Newly discovered label variation on Magna Carta’s live album on Vertigo swirl. ‘In Concert’ with the catalogue number 6360 068 has two issues on Vertigo swirl, even the long-established fan-site vertigo swirl.com has not published this label variation…
Note the change in layout and the addition of ‘Made in England’ to the right of the label on the 2nd, later issue (shown right).
Click here to go to the album page and see the sleeve in all its glory!
A further 8 Harvest LPs have been fully updated, click the sleeves to go to each album’s page:
The first 20 ‘6360’ Vertigo swirls have now been updated, with bigger pictures and all known reissues with label variations too. More updates to Vertigo coming soon…have you noticed the similarity between Uriah Heep, Juicy Lucy and Patto covers on this page…?
This is how Black Sabbath’s second album would have looked if they’d stuck to their original intentions…
When you see the ‘correct’ title of “War Pigs” it makes so much more sense of Marcus Keef’s front cover concept. The pink-clad-warrior idea was obviously intended to reflect the album’s original title and is probably why “War Pigs” was also the first track on the album.
Recorded in June 1970 and released in September just a few months after their debut in February of that year, USA was still deeply ingrained in the Vietnam conflict and anti-war demonstrations were rife in America. Sabbath were due to tour for the first time in support of the debut and new album releases and the new album’s title was deemed to be too inflammatory. The album title was changed to “Paranoid” to coincide with the first single release.
The album went to No.1 in the UK albums chart, and No. 12 in the US, so thankfully the title change appeared not to affect sales in any way, although instead of being identified as anti-war protesters in the US, Sabbath instead were labelled satanists and devil worshippers due to some lyrical content on the first album. Don’t know which is worse!? But it doesn’t appear to have harmed their career…
The first 7 releases on Vertigo carried the catalogue number prefix of ‘VO’ but this was dropped after Cressida’s self-titled album VO7. The numbering system then followed a more formulaic style based on existing Philips Records catalogue numbering with a 7 digit numerical code: 6360 (to denote Vertigo from other labels following a similar system) and then a 3 digit code specific to each release (although this featured some omissions, and other anomalies).
The VO5 number was never officially released although ‘Women And Children First’ by Ancient Grease was supposed to use this number but ended up being released on Mercury instead – 6338 033. The sleeve had a VO Price Code box on the rear giving a clue to its intended Vertigo release.
Click the sleeves below to go to each album’s page where you can see the gatefold sleeves in all their glory and also the various reissues on Vertigo Swirl and Spaceship labels where applicable.
These 1st releases were also the only ones to carry a reference to the Philips Records parent company. “A PHILIPS RECORD PRODUCT” appeared on the base of the labels below the word ‘VERTIGO’. This wording disappeared with the new catalogue numbering system of ‘6360 xxx’. There are reissues of many of the above without this PHILIPS RECORD credit.
Also worth noting; both Colosseum and Manfred Mann had the same “A PHILIPS RECORD PRODUCT” wording on first editions of the sleeves. This disappeared on reissues.
4 more albums have now been updated in WWA Records (see ‘others’ in the menu above):
just a few more to go now to make the section complete, including Jackie Lynton and Snafu.
a new site has just launched this lists all the versions, variations, reissues, errors, production team and even hinting at where it was recorded…
click the image above or blacksabbath.snack.ws to go to the site and see the 4 versions on Vertigo, plus the reissues on WWA and NEMS.
Two versions exist of Gentle Giant’s “Three Friends” album issued on the highly collectible Vertigo Swirl label. The first press small swirl label features an error in the song title of track 1, side 2: listed as ‘Feel The Paint’ when it should be ‘Peel The Paint’. Virtually identical in style, the 6360 070 label design features ‘Made In England’ in the top right of the label on the 2nd issue label and the song title error is corrected.
Sleeves are identical for both the above 1st and 2nd pressings and even for the 3rd pressing on the Vertigo spaceship label.
Added in sleeves and labels for 1st half of WWA Records section, featuring Black Sabbath, Gentle Giant, Groundhogs and Snafu as well as the solo album from Tony McPhee (Groundhogs). Click the sleeves to go to the relevant page:
remaining albums from Black Sabbath, Snafu, Jackie Lynton and Gentle Giant coming soon…
Purely because there isn’t room to list every label in the main menu, a new section has been created to list other rarities and obscure records with the same level of detail as the other sections. Click ‘Miscellaneous’ here or go to ‘Others’ in the main menu (you’ll also see other labels such as Gull, Pegasus, Mooncrest and WWA) under that heading. Here’s a taster of what’s in the new section:
Other labels and artists coming soon in this section include: Jimi Hendrix on Track, various releases on Island Records, Fleetwood Mac on Blue Horizon, a couple of releases on RCA’s ‘Neon’ label, Pink Floyd on Columbia…and many more!
As with all sections in this site, this will be constantly evolving and updated as and when new items are added to the collection, keep coming back!
Rare Record Collector 