I'm not sure how many of you might recognise this historical fact, but in the early 1970s, a rock musician named Al Stewart was eaking out a living producing a variety of rock albums and songs in every genre' before he hit it big with historical folk-rock.
That's right, "Historical Folk-Rock", featuring songs that drew from history, romantic images. His big breakthrough song in the U.S. was "The Year of the Cat", followed by other hits and popular releases "Time Passages", "Song on the Radio", "Midnight Rocks", "Running Man", and "On the Border" among others.
But prior to the 1976 album "Year of the Cat", Stewart had a number of albums that were released in England and in the U.S. with different jacket artwork. In about 1973, he had an LP that had a recognizable image for comic book fans...
I had to look twice when I saw this in the record library of our campus radio station in about 1977, cause it was so similar to images of Dr. Strange jumping from one dimension to another. Sure enough, the wikipedia entry clearly identifies this as Dr. Strange:
"The U.K. cover (CBS) is a gatefold affair, with a simple photo of Stewart leaning on a mantelpiece. The photo was taken by photographer and film director Mario Grattarola at the Geffreye Museum in London. The U.S. album cover (Janus Records), by Hipgnosis and George Hardie, is a photography-like rendition of the Marvel Comics character Doctor Strange using his Cloak of Levitation to travel through a hole created in the air into an alternative universe.
I was dying to see the other side of the LP jacket to see who this was, and where he was appearing. However, there is no similar image on the back.
The"Modern Times" LP released in the U.S. in 1975, features a 1930s roadster, gangster and moll on it infront of a stately brownstone mansion...but in the middle background, is a blinding light flare, which may be representative of Dr. Strange casting a spell. The central figure is not clear, but the flare is dead center of the cover, and draws your attenion. What do you think?
I think these are two of the several comic book images that appeared on rock LPS in the 1970s...and the third being "Reflections of a Super-Hero" with a Romita drawing of Peter Parker looking at a reflected image of Spider-Man on the cover. 'Nuff Said.
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My dim recollection is there's an image like that at the end of the instalment in Strange Tales #137 ("When Meet the Mystic Minds!"), but there might be a closer image in an issue from around the time as the album.
Ah, very neat, Kirk.
Neal Adams did the artwork for the cover and fold-out comic on Who Will Save The World? by The Groundhogs in 1972.
If you scroll down and click on the small illos, you'll see the whole thing and recognise the cast.
http://shop.totallyvinyl.com/record/2941-groundhogs-ua-lp-vinyl
It's the Groundhogs, so it's loud, no-nonsense noise from a great trio. I saw them supporting the Stones in '71? at green's Playhouse in Glasgow and, if anything, they were louder than Jagger and co. What a racket, what a great night.
Ah yes, "Who Will Save the World"....I had forgotten that one.... I SAID, I HAD FORGOTTEN THAT ONE, STEPHEN...(any hearing left after those concerts?)
As Monty Python said, "Our three main weapons are....make that our FOUR main weapons are..."
Surprisingly, not a lot of damage. Lots of big name bands played Glasgow and Edinburgh and Deep Purple were a tad on the loud side as well. But there were nutters at the occasional club who would stick their head inside the bass drum (there was time when drummers seemed to like to take the front skin off the bass drum.) - and what's your name? 3 O'CLOCK!
Or was that Dick Giordano?
I believe you are right.
Oddly enough, these were some of my first images of Dr. Strange that I recall showing up on the spinner rack, when I started to take notice of what was ON the spinner rack....
I recall someone just missing someone else stepping through a shimmering gate... but had no idea what the ongoing storyline or arc was about as a kid. (Those magician stories were just too weird for me...land bridges that wander and lead to no where...sightless lumps of clay that fire eye beams like cyclops trying to break out of their prison, etc.)
Even more surprising. Someone had recently pointed out that (probably in the Steve Ditko stuff that I've been reading about) there had never been a full cover of Dr. Strange on Strange Tales until the last Ditko installment, and that had been cobbled together by the production staff to be printer-ready.
Oddly enough, I believe there was a terrible snowstorm in my region as FF #61 came out, possibly in January or February, and all the schools closed down. Drifts were five foot high and no sidewalks were plowed. To walk seven blocks downtown, you had to walk in the streets, where there were only two lanes of traffic plowed. I remember this because I had to walk downtown to get the new FF #61 which had just come out, and featured the Sandman and a cliffhanger for Reed Richards...but also on the same spinner rack was a Dr. Strange cover, "The End at Last"...and for some reason, I seemed to think that his series was ending.
These impressions are wrapped together in my childhood memory, cause I bought the FF but not the Strange Tales, though I flipped through it and was confused by the double pin-up of Dormammu attacking Eternity...and then, placing the precious FF #61 inside my shirt against my skin to keep it protected from the snow and weather, I walked home...only to discover the back cover had stuck to my skin due to my persperation from walking home through the snow! HA!
Thanks, Kirk.
Alright, I have a confession to make. I should have done this before I posted that lengthy memory above, but I didn't. And it wasn't until 2 a.m. that I put down the book "Marvel Comics: The Untold Story" and got on the internet before I realized that I had forgotten to fact-check my memory.
I went to Mike's Amazing World of Marvel ComicsKang's Time Platform to check out what was on the racks when FF #61 was arriving in February 1967, and it turns out thatStrange Tales #156with Zom on the cover was out the next month, Feburary, with the second part of the Reed Richards cliffhange in FF #62 That means the Dr.Strange cover that I recall, #146"The End At Last" must have been out in May 1966 as the FF #52with the debut of the Black Panther was on the spinner racks. Now, I KNOW that I didn't start regularly checking out the spinner racks until FF #55, so there is NO WAY that it could have been Ditko's last installment that I saw during that snowy February snowstorm trek down to the corner store.
In fact, it wasn't the FF #61 Sandman adventure that I was hunting...it wasthe next issueduring the snowstorm. Dr. Strange didn't have the cover of Strange Tales for #155 or 157, which narrows down the month for me.
So, basically, I'm telling you that I've confused two memories of walking downtown to check out the spinner rack...and got the issue I was seeking in the snowstorm off by just one issue #. But I do recall flipping through most of the rest of the issues that had come out that week and were available to buy. I just didn't have a paper route and my allowance was too small to pick up anything except my beloved Jack Kirby's FF.
Even walking around looking for empty pop bottles to redeem for 2 cents or a nickle wasn't any good during the winter, when pop drinking dropped and the ground in Michigan was snow covered. Durn! Life was tough!
...Remember the 90s thing of the unauthorized Amy Grant album cover swipe on a Doctor Strange comic cover ???
Remember the Barry Smith LP sleeve for a (from the vaults , actually) Byrds LP ???
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