Sleeve Talk

The concept album is one of those rock ideas that got thoroughly shat upon by punk as an example of the previous generation's ridiculous pomposity and became the butt of a million Spinal Tap-ish jokes regarding epic songs about wizards and elves. Even though I grew up reading Marvel comics and science fiction novels I was thankfully too young to also fall under the spell of Genesis, Yes, Barclay James Harvest and all their Proggy brethren whose every album seemed to be a grandiosly conceived Sci-Fi or fantasy concept of some kind or other. ELO's more poppy form of pretension got me early though and I fell in love with their 1974 album "Eldorado" which was a concept album (sorry, it's actually called a symphony) about the magical goings on in a fairy tale dream world. I never paid much attention to Jeff Lynne's lyrics so it wasn't the subject matter (full of all sorts of silly stuff about knights, rainbows, and Robin Hood), I just liked the way it sounded. I also loved the sleeve which I still think is gorgeous.

In case you don't recognize it, that's a still from "The Wizard of Oz" which is also about a dream world. I thought it was very clever of the designer to go with an image like that rather than other, more obvious routes – like hiring Roger Dean – and was all set to write about how a lot of design is about making intelligent choices and how a designer's brain is his most important tool, but in my research I found out that the idea to use that picture actually came from band manager Don Arden's daughter Sharon. Digging further I discovered that "Sharon" is none other than Sharon Osbourne – yes, that one, Mrs. Ozzy Osbourne. Still, it is a great idea no matter where it came from; the image of the glittery, iconic red shoes is beautifully striking and doesn't look at all dated unlike a lot of other concept albums from the era. The small, elegant typography looks like the engraving on an expensive invitation to a grand ball, a feel reinforced by the gold border around the edges. It's certainly a huge improvement on the "here are our belly buttons" sleeve of their previous album.

This was the first ELO album to use a full orchestra and the first two tracks segue together to produce about the grandest, dreamiest opening you can imagine. "Eldorado Overture" starts with an incredibly pretentious spoken-word intro by some bloke called Peter Ford-Robertson who has the warm and plummy tones of an old BBC radio presenter announcing the death of the King. Then the orchestra comes in, swooping and crashing in madly baroque fashion, and the moment where it suddenly dies and fades into the shimmering "Can't Get It Out Of My Head" is sublime – probably the single most heavenly moment ELO ever produced.

Download: Eldorado Overture/Can't Get It Out Of My Head - Electric Light Orchestra (mp3)
Buy: "Eldorado" (album)