A fabulous creation how the LP saved our lives

The era of the LP began in 1967, with ‘Sgt Pepper’; The Beatles didn’t just collect together a bunch of songs, they Made An Album. Henceforth, everybody else wanted to Make An Album.The end came only fifteen years later, coinciding with the release of Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’. By then the Walkman had taken music out of the home and into the streets and the record business had begun trying to reverse-engineer the creative process in order to make big money. Nobody would play music or listen to it in quite the same way ever again. It was a short but transformative time. Musicians became ‘artists’ and we, the people, patrons of the arts. The LP itself had been a mark of sophistication, a measure of wealth, an instrument of education, a poster saying things you dare not say yourself, a means of attracting the opposite sex, and, for many, the single most desirable object in their lives. This is the story of that time; it takes us from recording studios where musicians were doing things that had never been done before to the sparsely furnished apartments where their efforts would be received like visitations from a higher power. This is the story of how LPs saved our lives

Foreword -- A fabulous creation -- 1967: 'People were smiling and giving us the thumbs-up' -- 1968: 'The Rock Machine is a machine with a soul' -- 1969: 'Fucking incredible' -- 1970: 'The Man can't bust our music' -- 1971: 'The annus mirabilis of the rock album' -- 1972: 'There's a new sensation, a fabulous creation' -- 1973: 'There is no dark side of the moon -- it's all dark' -- 1974: 'Rock is dead. Long live popular music' -- 1975: 'Take Donna home and make love to her' -- 1976: 'What's the worst job you ever had?' -- 1977: 'With their fretboards pointed directly at the music of the spheres' -- 1978: 'The kids need new shoes' -- 1979: 'Oh I just don't know where to begin' -- 1980: 'Suddenly we were floating' -- 1981: 'Home Taping Is Killing Music' -- 1982: 'We're here to save the recording industry' -- After 1982: 'Who cares about the box?' -- Beyond 1990: Played just once -- A hidden track -- Shelf life: an appendix -- Select bibliography -- Acknowledgements -- Picture acknowledgements -- Index