by Stuart Penney
We all love records, right? Despite
being declared dead and buried at the turn of the century, vinyl is back
with a vengeance. Tactile, with proper, decent sized artwork, LPs really are
the most desirable way to listen to recorded music. Add to this the powerful nostalgia
factor and the lure of old records is irresistible.
On the minus side, records
are extremely easy to damage and need to be handled with great care. They are also
bulky, ridiculously heavy in quantity and prohibitively costly to ship. All of
which explains why they were so easily superseded by the soulless CD. But, against the
odds, LP records have made a Lazarus-like comeback in recent years.
You may have noticed that new
“vinyls” (as the kids of today like to call their records) are also exorbitantly
expensive, often retailing at more than two or three times the price of a CD.
But then, records have never been
especially cheap. Except, perhaps for that brief period in the early 2000s when those
pesky CDs were poised to take over the world and vinyl was experiencing a
worldwide slump in popularity, LPs have always been costly (OK, they were always
much cheaper in America than in the UK and Europe, but that’s another story
for another time).
Come with me now back to the late 60s
when records were king. This was a time when our favourite artists were
getting serious about their art and some of the more cerebral musicians (Pete
Townshend, I’m looking at you) felt that a solitary LP was simply not enough
to contain the fruits of their genius. That’s when we started to see double albums appearing by some of the biggest names in rock.
OK, Bob Dylan and Frank Zappa had got there first in a 1966 photo finish with Blonde on Blonde and Freak Out respectively, but it was the Beatles who really kick-started the double LP craze in 1968 with The Beatles (aka "The White Album").
Late 60s UK double albums often retailed at literally twice the price of a single LP, making
them unaffordable for many record buyers. While regular single albums hovered around
the 40 shillings (£2) mark, some double sets – Jimi Hendrix’s Electric
Ladyland for example - sold for 85 shillings (£4.25). That translates
to a not-insignificant £62 today.
Polydor was one of the main offenders in the LP price wars and in 1968 they came up with the bright idea of splitting some of their popular double albums and offering them as individual single LPs, presumably to soften the financial blow. The theory seemed to be: you could buy one half now and the other half next payday. Or perhaps you'd decided you didn't like 50% of the album, who knows? It was a curious phenomenon which must have made some kind of sense in the Polydor boardroom at the time, although it seems little short of madness from this distance.
Even though the truncated versions often
had new and interesting artwork, it was a flawed artistic and commercial
concept which simply didn’t catch on, for obvious reasons. But, for a brief period, we
saw big-name UK double album sets on Polydor (and their affiliated family of labels
Track and Elektra) such as Tommy, Electric Ladyland and
Wheels of Fire sold individually as parts 1 and 2.
It had been tried before, of course.
Jazz, folk and classical multi-LP sets had long been sold in separate
volumes, but it was a brand-new innovation in rock and pop.
This is not a comprehensive list of late 60s double albums, by the way, just a handful that were offered as both 2/LP sets and single albums.
DONOVAN - A Gift From A Flower To A Garden (Epic 1967)
The earliest rock double album I remember being split and offered individually was Donovan’s 1967 A Gift From A Flower To A Garden. Unlike most of the other titles mentioned here, this elaborate box set was not a Polydor release. It appeared on the Epic label in the US and on Pye records in Britain.
When originally issued in the UK in early 1968 AGFAFTAG retailed at £3/17s/6d (£3.88), twice the price of a single LP at that time and the equivalent of almost £60 today. The British release was delayed for three months, so in late 1967 I bit the bullet and bought a US Epic pressing at a London import store for £5, which converts to a wallet-worrying £81 in 2026. That was more than 50% of my weekly wage at the time.
In America the two LPs were also sold individually as Wear Your Love Like Heaven
and For Little Ones. In fact, in some territories (eg Australia,
S.E. Asia and parts of mainland Europe) the box set was considered too
extravagant for local release and the A Gift From A Flower To A Garden
material was only ever sold as these two separate records. The pair were
scheduled to be issued separately in Britain and were even allocated Pye catalogue numbers, but
the release was cancelled at the eleventh hour.
In December 2023 Donovan re-released a signed, limited edition of the mono vinyl box set with all inserts through his website. The asking price was an eye-watering £180.
The sleeve design of For Little Ones was taken from the inside tray of the AGFAFTAG box, while the artwork for Wear Your Love Like Heaven appeared nowhere else at the time. Both covers were photographed by Karl Ferris in the moat at the 14th century Bodiam Castle, Robertsbridge, East Sussex, 10 miles north of Hastings and roughly 53 miles southeast of London.
