(Album ©1987, Geffen Records)
Here’s another record that 
I’ve already written about on this blog. This is one of the all-time great albums, and it really came out of nowhere, shocking the rock music world that was deeply stuck in the hair metal era. At first glance, this appeared to be part of that genre, but in reality it was a dark, gritty reaction to the increasingly glossy, overproduced, increasingly not heavy metal scene. I remember hearing “Welcome to the Jungle” for the first time, seeing the video on MTV in my dorm at college and being worried that this was a reaction to hair metal, but it was overcompensating and getting too dark.
album covers, I just talk about the cover and maybe the songs on an album, and it’s sales. But with this record, the conditions under which this record got made are critical to the cover’s design. 
with the Skynyrd / Allmans / Marshall Tucker / Outlaws scene, and in fact they followed Skynyrd out of Jacksonville, Florida and onto the charts. Their first three records all went platinum, which was due as much to the company which they kept as to how good they were. No offense meant, but their first record wasn’t THAT good. The fact was that Southern rock was at a high point by the late ’70’s, and Molly Hatchet stepped up to help satisfy the demand. 
no surprise that I’m including my favorite album of all time. This record was a phenomenon when it was released in 1975, because an artist who few people knew about, who was about to be dropped by his label, turned in an all-time great collection of songs, became a star, and set a course for greater things in the future. The cover, though, is a thing of beauty unto itself.