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Physical Graffiti pre-release artwork mock up


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Physical Graffiti Pre-release Artwork/Mock-up

Hi,

Newbie here, first posting. I thought that I would like to let you all see something that I have owned for over 40 years. As a newbie, I should do some of the other things that you all like them to do and explain myself and tell you great tales from many years ago. Well, my first Led Zeppelin gig, oh, dear dear, not my first rock n roll gig (I’d seen Bowie earlier in the month and I saw Chuck Berry last week). Well, it was cold, another boring, cold, Scottish Sunday winter afternoon. I can’t remember whom I persuaded to go, it was somebody from my crowd or from school (I am still only 15 and three quarters – but that’s really sixteen aint it). I was a kid who could run wild and was from a family who would let me run wild. My father was a professional musician but the kind the just went out and played dancehall music 7 nights a week. So, somehow there was me and someone else (because I didn’t go myself). We caught the bus at 6 O’clock with enough spare money for a bag of chips on the way home. We got off the bus at the West End and marched up Lothian road and we reached the Usher Hall and thought “was it a week ago that we saw Chuck Berry and kept marching on up the hill. We got to the clock at Tollcross and I remember, it was getting busy. There were lots of older guys with long hair and old trench coats, heavy metal heads “what a magical world I thought. So, we kept on trudging up to the Kings, we had the money but there was no way that you could buy a ticket! Slowly, as time passed, we met a fewpeople we knew and we all huddled together. The queue slowly filtered in to the venue leaving us on the street, like all the others without a ticket. On the right hand side of the Kings Theatre, there is a small alleyway, where there used to be 3 fire doors. You could go up to these doors and stick your ear up to them and hear the gig (this had not been proved before because this is the first eve heavy rock gig that the Kings Theatre had ever put on- in fact, the first and last).The Kings theatre was never of that type (we had the empire, The Caley and the Usher Hall for gigs). So, time flies by and we kept hanging about and hanging about, the door. Then soundsWe were freezing but we were loving it. Some big boys come along and they were quite drunk (to us they were much older men but they were in their twenties but they attempted to knock down the fire doors to get into the auditorium (we couldn’t believe it, there must have been about 50 people listening at the doors when this heavy mob arrived). The boys tried pushing the door with them al leaning on it at one point and also lying down and kicking the doors at the same time and just missing our heads. Not working, big boys started to push the top of the door (some on their shoulders). The kings was having some outside problems and a scaffold had been erected, turning round from the doors and looking across the alleyway, you could spot a pile of scaffolding and a pile of 4 by 2s as soon as the boys saw the tools, we were in the door in about 5 minutes, I remember. They smashed the doors using 4 by 2s and prising the doors using pieces of scaffolding. We were in without anyone hearing was going on (the band had played 2 hours already), we thought what are we going to do (but the ushers were virtually of retirement age) and the place was mad. Everyone was standing (there was 1500 that night (the heat when we broke down the doors, it was like a different world to the freezing cold of outside). Someone had just turned up the heat and the volume up ‘Dazed and Confused’ was playing. I also got to see Stairway, Whole Lotta Love and Heartbreaker before the end of the gig (I was at least in there another hour I think in total. As you can see, I’ll never forget those days, perfect end.

 So, that was it, rock ‘n roll, that was all I could do, I’d always loved rock ‘n roll. As I was a wild child, I thought ‘to hell with it’, if you are not smart enough to get a smart job, get a job that you’ll really love or create the job. My fascination with the record was rearing its ugly head again and the obsession with rock ‘n roll paraphernalia, I would collect anything. I’d become 16, I just wanted to do a job in music, can you be a pop star by getting a job in music. I tried and failed over all these years, that was it@ I saw an ad for a shop assistant and I was allowed to leave to school once I completed all my exams and on my last day I left, not caring about the results. I went thought the interview, I turned up looking like myself, having the attitude; denim jacket, long hair long enough to sit on I think and passed with flying colours, I did. I knew this shop didn’t want any ordinary (you had to know what you were talking about), so, here I am, late ’73, new kid on the block. All the guys in the shop (around 25ish age wise), they were like big brothers, taking me drinking every night, they loved me although I got a load of the shitty jobs but As I think about it now, some of these jobs were actually great. I wanted to learn the trade, I loved every minute of it, unbelievable job for a 16 year old with the coolest guys in the world around me, there many other really great guys at that time who went to tackle the music business (to be a star!) possibly working for my employer at some point. We would meet these guys many, many many times, they knew the whole gang went for a drink every night after the shop shut, and this brings us to Larry. Larry was what you call a display rep I think and I think that he worked for the business before, a real big friend of all the guys in the shop, you’d see him many nights in the pub. Larry was the man that you ordered your records from and always, at the same time, he would put up a shop display for the forthcoming album of an artist like an album sleeve or a poster. He fire them up on the wall with that staple gun, all that was to fancy and too precious, I said “ I don’t think if I can’t put that anywhere and I’ll see if I can put it up in the shop next week”. The other part of his job was to sell you all future releases, most would only be about 2 or 3 weeks away to release. Larry carried with him either a picture of the sleeve, possibly a ‘white label’ (which you could listen to while doing your order). He could have stickers or other paraphernalia such as badges from the album and always usually a press release regarding the record company (quite a rare item, going out all DJs and telling them what it was all about). So, I have started work and here I am, it’s late ’73, Christmas parties and all that, you really get to know not just Larry but other guys, ones who were Island display reps, others EMI, Polydor. Larry was Atlantic. Every month of 74, well he came in once a month for every order (he lived in the city), we saw Larry all the time and he was meant to be ‘up on his job’ and we kept saying “when’s the new ‘Zeppelin album”, ‘god he was meant to be in touch with the mother ship’ although he worked for WEA. He had to go to headquarters once a month, to collect all his new rubbish which he needed to fulfil his new month for selling all of these new albums (badges, stickers, new covers, white label pressings). I had to get all the information about when the new album was coming out, customers are screaming out for it!