Mick Taylor (no relation to the Rolling Stones/John Mayall guitarist) and Sheena McCall are jointly credited with the artwork for these three albums as well as other Donovan releases Sunshine Superman (US and UK versions), Mellow Yellow and Hurdy Gurdy Man, plus the 1975 Maggie Bell album Suicide Sal.
Trivia fans will delight in the knowledge that Sheena McCall is the aunt of UK personality Davina McCall, who presented the British version of the Big Brother reality TV show for several years.
No one expected it to set the charts alight, so it was a surprise when the Incredible String
Band’s Wee Tam and the Big Huge received the same treatment.
Elektra was part of the UK Polydor stable until 1971, so the ISB’s 1968 fourth
album was sold (in mono and stereo) as both a double album and two single LPs in Britain but not in
America where it was available only as
the individual titles Wee Tam OR The Big Huge.
This decision killed the album’s sales in the US where both LPs barely
scraped into the Billboard top 200. Although, having said
that, neither the double album nor the two single LPs enjoyed any chart action whatsoever
in Britain. Confusingly, the single LPs appeared with several different sleeve
designs in both the UK and US, some of which are pictured here.
The UK double LPs contained a sleeve insert featuring "The Head", a poem by Robin Williamson.
We are assured that the cover photos were taken in Frank Zappa's Los
Angeles garden, probably at the house known as the "Log Cabin" at 2401 Laurel
Canyon Boulevard. I asked producer Joe Boyd about this (he said, casually name-dropping) and, while he confirmed the Zappa connection, Joe couldn’t remember which house was
involved, as Frank moved to a different property a mile or so up the Canyon in mid-1968, around the time the ISB visited America.
John Mayall also spent time at the Zappa house where he wrote the song "2401". This track appeared on Mayall's 1968 LP Blues From Laurel Canyon.
The florid shirts worn by Robin Williamson and Mike Heron in the various cover photos were made by Jeannie "The Tailor" Franklyn, then-girlfriend of Fairport Convention's Richard Thompson and seamstress to the rock world in general. Sadly, she was killed in the same May 1969 motorway accident which also claimed Fairport's drummer, Martin Lamble. Jack Bruce titled his debut solo album Songs for a Tailor in Jeannie's memory.
CREAM - Wheels of Fire (Polydor 1968)
One release which seemed to fit the format better than most was Cream’s Wheels of Fire which was split neatly into In The Studio and Live At The Fillmore. Martin Sharp's wonderful artwork from the front of the double album was retained for the UK studio LP, while a black on silver version with a negative effect was adapted for the live album sleeve.
In other countries the
artwork varied with most territories getting the silver (or sometimes a faint
gold tint) covers for both albums. The USA didn’t get the individual LPs while Australia didn't get the double set.
The double Wheels of Fire
set was released in Britain on August 9, 1968, in mono and stereo. It retailed
at 72s/2d (£3.60), while the studio single album (released the same day also in
mono and stereo) sold for exactly half price at 36s/1d (£1.80).
For reasons unknown the Live At The Fillmore
half of the package didn’t appear until four months later in December 1968,
also in mono and stereo. These single LPs stayed on catalogue for quite some
time and were still available well into the 70s. Live At The Fillmore
was re-issued as an extended 3/LP set for Record Store Day 2026 with the same “negative” front
cover as the 1968 version.
THE WHO - Tommy (Track 1969)
However disjointed, Pete Townshend’s rock opera Tommy was always intended to be listened to in its entirety. Which
makes the decision to split it into two volumes quite baffling. The double LP
set was first released in May 1969 in an elaborate multi-fold sleeve with
numbered booklet. Oddly, it was three years before the individual LPs arrived
in May 1972 as Tommy Part 1 and Tommy Revisited Part 2, seemingly as a stopgap measure between Who’s Next (1971) and Quadrophenia (1973).
Both parts had lyric sheet inserts and new sleeve designs adapted from Mike McInnerney’s artwork seen inside the double album gatefold. Tommy appears to have been offered this way only in the UK and almost nowhere else.
Mike McInnerney is also credited
with artwork on albums by the Faces (The First Step
and the giant poster which came with A Nod Is As Good As A Wink), Pete Townshend (Who Came
First), The London Symphony Orchestra’s 1972 recording of Tommy
and many others.
JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE - Electric Ladyland (Track 1968)
Electric Ladyland had several different sleeves over the years, but the one which caused the biggest brouhaha was the original November 1968 UK pressing with the saucy nude ladies on the cover. It’s been reported that Hendrix himself didn’t much care for this sleeve, but I suspect it was not so much the content which upset him, more the lighting and wide-angle lens photography which didn’t present the girls in the most flattering light.
November 1968 turned out to be quite a popular month for nude record sleeves, with John and Yoko's controversial Two Virgins LP causing an even bigger stir around the same time. You probably wouldn't get away with a cover like this today, but although it was something of a cause célèbre back in the day Electric Ladyland was displayed quite openly in UK record stores. The Blind Faith nude LP sleeve of August 1969 would ruffle more feathers than this one.
The two parts of Electric
Ladyland are possibly the most interesting of all the records discussed
here, artistically at least. Part 1 boasts a lurid cut n’ paste yellow
sleeve montage showing Jimi and the boys in a post-apocalyptic landscape with
50s spaceships, aliens and multiple images of New York’s Chrysler building. On
the front and back are colourised images of Mae West dressed as the Statue of
Liberty in a promotional photo for her 1934 film, Belle of the Nineties.
The artwork is credited to David King who worked on several iconic sleeves for the Track label, including The Who Sell Out, Axis: Bold As Love, Electric Ladyland (that notorious UK “nude” cover discussed above) and The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown. He also created the sleeve for the rare sampler LP The House That Track Built.
In the 70s King designed posters and logos for the Anti-Nazi
League, the Anti-Apartheid Movement and Rock Against Racism. An art historian
with a special interest in Leon Trotsky, part of his huge collection of 250,000
Soviet graphics and photographs is housed in the Tate Modern, London.
King is also credited with
the artwork for the Part 2 sleeve. This is just an adaptation of
the inside gatefold sleeve of the UK double LP featuring a tightly cropped head
shot of Jimi on the front taken from the original photo by David Montgomery. On
the back are Donald Silverstein’s pictures of Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell.
These are tinted blue, unlike the smaller sepia tint versions on the double LP.
Don Silverstein is credited with countless jazz LP sleeves for the Riverside label during the 50s and 60s, but he photographed only a handful of important rock albums. They included Axis: Bold As Love, Electric Ladyland and the self-titled debut Fairport Convention album. He also shot some iconic posters of Hendrix which adorned countless bed-sit walls in the late 60s. He died in 1975, aged just 41.
If the published release dates are
to be believed, these two single LPs appeared a month before the Electric Ladyland
double set arrived. That’s unusual in itself and very different to The Who’s Tommy
which turned up three years after the double LP as Parts 1&2.
THE BEATLES - Rock 'N' Roll Music (Parlophone 1976)
Things reached a pretty pass in 1980 when Rock 'n' Roll Music, the 1976 Beatles double compilation LP nobody asked for (or wanted), was bizarrely reissued as two individual volumes on EMI’s budget Music For Pleasure label. It was probably the time we'd seen the Fab Four on a cut-price release.
The double LP artwork - designed in-house by Capitol records in the US - was widely criticised on release, not least by the band themselves. Interviewed in Rolling Stone magazine, Ringo said this about the (inside) sleeve "It made us look cheap and we never were cheap. All that Coca-Cola and cars with big fins was the Fifties!" Lennon was also critical of the artwork and wrote an angry letter to Capitol Records complaining it "looks like a Monkees reject". John offered to design the sleeve himself, but his offer was rejected.
On original pressings those life-sized thumbs on the front and back were embossed, obviously to give the impression of someone holding the record. The two MFP sleeves weren't much better. The US release showed a 1964 image of the group set against a crowd background. The UK version (above) eliminated the crowd and used a white background.
There was also some controversy over the mixes used for the album. George Martin was unhappy with the chosen mixes and remixed the tracks for the US Capitol release. EMI in the UK refused Martin's new mixes and issued the Parlophone double LP with the original mixes which Martin had considered inferior. These included five stereo mixes of songs that had not yet been issued in stereo in the UK: the Long Tall Sally EP and "I'm Down". The 1980 UK MFP reissues finally used George Martin's corrected mixes taken from the US double album.
So, with the UK and US double sets featuring different mixes, that makes Rock 'n' Roll Music worth owning, kind of, for completists, at least. Apart from that, the album has since been virtually disowned by all concerned and, significantly, has never officially appeared on CD, except maybe in Japan, where anything is possible.
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