Loved and lost | 21 March 2019

On 19 June 1948, the modern LP was unveiled at a press conference by the Columbia Records president Ted Wallerstein, who, as Billboard magazine reported, ‘demonstrated listening qualities of both 10- and 12-inch vinyl microgroove platters’. The company issued Frank Sinatra’s long-player, The Voice of Frank Sinatra, a week later.

The title of David Hepworth’s new book might therefore imply a starting point of 1948 — similar to the approach taken by Travis Elborough’s excellent 450-page history of the album, The Long Player Goodbye (2007) — but Hepworth’s book is both narrower and more autobiographical, largely confined to the years 1967 to 1982.

Following on from last year’s collection of articles, Nothing is Real: The Beatles Were Underrated and Other Sweeping Statements About Pop, Hepworth continues his customary policy towards potential objections, best expressed in his earlier work, 1971 – Never A Dull Moment: Rock’s Golden Year (2016): ‘The difference is this: I’m right.’

A Fabulous Creation contends that the LP began with the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) and effectively ended with Michael Jackson’s all-conquering corporate juggernaut Thriller (1982). This simply doesn’t hold water, like many of his other claims, such as the assertion that a record player could not be left alone otherwise the label would destroy the stylus (did he never own one with auto-return?), or that in 1972 Britain had only two TV channels and its film industry ‘was kept afloat by the latest releases in the Confessions of series’.That series began in 1974.

Prior to Pepper, he writes, LPs were generally supposed to be ‘two hits and a lot of filler’. Try these for size: Frank Sinatra’s Songs For Swingin’ Lovers! (1956), Bob Dylan’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963 – yep, just chock-full of filler, that one), The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds (1966).