Rock Moment: Posters (and more) with your LPs!
Poster that came with Kiss' "Unmasked" (1980)
I remember running home with a copy of All Things Must Pass tucked under my arm – the Barker’s department store was about three blocks away from my house, and this purchase represented nearly a month’s worth of wages delivering newspapers. After all, this was worth 14 bucks: George Harrison’s first solo album with not one, not two but three records! When I unwrapped the elegant box and gently lifted the cover, folded paper fluttered out of the boxtop. It was a HUGE poster of George!
Yep, back in the days of vinyl LPs you often got yer money’s worth – and more. Some of the cooler (or not) artists of the day occasionally tucked some surprises inside the album sleeve, more often than not it was a poster. You’d slip that baby out and unfold it like a gas station map, and your heart would leap as the last flip revealed a gloriously giant artwork ready for your bedroom wall.
Like they did with so many things back then, the Beatles would seem to have pioneered this bit of merchandising. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, back in 1967, included a cardboard sheet of cutouts including a mustache. The very next year the Beatles unleashed their eponymous double album (the “White” album) with not only a huge poster with photos on one side and lyrics on the other, but with four handsome color portraits of each band member.
However they weren’t the first – in the spring of 1967, a few months before the release of Sgt. Pepper’s, Columbia Records unleashed the first Greatest Hits album by Bob Dylan. Issued in the long silence after Dylan’s 1966 motorcycle accident, this Greatest Hits was a dollar more than other albums of its time ($5.98).
A bargain nevertheless, because it included “Positively 4th Street” (a single not on any album up to that time) and a glorious poster of Dylan with trippy multi-colored hair, created by the great Milton Glaser. If you stared at it long enough, your eyes would start playing tricks on you – even without any chemical help. A true psychedelic relic, this poster is a collector’s item today.
George Harrison
Soon other artists would follow suit: Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels soundtrack (1971) would come with a poster for the movie; Stephen Stills’ Manassas (1972) had a poster with photos and a suggestion that if you were 18, you should “use the power” and register to vote. This dude Freddy who lived down my street had a copy of Alice Cooper’s School’s Out (1972) that had a little pair of paper panties as an inner record sleeve, and Cheech and Chong’s Big Bambu (1972) with some really big rolling papers. Freddy was never holding enough to fill either of those rolling papers, if you know what I mean.
June 30, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Rolling Stones’ Emotional Rescue came with a huge poster as well…
Great Post!
April 1, 2011 at 1:40 pm
Cool site!! May I ask which Barker’s Department Store you are referring to??
April 1, 2011 at 6:35 pm
Groves, Texas. Now a HEB supermarket on the site. I think the actual building became some state employment facility, but my memory is fuzzy on that.
April 2, 2011 at 3:06 pm
Thank you for the reply. I thought that Barkers was only in the San Antonio area. Not to go off topic, but do you know of any other Barkers stores in Texas? I’m trying to locate them state-by-state…