Here’s a few more updates to the Vertigo Swirl section; click the sleeves to go to each album’s page:
It’s taken a while to getting round to continue the updates, but here’s a few more highly collectable Vertigo Swirls, including some of the rarest of them all; Jade Warrior’s “Released” rarely comes up for sale and “Gordon” by Gordon Waller is near impossible to find, rarer than Linda Hoyle, Tudor Lodge and possibly even Dr. Z…
Black Sabbath were at their peak in 1972, despite their excessive cocaine and alcohol consumption! Their 4th studio album (originally to be called “Snowblind in L.A.” allegedly) was released to mediocre critical acclaim, but the fans bought it in huge numbers none-the-less. Sabbath were however, going through a fairly turbulent time. Despite the successful album sales (“Paranoid” had hit No.1 in the UK album charts 2 years earlier) and the successful worldwide touring, Sabbath had very little financial reserves to show for it (although vast quantities of drugs were being consumed, so most of it probably went up their noses to be fair!).
Sabbath decided they wanted their own label and more control over the money that went with it. WWA Records was set up (although still manufactured and distributed by Vertigo) to handle the recording of their next album. Relatively short-lived, Sabbath would only release 1 studio album on this label (“Sabbath Bloody Sabbath”) before further legal problems arising over disputes with their former manager Jim Simpson would force Sabbath to effectively curtail all touring and recording commitments for nearly 2 years (“The Writ” on Sabotage in 1975 tells the story of the frustrations etc).
Meanwhile, Vertigo was also going through some changes. The swirl label was dropped in 1973 and replaced with a Roger Dean designed ‘spaceship’ label.
As a net result of all the to-ing and fro-ing between labels, “Black Sabbath Vol.4” was released several times in an 18 month time span: twice on the swirl label, a quick reissue on the new spaceship label (which was swiftly halted) and then another reissue on the new WWA label (along with the previous 3 albums and the new 5th album).
2 years later in 1975, all of their entire back catalogue (5 studio albums) was reissued yet again on Sabbath’s latest record company signing – NEMS, along with their 6th studio album “Sabotage”.
Here are two examples of ‘original’ Mono copies of The Beatles “Help!” album, both with correct wording and even the exact same matrix stampers (XEX 549-2), yet the style of the lettering is different…the one on the left has wording in a serif typeface, whilst the right hand copy has a sans serif typeface. The only other discernible difference is that the left hand copy has a KT stamped code around the spindle whilst the right hand copy has MT stamped…
Note the differences in positioning of all the silver wording and also the size of the catalogue number – the left hand copy has a larger PMC 1255 compared to the right hand copy.
The perimeter text on the left is lighter in weight than the bolder text on the right.
“THE BEATLES” appears above the publishing credit on the left hand label, whilst the right hand label has this below the publishing credit.
Any comments or suggestions on the above would be appreciated…
Both labels display:
THE GRAMOPHONE CO. LTD at the start of the perimeter wording
SOLD IN U.K. SUBJECT TO RESALE PRICE CONDITIONS, SEE PRICE LISTS
MADE IN Gt. BRITAIN
Matrices (left first then right):
X E X 5 4 9 – 2 H A 4 C
X E X 5 5 0 – 2 L A 7
X E X 5 4 9 – 2 G O A 7
X E X 5 5 0 – 2 G L G 1 5
Highly collectable and hard to find, three albums on the iconic Neon label have been added with full details of sleeves and labels. Click the sleeves below to go to each album’s page:
Fair Weather, Chris McGregor, Mike Westbrook and Dando Shaft will be added soon…the remaining few on Neon are proving elusive!
The first half dozen or so releases on Probe Records in 1969/1970 featured a variety of little known bands in the psych/garage genre. They were released on black labels with silver text and were yet another offshoot of The Gramophone Co. Ltd (EMI in other words…). These would have fitted quite nicely into the Harvest label catalogue in my opinion, but were released on Probe as purely UK issues of American label ABC Records. These black and silver label, laminated flipback issues are hard to find and quite collectable, as well as being decent examples of the genre.
Here’s the three I’ve managed to get hold of so far…
Here’s another swirl that is reasonably hard to find complete with original poster; Jackson Heights’ “Ragamuffins Fool”. One of a very few non-gatefold releases, but it did come with an embossed sleeve and also the elusive poster.
Another 8 updates to the Harvest section, click the sleeves to go to each page:
Another 8 Vertigo swirls have been updated with sleeve, label and matrix details:
If only this LP had been on Vertigo Swirl…! Still, a nice collectable copy on Mooncrest is still in the £20 region these days. Click the sleeve to see all the details, including the hard to find original company inner sleeve:
Rare Record Collector 