So one day in ’74. Larry comes in and shows me the cover and what he has picked up in WEA’s offices or wherever he went to get all of his stuff for the month. I am sure that he said that in ’73 or very early ’74, I hear there’s a new Led Zeppelin album coming out (maybe it was even in the press then). They started recording in November ’73, so, he got information or very quickly after November that there was a new album coming soon. I think about the middle of the year, Larry came in and had the order book and form and could order for you the new Led Zeppelin album that day, like every other shop , we put the order in on day one. In those days, it’s a g, it can sell out, a gamble, if you didn’t order enough in for 2 weeks supply, and it could sell out at the pressing plant. Physical Graffiti, we thought, no problem, we ordered 100 copies and the amazing thing about ordering PHYSICAL graffiti as I remember, for every 10 copies ordered, you were given a free copy of the 'Trampled underfoot’ limited edition single. In fact, I remember Larry having one because he would never let it got. So we got 10 copies, coming in every week. They were never sold in the shop and I kept taking them home, I thought ‘this is rare rock ;n roll. Larry must have been 2 or 3 months still the same, no information, no nothing from Larry and he says ‘ I got something', I’d been bickering him for nearly a year now, he said the new sleeve had arrived for the Led Zeppelin album, it wasn’t the same sleeve for the Led Zeppelin album I knew and I never really knew what it was until I actually got the album in my hand. Now after all these years, I have to show you what this actually is, people were screaming, I don’t know why, were some record shops not going to make an order or something. It’s a mock-up’ to satisfy someone somewhere. I have read about the hypnosis sleeves and it was always Page and Grant who went along to kind of, finalise the ‘say’ or was this for the record company to have something to show. So Larry shows me up and he folds it all out, we’ve still not a clue what the cover is going to be, the album gets released and then I look at it again, and I see it’s a mock up of the 2 inner sleeves opened up with only the original image pasted over the window frame and not yet cut to size. So this has been , I think, we have the shot of the building both night and day, now, we’re going to have pictures in the windows of the inner sleeve. Now, this shows the pictures, the original pictures that were going to be cropped and fitted into the windows, this is a ‘hurried job to satisfy somebody. You will also notice ‘Physical Graffiti’ is written not near the windows and in 2 different colours, sorry, the large picture is very hard to photograph, being 2 foot square. We will and my good friend who’s writing this, we then, will photograph the back and front of both inner sleeves on my mock up and you will notice that some of these mock ups were never used and it is completely different from the final artwork that was released. It may be of interest to somebody and may spark a great discussion but I know that many of these people must be very old how this became or who pulled the photo shots. What was the reason that all these images were not used for the final album or was it copyright who did not want it or something. I hope that you have enjoyed our little journey be nice to hear from you, surely there must be another one of these as Larry only worked around Scotland and other reps must have done likewise further afield in the UK. Maybe some have been destroyed. Okay here are the photos! It was difficult to do the big one, get your inner sleeves must say, I am sure this was made in England but perhaps made for America because it has the American catalogue number.

 

full thing.jpg

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wow sam,mine is the same, maybe larry cut off colour band its not made for,not made for sleeves as no flip ins, is this yours? took a while for an answer, tank you so much its a hard subject, so long ago, hey thanks for the great photo now people can look at their  inner sleeves and see the changes

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Whenever I walk past the King's Theatre, I always think to myself, 'Led Zeppelin played in there'.

I've always wondered what the gig was like (I was only born in '79) so it's nice to get some insight from someone who was there.

Interesting stuff on the cover too, I have the picture framed in my living room, thankfully my wife loves Led Zeppelin too.

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14 minutes ago, Mook said:

Whenever I walk past the King's Theatre, I always think to myself, 'Led Zeppelin played in there'.

I've always wondered what the gig was like (I was only born in '79) so it's nice to get some insight from someone who was there.

Interesting stuff on the cover too, I have the picture framed in my living room, thankfully my wife loves Led Zeppelin too.

Thanks Mook, next time go up the alley to the doors, you say a picture on the wall? these are printers proofs printed on inner sleeve grade cardboard, could you buy the poster or was it a swan song advertising?

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2 minutes ago, kammo-kid said:

Thanks Mook, next time go up the alley to the doors, you say a picture on the wall? these are printers proofs printed on inner sleeve grade cardboard, could you buy the poster or was it a swan song advertising?

Ha ha, I'll check the alley out. I used to drink in Burlington Bertie's a lot so I'm familiar with the area. I work about 10 minutes away on Morrison Street.

The framed picture is just a poster we bought from All Posters online, it's nothing particularly rare.

There's only one picture relating to this gig on this site unfortunately...

Edinburgh - Fans Line-up For LZ Tickets (Nov. 1972)

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Cameras were rare in those days and only captain kirk and pals had  mobiles, that photo must have been taken in the afternoon,gets dark about 4 in january, hey who would take a camera to a gig in 73,i dont even recall if i owned one

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27 minutes ago, kammo-kid said:

Cameras were rare in those days and only captain kirk and pals had  mobiles, that photo must have been taken in the afternoon,gets dark about 4 in january, hey who would take a camera to a gig in 73,i dont even recall if i owned one

I believe the photo above is from November 1972, the day the tickets went on sale.

I would never use a camera or mobile phone at a gig in 2017, never mind in 1973. I go to enjoy the moment, not to take pictures & videos. Although I'm grateful that other people did from some of these gigs from the 60/70s.

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