Unusual album covers

[RealityChuck]

Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here was originally packaged in dark blue shrink wrap; you couldn’t see the album cover until you bought it.

Gatefold covers eventually became routine, but when the Beatles did one for Sgt. Pepper, it was highly unusual. They were logical for double albums (since they could hold two records), but they quickly became used on single disks.

[blondebear]

@Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew

The Who’s Live at Leeds was packaged in something like a Peechee folder, with the LP in one pocket and assorted memorabilia in the other.

Including copies of legal papers and contracts --most notably for Woodstock-- that have embarassed people on Antiques Roadshow and Pawn Stars. (Not to mention my co-worker, who was extremely excited when he presented a Woodstock contract to me that he found in a record bin at a Goodwill store. :p)

[Ichbin_Dubist]

The first pressings of The Return of the Durutti Column had a cover made of sandpaper, designed to destroy the covers of LPs it was shelved next to (scroll down for a picture, for what it’s worth). A joke inspired by this book, apparently.

[Casey1505]

I remember seeing pictures of a Zippo lighter shaped *Catch A Fire *album cover.

[Mean_Mr.Mustard]

Alice Cooper - Muscle of Love - Was packaged in a plain cardboard box.

Jethro Tull - Stand Up - Had a pop-up image of the band when you opened the cover.

Grand Funk - Shinin’ On - 3D image on the cover, complete with 3D glasses.

Led Zeppelin - In Through the Out Door - Had a sepia inner sleeve that turned color when you applied water to it.
mmm

[Colibri]

@RealityChuck

Gatefold covers eventually became routine, but when the Beatles did one for Sgt. Pepper, it was highly unusual. They were logical for double albums (since they could hold two records), but they quickly became used on single disks.

It also had an insert of paper cut-outs.

The whole thing, including the gatefold and insert, was copied by The Mothers of Invention for We’re Only in It for the Money.

Outer cover

insert

[blondebear]

Spinal Tap’s “Back From The Dead” cover unfolds into a diorama of Stonehenge with action figures of St. Hubbins, Tufnel and Smalls towering over it.

[5_time_champ]

Grand Funk- E Pluribus Funk looked like a big round silver coin. The disk never stayed in the album jacket.

Yes- Tormato looked liked it had tomato guts on the back cover.

[postcards]

@Colibri

The Rolling Stones’ Some Girls album had cut outs in the cover; you could move the inner liner to make the Stones’ faces appear in different cut outs.

And the blank spots on the album in that link are the result of the pictured people (or their estates) suing the band because their images were used without permission.

The missing persons are:

First row: Marilyn Monroe - Lucille Ball

Second row: Not sure - Judy Garland

Third row: Farrah Fawcett-Majors

Fourth row: Raquel Welch

Wiki has the uncensored coverand some more info about the cover.

[Infovore]

The Alan Parsons Project’s *Stereotomy *originally came in a regular sleeve with blue and red artwork on it (kind of like an old 3D image), but then the whole thing was packaged in a plastic slipcover that was transparent red on one side and blue on the other. Slipping the album inside the slipcover revealed different images. It was pretty cool.

[ftg]

@tdn

*Alice Cooper’s Killer, I believe, had a perforated cardboard panel that could be torn off, and torn into smaller sections that were postcards of the band.

My copy’s tearoff was a foldout calendar for 1972 with Alice hung from a rope at the top. It was set up sort of like a double album cover except the one half was meant to be torn off and itself unfolded.

[aruvqan]

Rick Wakeman’s No Earthly Connection

per wiki:

The original LP release contained a small square sheet of reflective plastic that could be curved into a cylinder, which when placed on the front cover allowed the viewer to see the cover drawing undistorted and with a 3D-like effect. A barely noticeable thin colourful arc on the cover (see picture) appeared then as a rainbow keyboard about to be played by Wakeman’s hands, in consonance with the album’s theme of a creation myth based on music.

Anamorphic rendering is neat =)

[Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew]

@ftg

@tdn

*Alice Cooper’s Killer, I believe, had a perforated cardboard panel that could be torn off, and torn into smaller sections that were postcards of the band.

My copy’s tearoff was a foldout calendar for 1972 with Alice hung from a rope at the top. It was set up sort of like a double album cover except the one half was meant to be torn off and itself unfolded.

I think it was Billion Dollar Babies that had the postcards, wasn’t it? (I never owned either one of those albums on vinyl. I did have School’s Out with the desk-shaped gatefold, but my copy had a plastic inner sleeve instead of the infamous panties.)

[psychonaut]

@tdn

@Arnold_Winkelried

I don’t know if this counts for the OP, but the Rolling Stones had a version of Their Satanic Majesties Request that was a 3D picture for the cover photo. The regular album had the same photo, but without the 3D effect.

I sort of remember that, but I can’t remember how it was 3D. It certainly wasn’t a hologram back in those days. But it was like a glued on piece of plastic, right?

Captain Beyond’s debut self-titled LP from 1972 did feature a hologram cover, though. I don’t know of any hologram cover which antedates it. Come to think of it, I don’t know any any other hologram covers at all.

[lawoot]

Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s Brain Salad Surgery:

from wikipedia The album cover features distinctive Giger monochromatic biomechanical artwork, integrating an industrial mechanism with a human skull and the new ELP logo (created by Giger). The lower part of the skull’s face is covered by a circular “screen”, which shows the mouth and lower face in its flesh-covered state. In the original LP release, the front cover was split in half down the center, except for the circular screen section (which was attached to the right half). Opening the halves revealed a painting of the complete face: a human female >snip<, with “alien” hair and multiple scars, including the infinity symbol and a scar from a frontal lobotomy. The two images of the woman are very similar, but the outer image (in the circle) contains what appears to be the top of a phallus below her chin, arising from the “ELP” column below.

[blondebear]

There’s a couple more interesting things about the ELP cover further down in the article,

The original acrylic-on-paper paintings were lost (or stolen) after a Giger exhibition at the National Technical Museum in Prague, which ended August 31, 2005.

Giger states in his book that Emerson, Lake & Palmer never paid the bill for his artwork for this album.

[kidneyfailure]

Some of these are completely creative and awesome. Cool packaging is a dead art : (

[Mean_Mr.Mustard]

Velvet Underground and Nico - Peel-off sticker on a banana

Three Dog Night - Hard Labor - Came with a manila file folder covering a woman giving birth

**Alice Cooper **- From the Inside - Gatefold ‘doors’ opened and welcomed you into the asylum

The Raspberries - In the shape of a bowl of raspberries
mmm

[Nonsuch]

More in the “unusual for the time” category, but the Rubber Soul jacket did not include the name of the band that recorded it, and Blonde on Blonde featured a photo that was very obviously out of focus.

[Yorikke]

@silenus

@wheresgeorge04

What is a grass-cleaning box?

Joe

Gods, you’re young!

A grass-cleaning box was a low, flat, open-topped box of a size appropriate for de-sticking and de-seeding a lid of marijuana. Gate-fold album covers were the prefered platform to roll on as well.

Not that young - I’m 36, and have smoked a LOT of weed in my time. “Grass,” however, is not a term that I think I’ve ever used. I honestly thought you were talking about your lawn.

Joe