A pissing match waiting to happen

The Who's Next album cover. The
music inside also left a mark
at the Sanctuary.

Here they are, the Top 10 album covers of all time, according to a Rolling Stone magazine readers poll.  (It's obvious the list is limited to rock music; there are some jazz album covers that artistically would blow most of these away.)

1. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Beatles
2. Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd
3. Nevermind, Nirvana
4. Abbey Road, Beatles
5. London Calling, The Clash
6. Sticky Fingers, Rolling Stones
7. Revolver, Beatles
8. Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen
9. Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd
10. The Velvet Underground & Nico, Velvet Underground

It's a decent, if somewhat predictable, list. We find it troubling that two groups (Beatles, Pink Floyd) are hogging half the covers. If we had been choosing we might have tried to slip in Who's Next by the Who, Music From Big Pink by Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin or Led Zeppelin IV, Herb Alpert's Whipped Cream & Other Delights, Springsteen's Born in the USA, and the Stones' original Beggars Banquet cover showing graffiti on a lavatory wall (reissued in 2002). Yeah, we just had to piss on their list.

RS notes that only five people depicted on the celebrated Sgt. Peppers cover -- always a popular pick -- are still with us: Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, of course, along with Bob Dylan, Dion DiMucci and Shirley Temple.  (The late actor Leo Gorcey of Bowery Boys fame was nixed from the cover after his agent demanded $400. He died two years later.)

Click here to view the RS Top 10 (and we hope that you enjoy the show).