Good Albums, Bad Covers

For the past five years or so, record collecting has become my new, sometimes expensive hobby.  At least this weekend I went trolling for vinyl at a flea market in South Jersey, where I got three classic records for a mere four bucks.  One great advantage of LPs is their large size, which many have used over the years as a canvas for some truly wonderful art.  Of course, there are also some famously awful album covers out there.  The most famous tend not to be classic albums, but there are in fact some great albums with equally bad covers.  Here are, to me, the albums with the biggest contrasts between the greatness in the grooves and the crapitude of the cover.

Rolling Stones, Let It Bleed

This is a timeless nugget from the Stones' glory years, containing such memorable tunes as "Gimme Shelter," "Midnight Rambler,"and "You Can't Always Get What You Want," along with two of my all-time fave Stones deep cuts:  "You Got the Silver" and "Monkey Man."  The former's got a rare Keith vocal and sublime slide guitar, the latter a searing turn by Jagger and the latter some of sickest open-tuning this side of Robert Johnson.  However, the cover just sucks.  There are a lot of jumbled elements to it, and none of them interesting.  Who in the hell wants to picture the Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World as birthday cake topping?

Louvin Brothers, Satan is Real

On this record the Louvin Brothers reach country gospel perfection with eerie close harmonies that can't be beat.  If they see fit to give me a church funeral, I'd certainly want "I'm Ready to Go Home" to accompany my casket out the door.  However, this cover features a cardboard cut-out of Satan that's more silly than scary.  At least it's good for a laugh.

Beatles, Revolver

Revolver is the best Beatles record, hands down.  It's full of amazing experimentation like "Tomorrow Never Knows," sitting side by side with beautiful pop songs like "Good Day Sunshine."  It manages to combine all the great elements that band could muster, but without the pretentiousness of Sgt. Pepper or clunker songs like "Ob-La-Di" or "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" to prevent perfection.  I have to honestly say I took awhile to pick up this album because I thought the cover was so awful.  The  rendering of the Beatles by Klaus Voorman look like a piece of teenage fan art drawn in a math class notebook, and doesn't really resemble the Beatles that much.

Steely Dan, Can't Buy a Thrill

The Dan's debut is a real pleasure and full of standards like "Dirty Work" and "Reeling in the Years," but the cover looks like a bad acid trip barfed all over it.

Led Zeppelin IV

Such a great record, arguably Zep's best, and certainly it's most well-known.  The cover is just wretched, though.  For a record full of the most mystically grandiose rock music ever recorded, including one inspired by The Lord of the Rings ("The Battle of Evermore"), they chose a peeling wall with an old painting of a man gathering sticks on it.  It's too clumsy to be a knowing contrast to the music, and certainly not worthy to grace such an epic album.

Beach Boys, Pet Sounds

Here's another fantastic record with a sterling reputation that I held off on getting because I could not believe that any record with a cover this ridiculous could possibly be all that great.  Not only is the concept just silly and undignified, the photo looks hastily chosen.  Carl Wilson's face is caught in a moment of contorted disgust, and Mike Love has his eyes closed.  Brian Wilson must still be peeved that his magnum opus, containing such triumphs as "Wouldn't It Be Nice" and "Caroline No," among others, is associated with a trip to the petting zoo.

Bad Album Covers I See At Almost Every Used Record Store

One of my hobbies is buying and listening to old LPs, and over the last few years I've noticed a few albums with epically bad covers that I always seem to find at used record stores.  Some are so wretched that they have sadly been burned into my mind like my bad memories of gym class growing up.  With every hope that this will be an exorcism, now it's time to share the pain with you.

Foghat, Rock and Roll

This is one of the few album covers that can elicit the kind of groans normally associated with a joke told by Fozzy Bear.  At least Foghat managed to concoct an album cover more ridiculous than their name, which is no mean feat.

Mike Rutherford, Acting Very Strange

A middle-aged Boomer rocker wearing a straw fedora and cut-off Sumo wrestling t-shirt in front of funhouse mirrors sounds a lot more interesting than it looks.

Roger Daltrey, Ride a Rock Horse

Words fail.  Since it came out in 1975, I can only presume cocaine was involved somehow.

Fleetwood Mac, Heroes Are Hard to Find

Nobody, and I mean nobody, needs to see Mick Fleetwood in his undies holding a naked child.  The unsettling vibe is also done in by the fact that he's wearing sneakers with gym sox.

Fleetwood Mac, Mystery to Me

This cover is ugly and surreal without being interesting.  I guess before Buckingham and Nicks joined the band in 1975, they were drifting in more ways than one, based on these covers.

Black Sabbath, Sabotage

Not a bad album, but you'd never guess by the cover.  Geezer looks like a street hustler, Tony doesn't appear to want to be there, Bill's red tights make him look like a medieval page as acid casualty, and Ozzy's combo of kimono and platform boots is seventies fashion victimhood/too stoned to care at its worst.

Loggins and Messina, The Best of Friends

Were these guys aware that their picture was going to be slapped on the cover of record sleeves going to stores all across the country?  Loggins is wearing a monkey-shit brown colored sweater, and Messina looks like he just crawled out of the gutter after downing a bottle of Thunderbird.