The Ones That Got Away: Near Misses With Rare Records - #3 Led Zeppelin

Here’s another sorry tale of how I let a rare and valuable record slip through my fingers. Like the earlier pieces this one also concerns Led Zeppelin – their debut album, in fact. But unlike those other records I did actually own this LP for quite some time. Although that probably only makes this saga even more lamentable.

So what? you may say. LZ’s albums sold by the squillons after all. Not this version, however. In the strange and obsessive world of record collecting this could be the single most desirable Zeppelin artefact of all, at least among the records which were sold commercially (ie not promotional releases). I’m talking about the very first UK pressing of Led Zeppelin (Atlantic 588 171). To be specific, it’s the one with the album title and Atlantic Records logo printed on the front in turquoise, with a thin but distinctive grey stripe/border along the bottom edge of the sleeve.

Why is this album so rare? It’s because only a very limited number (at a guess, maybe just a couple of thousand copies, although don’t quote me on that) escaped into the world before the sleeve was reprinted and the turquoise print was replaced with the orange lettering we are so familiar with today. Also, this version identifies the record as an undisputed, genuine first edition and, just as in the world of rare books, that carries great weight in terms of value and collectability, especially with an artist as important as Zeppelin.

I’ve never heard a convincing explanation as to why this variation came to be. Perhaps it was a mistake, but I like to think was something as simple as the printer running out of turquoise ink. Such slipshod cost cutting measures were not uncommon back in the 60s. It was only rock & roll, after all. Whatever the reason, this early version of the album sold out within weeks (if not days) making it incredibly rare and desirable today among those who value such things.

A change in the colour of the print may seem like a trivial thing to get all fired up about, but that kind of detail is meat and drink in the world of record collecting. And Led Zeppelin collectors are some of the most obsessive of all, probably second only to Beatles fans in that respect. I should mention that apart from the sleeve, there are several other tiny differences/discrepancies which distinguish the early pressings of this LP, but we won’t go there. Uncorrected matrix numbers and amended publishing credits are way beyond the scope of this blog, besides which that way madness lies for sure.

But what of the record itself? It’s impossible to overstate the importance of the debut Led Zeppelin album. Released in early 1969, it was a towering achievement which swept all before it. “Communication Breakdown”, “How Many More Times”, “You Shook Me”, “Dazed and Confused” and the rest created shock waves which are still felt throughout rock today. Following on from the Mayall/Clapton “Beano Album” and Jeff Beck’s Truth debut, Jimmy Page saw a lucrative gap in the heavy rock market and claimed it for his own.

I’d seen Zeppelin play at Sheffield University on November 23, 1968, over four months before the album hit UK stores. Discounting a few warm-up dates in Scandinavia, Sheffield was just the 8th gig they ever played and, in fact, the advance posters were still billing them as “The New Yardbirds”, although the new name was in place by the time I saw them. Today it would be unusual for a band to tour without a record of some kind in the shops, but that’s exactly what Zeppelin did in late 1968.

I bought my copy of Led Zeppelin I (as it became known retrospectively) in mid-April 1969 at Bradleys Record Centre in Sheffield city centre, just days after it was released. The price of a new LP at the time was around £2. I kept it for a few years before trading it in at Honest Jon’s record store on Portobello Road. You did that kind of thing back then. If you needed money to pay the rent on your grotty bed-sit, or cash to buy more records, you’d take an armful of LPs down to the local second-hand store. Rare records were not yet a thing in the early 70s and the turquoise sleeve variation meant absolutely nothing to me at that time. The store paid the going rate of one or two pounds for each album, if they were in good condition, which we happily accepted.

So that’s where my rare turquoise copy of the first Led Zeppelin LP ended up - traded in for a quid at Honest Jon’s. Today, things are very different, and in recent years we’ve seen the value of this record go stratospheric. The highest selling price I could find on Discogs was around £8,000 while several copies between £5,000 and £7,000 have been recorded on Popsike.com. In June 2024 esteemed music journalist and broadcaster Danny Baker sold his personal copy at auction for £2,800 which almost seems like a bargain for the lucky bidder. In the Omega Auction catalogue notes Danny wrote:

"Bought, LATE 70S, in Greenwich upstairs in a commercial duplex that mainly sold old books and magazines. Long gone now. I didn’t have a copy of LZ at the time and had no clue about the colours on the cover. It was ten pounds and the man reiterated the price to me before putting it in a bag. It was ten times dearer than anything else in his racks."

