Lord Reith wrote: ↑Sat Feb 17, 2024 3:43 am
C90 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 17, 2024 1:04 am
I agree - a real selling point for me. I'm a sucker for the pastiche 'official' album artwork that bootleggers began to adopt in the late 70s/ early 80s.
I drooled over many an LP in dealers' racks during the 80s, unable (or unwilling) to commit my hard-earned £10-15, and 'Youngblood' was one of them.
Yes, the beatleg artwork was always way more attractive than the official compilations. The Beatles were four of the most photogenic people in history... literally all you needed to do was slap some nice photos together with some text and you had a great eye catching album cover. But this simple truth completely eluded EMI for decades. Just some of the horrible, horrible official covers we had:
Love Songs. Crikey. Literally a shit coloured cover with a tiny unfamiliar photo in the centre.
Rarities. Royal Blue. Nothing else. Oh, hang on... the title in gold.
Greatest Hits. Every country seemed to have a different cover, and each was worse than the other.
Beatles Ballads. A painting of something vaguely resembling the four Beatles.
Reel Music. Garish badly drawn cartoon cover.
The Essential Beatles (Australia). An almost completely black cover. Like Spinal tap said, "It's so black it's like... how could it get more blacker?"
Rarities (US). Revolting lavender cover with yet another small polaroid stuck in the centre.
Love. Bright canary yellow this time. With more cartoonish characters (for the third time)
Rock And Roll Music. based on a perfectly good photo which would have made a great cover. But, no, let's turn it into another cartoon.
Live At The BBC. Another shit coloured cover! As someone said at the time, it was 1960s Britain, not the American wild west. No need for the sepia tint.
Past Masters. Another depressing black cover! Remember, someone actually got paid to come up with this.
I think I'll stop now because it's getting sad. I just can't figure out why some guys in their bedrooms could make better covers with magazine cut outs than the art department of a major record company.