I currently possess about a dozen record albums.
You know the radio show cliche, “Hi! I’m a first-time caller, long-time listener?” I’ve been writing about being a long-time listener and first-time music player. My 5 years of mechanically playing the trumpet don’t count. I say “mechanical” because that’s the left brain at work, not the creative side of my noggin.
Neither The Beatles nor the Rolling Stones can read sheet music. The Grateful Dead is known as the world’s greatest jam band. I'm reminded of a story that Jerry Garcia told in an interview. When he first picked up a six-string guitar, he tuned it to E Standard by ear and without knowing what E Standard was, simply because, in his words, "it just sounded right." Like others mentioned above, Garcia had an ear for notes and was seemingly wired that way, knowledge of theory notwithstanding.
All of us have some musical knowledge. Some of us listen and play. Perhaps I started playing an instrument because the experience of listening to music had changed so much that I had to find something to fill a gap; something that had gone missing. And maybe what had gone missing was the time I spent looking at album covers or reading the liner notes on my record albums.
That’s it! I learned a lot about the bands and what I was listening to from reading the packaging that held the goods!
Have you ever wondered who all those people are?
Now you know.
Did you know that Paul McCartney was able to secure the rights to print the lyrics of the Sargent Pepper album’s songs on the back cover? This had never been done before because, back then, sheet music generated a lot of income.
I used to be a huge fan of CSN and CSNY. Stills was a favorite in the Rocky Mountain area and lived just outside of Boulder. I don't need to go into detail about the band members - they were a supergroup that my friends and I absolutely adored.
The album cover of CSNY’s Deja Vu is my favorite album cover of all time.
Stephen Stills, who is a Civil War buff, wanted the cover to look like an old photo from that era, the 1860's. Like this one:
Tom O’Neal is the photographer here. David Crosby sure liked to look like Buffalo Bill back then, didn’t he?
O’Neal had his backdrop, and here you can see the vision coming together:
According to Stephen Stills in the video "Under the Covers: A Magical Journey: Rock 'n Roll in L.A. in the 60's-70's" (2002), Stephen Stills persuaded the record company to use a type of leather-textured paper made by a company in Georgia. He assured them by saying, "Don't worry, the record's great, you'll make all your expenses back." True to his word, the record went platinum two weeks after its release.
For at least the first printing, he also convinced the record company to stamp the cover with gold, hymnal-like lettering and have the picture "tipped" on (glued on).
Of the dozen or so LP’s I have kept, I have one of those “First Printing” Deja Vu albums.
Here is what the inside of the album cover looked like. all photos were taken by Henry Diltz at Stephen Stills house, a place in Hollywood Hills that he was renting from the Monkees’ Peter Tork:
…and to refresh your memory, there were two sides to a record album. The term used was, “Side 1” and “Side 2”. Sometimes bold record companies would use “Side One” and “Side Two”. In “Woodstock” and “All Things Must Pass” cases, even a “Side 3” and “Side 4”, “Side 5” and “Side 6”.
We were exhausted after "turning these records over." Just think about it - 20 minutes of music, then turning the record over, and another 20 minutes of music. We hoped that our automatic tonearm worked properly because if it was on the fritz, the tonearm would drive us crazy until we tended to the turntable.
These were the songs on the Deja Vu album, to refresh your memory:
Side One
1. "Carry On"
2. "Teach Your Children"
3. "Almost Cut My Hair"
4. "Helpless"
5. "Woodstock"
Side Two
1. "DéjàVu"
2. "Our House"
3. "4 + 20"
4. "Country Girl (Whisky Boot Hill/Down Down Down/"Country Girl" (I Think You're Pretty)"
5. "Everybody I Love You"
How easy is that?
Do you remember record albums that had texture? Deja Vu was an example of this. I remember the Stones’ psychedelic Sargent Pepper wannabe, “Her Satanic Majesties Request” (or whatever that crappy album was called), had a 3D photo on the front cover. The Bee Gees’ “Odessa” album was in red velour or velvet, whatever “v” word you prefer.
After I just dissed the Stones, I will make a casual mention that the next 3 albums, “Beggars Banquet”, “Sticky Fingers”, and “Exile on Mainstreet” were and are three of my favorite albums of all time, and in my book, their peak, by far.
Who can forget Andy Warhol’s Sticky Finger’s album cover with a working zipper?
A side note: I have also given almost all of my CD’s away, too. One of the compact disc’s I still have is Sticky Fingers with a working zipper.
The key here is the working zipper. It is unique and part of the overall experience of listening to the album.
As a 9-year-old child, I can remember lying in bed reading the liner notes to “Meet the Beatles”. The back side of the album had their bios and told us what instruments they played.
It’s hard to see, but at the top of the photo, there are little comments about who is playing what instrument. “That’s Paul on Fuzz Bass.” I didn’t think of a musical instrument and read it as rhyming with “class”.
”What is a fuzz bass?” I wondered. That’s the earliest album cover other than maybe “The Music Man” or “Mary Poppins” soundtrack album covers I remember reading.
…but I never stopped reading those album covers and liner notes.
Even in high school and college, in between using albums as “tools” for separating the seeds and stems from $10 lids of cheap Mexican rope (with the help of the edge of a pack of Zig Zags), I would learn, learn, learn.
Mississippi Queen, do you know what I mean?
Now that I have this subject out of my system, we shall return to where we left off in 1969, but I wanted to drop a note about how we have lost the “soul” of the record album experience in today’s streaming subscription world.
It wasn’t only about listening to the music. It was also about reading about the band and getting a little help understanding the lyrics. I mean, we could have used a little help with the “bathroom on the right” and “excuse me while I kiss this guy.”
Right?