Polydor handled the Atlantic label in Britain until 1971 when distribution switched to Kinney/Warner Bros. That’s when the Atlantic labels changed from their familiar plum/orange to green/orange (see below). Kinney was superseded by WEA Records in 1972.

While my turquoise copy may be long gone, I do still have three early vinyl copies of Led Zeppelin I (of course I do) comprising a couple of plum label pressings and an early 70s Kinney/Warner Bros issue, all with orange lettering, naturally. And that’s before we get to the many and varied CD releases. But that’s probably enough tedious information for one day.

The Ultimate Nick Drake Rarity?

 

How did an impossibly rare Nick Drake vinyl LP turn up in a tiny Australian outback town? Stuart Penney tells the story

Nick Drake’s records have always been somewhat elusive.  In fact, until the digital age arrived, and music became freely available to all, his vinyl LPs were invariably hard to find and generally quite expensive, too, even as reissues.  Why was this?  Let’s put it down to that old cliché supply and demand.  Except, unfortunately for Nick the demand didn't arrive while he was around to enjoy it.

In July 1969 his debut Five Leaves Left was released to modest interest from the folk music community, but widespread indifference from the general record buying public.  Initial sales of that LP can only be described as woeful.  I’ve heard it said that just 400 copies of the first pressing of FLL were sold in the weeks after release.  That number sounds a little low even for the most willfully obscure niche artist and I’d guess 2-3,000 copies is probably closer to the mark, certainly during Nick’s lifetime.  But then, on the other hand, that low figure could explain the crazy prices we see today, with pink label original copies regularly changing hands for £1,000 or more online.

Poor sales notwithstanding, Five Leaves Left had one important thing in its favour: it was on the Island label.  Since diversifying from Jamaican music and soul into white boy prog, psych, blues and folk around 1967, it’s probably fair to say Island had released barely a bad album.  Just about everything on Chris Blackwell’s label was worthy of investigation back then and Nick’s debut surely gained a following wind from groundbreaking releases by his Island stable mates John Martyn, Traffic, Jethro Tull, Free, King Crimson, Cat Stevens and the rest, even if it didn’t necessarily translate into sales.  If any UK record company could lay claim to the handle “trademark of quality” at that time, surely it was Island.

Sales wise, Drake’s final two records Bryter Layter (1971) and Pink Moon (1972) fared little better than his first and a reluctance to play live certainly didn’t help matters.  To his credit Blackwell refused to delete the albums despite the poor sales.  Then, following Nick’s death in 1974, the Island boss vowed that the three LPs would remain on catalogue as long as he had a say in the matter.

All of which brings us to my own copy of Five Leaves Left.  Although I never owned a first pressing of the LP in 1969, I knew people who did, and we fell in love with Nick’s hypnotic songs, unique guitar style and his voice like warm molasses.  Robert Kirby’s haunting string arrangements on four tracks were the icing on a delicious cake.

Naturally, as fully paid-up wannabe "heads" my pals and I were acutely aware of the nudge-nudge nature of the album title.  It was a reference to the insert found towards the end of each packet of Rizla cigarette rolling papers, warning users they had "only five leaves left."  Despite being scarcely able to stump up enough cash for a ten bob (50p) deal between us, this surreptitious reefer reference made us feel like we were somehow part of Nick's impossibly hip gang.

I watched over the years as those early, original Nick Drake vinyl LPs rocketed in value, even after the CDs became available.  It seemed that a combination of the always collectible Island label and the desire to own an original piece of Nick’s legend had driven prices into the stratosphere.  How we wished we’d had the foresight (or, indeed, the wherewithal) to buy a dozen copies in 1969.

By the mid-80s I was living in Western Australia and had started my own second-hand record store, stocked with thousands of LPs I brought over from London.  As luck would have it, 1985 was the perfect time to open such an enterprise in Australia.  Collectable records were starting to become big business in Britain, with Record Collector magazine taking its first faltering steps and record fairs popping up everywhere.  But the boom had yet to take off down under, especially in the sleepy west coast city of Perth.  So, for a few years I had the rare vinyl field almost to myself, especially as so many people started to jettison their LPs in favour of the newfangled CD format.

