MLT Club Member Jürgen
MLT Club MemberForum Replies Created
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Well done Jacki. As always. Creative and colourful.
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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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Here are some more interesting album covers from the 70s:
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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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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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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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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.