My Back Pages

The album cover is a lost artform. These days, they seem to be nothing more than a generic picture photoshopped to within an inch of their life. But even more of a lost artform is the back album cover. With physical releases on the downward spiral, even the front cover can still seem like a small icon. The backalbum cover always for me had more charm than the front, with the pasted on texture in the 60s and usually black and white photos, free of a barcode. The album's move to CD in the 80's led to the re-release of rocks back catalogue, but the back cover suffered. They were ahrinked down to size, the pictures and the text often relegated to the inside of the booklet.

One such instance was the back album cover for Buffalo Springfield Again, released at the end of 1967. The front album cover holds no appeal for me, and is heavily dated. The back however is a beast, with a horizontal list of "friends, enemies and people we don't know from Adam" with the text layout by famed rock photographer Henry Ditz. Looking ath the list is an interesting experience, with most of the names from rock royalty (with the humerous aside of "Ringo"), various blues legends and even Fidel which seemed daring for the time. The five names larger than the others reveal their influences, Fred Neil and Bob Gibson being Stephen Stills' big folk incluences, Ken Koblum a bass player Neil Young knew who "Broken Arrow" is also dedicated too and finally Jack Nitzche the famed orchestrator who produced "Expecting to Fly" who would begin a long association with Young. The credits for the indiviual songs are also illuminating. Back in this era, it was important that bands seemed a unit, even if most tracks had sidemen in the backing. Here, not pretense is needed and it simply lists who plays, revealing that pretty much nowhere did the band play on all tracks. David Crosby was the uncredited write of "Rock and Roll Woman" alongside the credited writer and band member Stephen Stills, but as he was signed with Columbia he simply gets his own "inspiration" credit in the songs credit, a sort of "wink wink" to those who knew". The band shows its humouress side too, listing 11, 386 (sic) guitar parts for "Bluebird" and dedicating "Mr Soul" to the women of Hollywood. All of this charm is lost when relegated to the inside of a CD case, and even more so in the digital age. Sigh.