value. No passionate collector will speculate with his personal treasures. And once he got it, he certainly won’t sell it again. I see it the same way you do: I will certainly not give up the autographed CDs or text drafts by Mona and Lisa. This pieces already have a high ideal value for me. Simply because it’s something personal, something rare and special. That’s how the collectors heart beats. 😀
Nevertheless, if well-preserved, rare LP albums are sold again (for whatever reason) they can achieve quite considerable prices. I sometimes have the feeling that there are record dealers who buy up limited editions of music albums in large numbers at the time of release, wait some time until the edition is sold out and then sell their own stock at completely inflated prices.
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I’d never seen that video before, thanks for posting that.
I don’t consider myself a collector. I bought music to listen to, and yes, mostly past tense. YouTube is pretty efficient at that these days, and I’m trying to downsize a bit.
But this exercise today tells me I need to reorganize the vinyl. I haven’t been playing those much and saw a bunch of stuff I had forgotten I have. Maybe I’ll borrow the idea of putting the jackets on the wall too.
And I found that Dark Side of the Moon album that I thought I’d lost forever! lol.
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I remember being a kid in the 70’s and my uncle had the record. I thought the real zipper was cool. Wild Horses was and still is my favorite Stones song.
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Hi Chris, it seems like you have a cornucopia of hidden treasures at home. Who knows what else you will find if you search long enough. 😀
I listened to Wild Horses Tomás. I like this song, it sounds more mature than other Rolling Stones songs I know.
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Hi Jurgen, You are right about those album jackets being too nice to be put in a rack. As a teen I used to pin them up on my bedroom wall like posters. The ones by female artists were particularly nice. Heart and Linda Ronstadt were two of my favorites. The best album cover of all (for me) was Moontan by Golden Earring. Radar Love was on this LP. If you don’t know the cover you can look it up. I could post a picture but I don’t want to be scolded by Mona and Lisa. It had a strategically placed label on the shrink wrap and when you took the plastic off it revealed a totally naked showgirl. I never put that one on my wall. My Mom would have burned it. Lol… Wait, Maybe I can post it this way
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This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by Tim Arnold.
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Hi Tim,
I had also thought about hanging the record sleeves on the wall like posters when I was a teenager. But somehow I was put off by the thought of poking holes in the artwork with thumbtacks. Also, I wasn’t the poster type. The only artist pictures that made it to my wall were the four Beatles Potraits that came with the white album. Although sometimes I found it strange to be watched by the fab four all the time… 😄
I’ve definitely seen the Golden Earing album before, somewhere in a record store, but only with the “strategically placed labels”.
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I’m not familiar with Golden Earring or Moontan, Tim, but that picture made me think of the infamous Herb Alpert “Whipped Cream” album cover. I wonder how many people who bought that one ever actually listened to it!
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Hi David, I’m not familiar with the Herb Alpert album Whipped Cream. I’ll have to look it up. Golden Earring was a Dutch band (I believe) that had 2 monster Rock n Roll hits. Radar Love in the 70s was on the Moontan album. In the 80s they had a hit song called The Twilight Zone that was played on MTV a lot. As far as I know they are still playing with their original lineup.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by Tim Arnold.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by
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My mother liked Herb Alpert, I remember this album being around when I grew up.
She had a lot of his albums, and I listened to them. I’ll bet this one is over at my sister’s house right now.
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From Wikipedia:
The album cover was so popular with Alpert fans that, during concerts, when about to play the song “Whipped Cream,” Alpert would jokingly tell the audience, “Sorry, we can’t play the album cover for you!”
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I remember Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass and always liked seeing them on some of the old TV variety shows. I just didn’t know any of their albums. I checked out the cover of Whipped Cream and it looks “delicious”. Thanks David.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by
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From my youth, I was captivated by many album jackets, not just the music of the records themselves. Some of the better known cover arts of the day were Deep Purple Machine Head, Iron Butterfly Inna Godda Davida, Black Sabbath Paranoid, Led Zeppelin IV (sometimes called “Ruins”) to name a few. But one that really grabbed me was Steppenwolf Monster. The front was somewhat striking, but the back was sensational. Intricate, dark and foreboding, maybe even a touch of evil. But certainly very descriptive. Given the popular “habits” of the day, it sort of goes without saying that there was some, ah, ethereal influences.
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Yeah Daryl, the back of the Stepenwolf Jacket exudes a mystical, dark pull. I would be interested to know why this trend was later picked up specifically by hard rock bands. I’m thinking, for example, of the LP Jackets by Iron Maiden or Guns n’s Roses. Deep Purple, on the other hand, have consistently gone their own way. Most of their covers are interestingly designed. I’m thinking of “Fireball”, “Deep Purple in Rock” or “Machine Head”. Though their music grew progressively heavier, they never followed the quirky “death cult” of other hard rock bands. The only cover of Deep Purple that turned out to be really somber belongs to their third album, which is designed with motifs by Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch.
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Totally hear you. I always got a chuckle out of the “Rushmore” theme of Deep Purple In Rock. But they were on a different tangent like you say, went their own way. I still dig their music, I love playing Smoke on the Water, Highway Star, Woman from Tokyo, Hush…but I’m no Ritchie Blackmore either so. I did play keys and fooled around with Lazy when I was in the school stage band. Deep Purple was one of the few bands of that day that my parents would abide me playing in the house before I moved out on my own. Black Sabbath, Iron Butterfly…FORGET IT!🤣
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Each musical epoch also had its own graphic style, which perhaps reflected the lifestyle of the time. A famous example is the Yellow Submarine cover art. It was designed by German graphic artist and illustrator Heinz Edelmann. He taught design at the Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences. He became famous as the art director of the animated movie Yellow Submarine, which became legendary at the time with the well-known pop art style. Here are some other well-known LP sleeves from the 60’s:
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This is another of my favorite all time albums and album covers. Great 2 record set with a lot of interesting pictures on the jacket. The Rolling Stones “Exile On Main St.”
