Authors Johnny Morgan and Ben Wardle divide album sleeves into 10categories: Rock & Roll, Sex, Art, Identity, Drugs, Ego, Real World,Escape, Politics, Death. The Art category seems to belie the overall notion ofthe album as art, but the introduction promises a thematic arrangementaccording to the imagery “and not necessarily the music on the records… Indeed,sometimes the art department would design a sleeve without hearing the album.That said, most successful album cover designs work because of the involvementof the musicians.”
Although beautifully designed, replete with a plastic case that servesas its own sleeve, The Art of the LPseems randomly organized. Yet, it is the best collection of album artwork amongseveral recent publications that do little more than aimlessly represent coversfrom classic ’60s and ’70s albums. At least some thought went into thestructure of The Art of the LP.
Albums did not exist until the 1940s, and even then they werecollections of 78-R.P.M. singles collected into a bookcase affair. The artworkwas incidental and for marketing alone. The 78s usually came in brown papersleeves of no remarkable value and were easily transferred into commerciallyavailable book-like cases that allowed the end-user to organize a recordlibrary without having stacks of fragile records go unorganized andunprotected. With the advent of the 33 1/3 R.P.M. came the need for a permanentsleeve with graphics that signify that this record stands alone as an artifact.Even then, album artwork came into its own only when packaging music with asignificant and consistent voice. The sleeve enhanced the experience oflistening.
Where The Art of the LP falls down totally iswhen it represents artists with albums of little importance to their career. For example, Gene Vincentis present from a 1983 album cover of an oldies reissue, not a ’50sbreakthrough. There is no excuse for this, and many other choices were madewith no aesthetic logic involved at all. Choosing a later album cover withabsolutely no historical value whatsoever here, and with others, too, includingElvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis, is not only maddening but also indicatesthat the authors have disconnected the music from the album artwork. Some oftheir choices are not only culturally misleading, but pedagogically inferior aswell.
And so, we have a cemetery with some of the wrong headstones. Asenjoyable as this book is, the text lacks scholarship, integrity and a historian’ssensibility. But it has a great sleeve.