One day I received a call asking if I would be interested in buying a large record collection.  The LPs were located about a two-hour drive east of Perth in a small country town with a population of (according to Wikipedia) just 725.  It transpired that following a divorce, the owner had moved to the east coast a decade earlier, locking up the house and its contents.  Now he had decided it was time to sell up.

I was given the keys by his ex-wife and drove out to take a look.  The scene which greeted me was like something from a Stephen King movie.  The house looked virtually abandoned.  The electricity was disconnected, so the place was dark and gloomy, with everything covered in a decade’s worth of dust and cobwebs.

The furniture was old and threadbare and there were torn and dirty bedsheets covering the windows as makeshift curtains.  And there, taking up all available floor space in every room (bathroom, toilet and an outbuilding included) were thousands upon thousands of records.  When I counted them later it turned out there were around 8,000 LPs and almost as many singles.  It took three trips with two cars and a box trailer to take them all back to Perth over a couple of weekends (see photo below).  It was the kind of score every record dealer dreams of.

I won’t bore you with too many details of the collection, but you name it, and it was probably there: all the early UK Elvis LPs on HMV, both unfeasibly rare Blossom Toes albums and clean original copies of every conceivable 60s collectible album, including items by the Artwoods, Davy Graham, the Zombies and countless more besides.  And there, almost unnoticed amid the tsunami of rare and desirable items was a UK copy of Five Leaves Left.

Apart from a few dozen choice items which I still have, I sold most of the collection over the years.  But I kept the Nick Drake LP simply because it wasn’t in the best of condition.  For a start the sleeve was in two halves, so I assumed it was damaged and therefore unsaleable.  That was not the case, but thankfully I didn’t know any better at the time.

It proved to be a good move because since then it's been identified as an advance promo copy of Five Leaves Left sent out to reviewers and the like with the sleeve (front and back) in two separate pieces, or "slicks," which are slightly taller than normal.  Other differences include the Island box logo and catalogue number on the back cover.  This appears in black on all regular released copies, but it is printed in green ink here and is the only known Island release to use this colour typeface.

 

The matrix number in the runout grooves is also the lowest one ever seen for this release:

Side One: ILPS 9105 A//2 111.  Side Two: ILPS 9105 B//2 113

On side one the tracks “Day Is Done” and “Way To Blue” are reversed on the label and sleeve.  The album actually plays “Way to Blue” followed by “Day is Done.”  On subsequent pressings this error was corrected on the label, if not the sleeve.

On my copy the pink Island label (with its Witchseason logo) is almost white.  Whether it was always like this or has faded due to exposure to the sun, I can't say. 

So, what I initially thought was a damaged and virtually worthless item was in fact correct and incredibly rare.  I’ve no idea how many were made like this, but I’ve only ever seen a handful for sale online, so I’d estimate no more than 50 copies were produced.

As I write (January 2024), only one copy of this item is currently for sale on Discogs with an eye-watering asking price of £6,000.  That figure may seem crazy and who knows if it will even sell at that price.  But such is the collectability of Nick Drake and the pink Island label today I'm sure it will find a good home eventually.

Would I part with my copy?  Well, I do also have back-ups in the form of the CD and an early 70s vinyl pressing on the Island pink rim palm tree label (even that is a £150 item in nice condition), so yes, I probably could live without the original.  Maybe I should take it on Antiques Roadshow, assuming their pop culture expert has even heard of Nick, that is.  But then again, perhaps I’ll hold onto it a while longer and see where the price ends up five years from now.

Footnote:

In early 2024 esteemed music journalist and broadcaster Danny Baker announced he was about to sell his massive personal record collection.  In the Nick Drake section of the online auction catalogue Danny added this comment:

"The night before my records were carted away by [auction house] Omega - four men, five hours in the shifting - my son came round and I asked him again if there were any final records he wanted for himself. He said no. Then, after a minute or so, he said, “Actually Dad, I haven’t ever had a good copy of Five Leaves Left.  Do you have a spare?”  Well I didn’t have a “spare” but I did have the mint original.  So I gave it to him.  That’s why it’s not here and there’s a grand I’ll never see again.  Likewise my signed copy of John Martyn’s Solid Air.  I taught that kid well..."

The first of several loads of records packed and ready to go