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Thanks Tim, the album cover looks interesting. I did a little research: it was the Rolling Stones’ tenth UK studio album and it was released in May 1972. So almost exactly 51 years ago. Is there actually an exciting background story how the album cover came about or why especially these pictures were chosen?
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Hi Jurgen. I really didn’t know much about the pictures on the cover other than it was a collection of mostly circus and sideshow freaks and performers. The inside and back had pictures of the band and crew in black and white that were shot on one of the backstreets in LA where they finished the album. Photographer Robert Frank took the pictures. I researched it a little and apparently The band wanted pictures that portrayed them as “runaway outlaws using the blues as its weapon against the world”. The cover photo that was used was already published in a book by Robert Frank. I just remember looking at all the odd and somewhat creepy pictures while listening to the album. The two albums with Rock, Blues, Jazz and Country were just as much a collage as the cover photos. I would stack the two LPs on my turntable, throw on my headphones and crawl into bed and drift off to sleep listening to all that great Stones music.
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You’re right Tim, some of the black and white photos look slightly creepy or even surreal. Like figures from another world. I have found an interesting article about this. Accordingly, the album was recorded in the basement of Keith Richards’ Nellcôte villa on the Côte d’Azur in France. Allegedly, the Stones were in some kind of existential crisis at that time. The production of the album was chaotic and impulsive. Apparently they felt like the characters on the album cover back then: freaks and crazy people left over from the 60s. The main shot for the Album cover was actually a photo of the wall of a Route 66 tattoo parlour, taken by Swiss photographer Robert Frank who was also involved into the project.
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The album “Decade” by Neil Young is actually a “Best of”. This album has accompanied me since my youth: there is sometimes music that is not just simply music, but also a piece of your own life and that makes it something special. Maybe because you heard it for the first time in a particularly sensitive phase of life. This makes this music timeless and accompanies a person for a lifetime. The music of the Beatles is such a companion for me and so is this album. The cover invites you to take off, to dream and to indulge in memories. Just like the music on this album.
Or as Edgar Allan Poe put it so aptly:
“Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music, without the idea, is simply music; the idea, without the music, is prose, from its very definitiveness.”
For me this album is poetry.
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Supertramp has released some quite interesting and imaginative LP covers. I’m thinking of „Crime of the Century“, „Breakfast in America“ or „Even in the quietest moment“. The front cover of the latter album features a snowy piano. To take this picture an actual, but gutted, grand piano was brought to the Eldora Mountain Resort, which was left overnight and photographed after a fresh snow.
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I came across this album at a record store in the 80’s. I didn’t buy it, but the title and the cover art gave me a good laugh!
Brian Brain – Time Flies When You’re Having Toast | Releases | Discogs
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Yeah David the title sounds real funny, almost a bit philosophical and made me curious about the kind of music behind it. It’s a mixture of simple electronic pop and new wave. Exactly the kind of music that sells like hot cakes here in the forum. The characters on the cover remind me a bit of the Simpsons and Bart Simpson may well have had a hand in the development of the songs 😀.
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We humans have an astonishing urge to collect things. Perhaps another relic of our ancestors. LP’s are no exception. And I have to admit: I sometimes develop an amazing energy to get a certain album. There’s something surprisingly satisfying about holding the loot in your hands afterwards.
By the way: There are many ways to invest your money. Some prefer share packages, others gold and still others choose very exotic forms of investment: gold coins, stamps and rare LP’s or Cd’s. Who knows, maybe one or the other of you has such a treasure lying around at home. But to be honest: which collector would sell such a valuable piece again?
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I almost forgot about Grateful Dead’s Blues For Allah. Bought that just for the album jacket! Wasn’t even a Dead Head haha!
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I googled for the Grateful Dead cover, Daryl. Well, at least the violinist seems to have fun making music. As far as you can tell from his facial expression… 😀
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The cover of the LP “Oxygene” is as legendary as the album and the music itself. Perhaps a warning to humanity about how vulnerable our planet is. Jean Michel Jarre’s other album covers are also designed in an interesting way.
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Santana’s album covers were as colorful and diverse as his music. The first album I consciously noticed from him was the eponymous album „Santana“. I think it was less the music that made me curious than the cover design itself. In 2018, he released an album titled “In search of Mona Lisa“. Apparently he was also looking for the music of Mona and Lisa. At least that’s what the title of his album suggests. But to stay serious: the album takes its title from a deeply personal experience that Carlos Santana had when he visited the Louvre in Paris for the first time and saw Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, Mona Lisa.
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Here are some more interesting album covers from the 70s:
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I may have been 14 years old when I devoured Tolkien’s „Lord of the Rings“ for the first time. A few years earlier, in 1970, the Swedish prog rock musician Bo Hansson had released a music album of the same name, inspired by the books. I was very fascinated by this music at the time because I could vividly imagine some scenes from „Lord of the Rings“ while listening to the music. That’s how Bo Hansson’s music was forever fused with Tolkien’s masterpiece for me. Almost like the the golden runes of the one ring with the power and the fate of the nine ringwraiths. The following LP covers by Hansson were always slightly based on a fantasy or science fiction ambience.
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The album covers of the bands Faun and Blackmores Night are also imaginatively designed. Although they differ in musical style, both bands have dedicated themselves to a kind of medieval folk music. Faun tries to revive the tradition of Minnesang again.
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