![]() The six people in the bar are watching a man burning a “Dear John” letter he’s just received, and each of the sleeve images is a viewpoint from one of the six watcher’s perspectives. Later reissues omitted the bag and have a barcode on the back cover of the sepia jacket. It also proved that you could stuff a Zeppelin album into a brown paper sack and it would STILL sell. The printing on the original issue bags is dark purple (almost black), and the printing on the reissue bags is light purple (almost pastel). The original album (and some early reissues) came inserted in a brown paper bag. This was band manager Peter Grant’s idea, so that no buyer would know which cover variation he was getting. Additionally, there is a “wiped” spot of color on each sepia-toned front cover photo. This is a reference to the little-known fact that if you wipe the black & white inner sleeve with a damp cloth, it will permanently turn to color (original issues only reissues do not change color). The six cover variations are labeled A through F, and the letter for each is printed in white on the spine, at the far left. The jacket was designed by Hipgnosis (best known for their work on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon LP cover), and was originally issued in six different cover variations each side of each cover variation was a view perspective of each of six people in a bar scene. The actual bar, based on the Old Absinthe House in New Orleans, was built on a sound stage at Shepperton film studios in London for the cover shoot. This topped the previous record for most albums on the chart, which was set in 1975 by… Led Zeppelin. It sold over 2 million copies in the first 10 days of its release and generated massive store traffic in the US, as it was heralded as a savior to the then-lagging record industry here. The sales were so good that it resulted in Zep’s entire catalog (9 albums) climbing back into the Billboard top 200 during the weeks of Oct 27 and Nov 3. It also instantly topped the charts in Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The album went to #1 in the UK in the first week and #1 in the US in the second week. The album was recorded near the end of 1978 at ABBA’s Polar Music studio in Stockholm and is musically dominated by John Paul Jones, who wrote six of the seven tracks. On August 15, 1979, after a two-year absence from the music scene (brought about by the unexpected death of Robert Plant’s son Karac in 1977), Led Zeppelin returned with the release of their eighth studio album, In Through The Out Door, so named because Jimmy Page said “That’s the hardest way to get back in.”
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