When the whole world turned at 33⅓ rpm
A Fabulous Creation: How The LP Saved Our Lives David Hepworth B antam Press €23 ★★★★★
Most LPs are not as good as people say they are,’ writes David Hepworth in A Fabulous Creation, his enlightening spin through the golden age of the album. The lack of sentiment is welcome. What could have been a baby boomer’s whinge against the march of progress – you know the sort of thing: ‘It were all Frank Zappa imports around here in my day…’ – ends up as something more complex and poignant.
Hepworth contends that the notion of an album being ‘something more than just a bunch of songs’ began in 1967 with The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper and ended in 1982 with Thriller by Michael Jackson.
Bob Dylan and Radiohead are among those who might reasonably query the time frame, but fret not. Hepworth isn’t suggesting that nothing of note was created outside of this window, simply that during this period the LP was at its most potent, when albums like Dark Side Of The Moon were ‘messages from the commanding heights of the culture,’ and stepping out with a copy tucked under one’s arm signified a bold declaration of one’s affiliations.
He renders this lost world vividly. The ritualistic experience of silently absorbing 40 minutes of music without distraction; how choosing an LP was loaded with sexual intent (putting on a Barry White album was ‘the male equivalent of slipping into something more comfortable’); and why record buying comes wrapped up in identity issues: men hovering over racks of albums are ‘trying to make a choice between who they think they ought to be and who they really are’.
There are some neat factoids. Making Tusk, Fleetwood Mac constructed a replica of Lindsey Buckingham’s bathroom in the studio. Elvis Costello ‘considered track four the key to an album’, the point where something unusual is most likely to
occur. The distinction between ‘rock famous’ and ‘shopping mall famous’ is smartly illustrated via the success of Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing In The Dark. At the album’s peak, the sleeve was a powerful promotional tool, conjuring new frontiers for the listener – and the artist. Geordie boy Bryan Ferry, notes Hepworth, ‘invented a dream, turned that dream into a [Roxy Music] cover, and eventually disappeared inside it’.
By the mid-Eighties, however, the experience had shrunk to fit the cassette, Walkman and CD. It heralded a new aesthetic, ‘which was more about the art of the mix than the work of specific artists’. This unbundling of the LP led to where we are today, with the album little more than a digital shopping list, just another flicker on the hard drive. It doesn’t necessarily make the music any less valid, but it does mean we consume in a more detached manner. Modern life no longer moves at a leisurely 33 1 ⁄ revolutions per 3 minute. Hepworth captures it all with insight, affection and perspicacity – and if the references occasionally feel a tad timeworn, it’s only fitting. After all, whether listening to a classic album or reading about one, familiarity is an essential part of the experience.
Elvis Costello considered track four to be the key to an album