Memorable Album Covers: The Sensual Soul of “Al Green’s Greatest Hits”

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Al Green oozes playful sensuality on the cover of Al Green’s Greatest Hits. The album was a popular summation of his career when it was released in April 1975, showcasing his sweet, aching voice on songs such as “Let’s Stay Together.” Most greatest hits packages are nothing more than blatant attempts to cash in on previously released material. But the cover of Al Green’s Greatest Hits turned a song collection into an artistic statement. For that reason, I have chosen Al Green’s Greatest Hits as the latest entry to highlight in my ongoing series about memorable album covers.

I remember buying Al Green’s Greatest Hits in 1975, when I was 12 years old. I had already owned several Al Green singles. I was drawn to that high-pitched, tender voice, so vulnerable on songs like “Call Me,” and emotional on “Tired of Being Alone.” I was fascinated by how he alternately cooed, shouted, and caressed the ear of the listener.

Producer Willie Mitchell complemented Green with lush arrangements, featuring the Memphis horns. Al Green and Willie Mitchell introduce me to love and romance long before I ever screwed up the courage to ask a girl out on a date.

Al Green was my artist. None of my friends where I lived in Battle Creek, Michigan, had ever heard of him. And I’m not sure their parents would have been happy if they had. Not only was his voice and manner sensual, his voice could sound downright effeminate to the uninitiated.

My older sister Cathy was of dating age, and the guys she occasionally brought home viewed my Al Green 45-records with scorn. One of her dates actually smashed all of my Al Green singles during an unauthorized house party while my parents were away.

Al Green’s Greatest Hits was a godsend. With one purchase, I could reclaim almost all the Al Green singles that some random cretin had destroyed. And on top of that, Al Green seemed to burst into my living room through that album cover. Here he was, smiling, full of movement, and (although I did not know the right word to use at the time), sensual. And in his tight, white leather pants and bare chest, he exuded a confidence that I hoped would rub off on me. The back cover featured not one but four Al Greens, this time fully clad in a white leather jacket, invited me to share some sort of emotional rapture.

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Technically, Al Green’s Greatest Hits was nothing new. I knew his songs and face already. But that cover was like a revelation: now I had the right image to go along the name.

Four years later, a gifted musician named Prince Rogers Nelson would update Green’s androgynous appeal by appearing bare chested himself on the cover of Prince (then donning stockings and underwear shortly thereafter on Dirty Mind).

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But whereas Prince was overtly sexual, Al Green was sensual. Nearly 40 years later, the cover of Al Green’s Greatest Hits still captures the essence of my Al Green.

PS: 36 years after I bought Al Green’s Greatest Hits, I paid a visit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Without question the highlight of my visit was coming across an exhibit containing the actual leather trousers Green wore on the cover of Greatest Hits. I had had no idea the trousers were on display. I felt like I had just discovered Superman’s cape. Also, for more album covers in my series, see:

A Band of Brothers “Born to Run”

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We remember Bruce Springsteen and Clarence Clemons as being both kindred spirits and successful band mates. And the album cover of Born to Run captures the essence of their story as we’ve learned it. Born to Run, profiled here for my series on memorable album covers, endures because the cover expresses the personality of an artist and his band.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band famously developed a reputation for being a rollicking, adventurous band of brothers, especially during the group’s marathon concerts that exuded energy and joy. The E Street Band was never a democracy. It was the Boss’s group to run and, later in his career, to disband and regroup depending on his personal musical needs and vision. But especially in the early going, the E Street was essential to Springsteen’s identity — so much so that he wrote about his band mates in “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out.”

And no one in the seven-person band touched him like saxophonist Clemons. The story of their meeting has been told several times. As Clemons told a fan website:

A rainy, windy night it was, and when I opened the door the whole thing flew off its hinges and blew away down the street. The band was on-stage, but staring at me framed in the doorway. And maybe that did make Bruce a little nervous because I just said, “I want to play with your band,” and he said, “Sure, you do anything you want.” The first song we did was an early version of “Spirit in the Night“. Bruce and I looked at each other and didn’t say anything, we just knew. We knew we were the missing links in each other’s lives. He was what I’d been searching for. In one way he was just a scrawny little kid. But he was a visionary. He wanted to follow his dream. So from then on I was part of history.

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As reported in Peter Ames Carlin’s recently published biography of Springsteen, Clemons became an integral part of the band’s sound and a musical soul mate, as well. When Clemons died of a stroke in 2011, Springsteen was at his side with a guitar. Later Springsteen said of Clemons, “He was my great friend, my partner, and with Clarence at my side, my band and I were able to tell a story far deeper than those simply contained in our music.

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That relationship is perfectly expressed on the cover of Born to Run, which consists of a photo taken by Eric Meola (the image is one of 900 he took). The body English says it all: Springsteen, a Fender Esquire in one hand, leans on Clemons, smiling affectionately at his band mate instead of looking at you. Clemons gives the Boss a sideways glance, his expressive body leaning back comfortable into Springsteen’s as he plays his beloved saxophone. The clean design, consisting of a plain white background and simple lettering, keep your eyes focused on the two men Interestingly, Springsteen has set aside his guitar to admire his band made, whereas Clemons looks like he’s working on Take 37 of a saxophone solo for “Jungleland” — an observation that might be fairly true.

In fact, making the album was anything but a carefree experience. Carlin reports that the recording of the album was “slow, grim, and tortuous.” Clemons “spent 16 hours playing and replaying every not of his ‘Jungleland’ solo in order to satisfy Bruce’s bat-eared attention to sonic detail.” After stripping his songs down and rebuilding them to achieve different sounds he was looking for, and after pushing his band to the extreme, Springsteen was still unhappy with the finished product of “unplayable parts, unfixable mistakes, and unmixable recordings.”

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Of course, history remembers Born to Run differently. Rolling Stone magazine ranks Born to Run as one of the Top 20 albums of all time — “timeless record about the labors and glories of aspiring to greatness.” The album is also listed the Library of Congress National Recording Registry of historic recordings.

The cover itself has become beloved, too, for expressing the passion and joy of Springsteen and his most famous of all E Street band members. (In a case of both art and life imitating art, Springsteen and Clemons were known to duplicate the album cover pose onstage during their concerts.) Here’s how Carlin describes it: “For in this picture, Bruce knew, resided the heart of the band: unity, brotherhood, a small fulfillment of the American ideals of strength, equality, and community.”

Well said.