Until the 70s, Melodiya sleeves were pretty much all the same, except for a few rare ones that were sold abroad. Some were used as advertising space for Soviet monopolies, while others featured abstract graphics. Back in the 1940s and ’50s, record jackets often had holes in the center, and the labels on shellac discs carried portraits of the performers, effectively serving as covers. By the early 1960s, the cut-out centers and portrait labels were gone.
Composer David Tukhmanov, whose 1976 concept album On the Wave of My Memory became one of the first Soviet records to feature an original cover design, also said that he was among the first to release true albums on the state label Melodiya in the early 1970s:
“Most of the audio releases back then were just compilations—collections of songs by a single lyricist or a single performer. My very first record, How Beautiful the World Is, released by Melodiya in 1972, already carried the traits of a real album: recurring themes, songs flowing into each other, a sense of conceptual unity. I was able to realize this idea more fully with On the Wave of My Memory.
Only the album format allowed me to bring my sonic and compositional ideas to life. At the time there was an extreme shortage of equipment, and the whole concert scene was completely unprepared for works of this kind.”
The songs were set to carefully chosen examples of world classical poetry from different eras, selected by his then-wife, Tatyana Sashko. David Tukhmanov, 35, spent the summer and fall of 1975 working on the record.
It was, in a lot of ways, the official Soviet Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band—and not by accident. In a bunch of interviews, Tukhmanov himself said that that famous Beatles record was his inspiration and then he tricked the artistic council:
Of course, this idea was inspired by the Beatles because it was, they who began releasing albums with conceptual titles and a suite-based approach…I was afraid that anything related to pop would be
prohibited. But I managed to mislead the artistic council. I said it would be a classical performance—and sang it in a classical style. Then the rhythm was changed.
Cover Art
Designer Alexander Shvarts:
“I did part of the work in my studio and part of it in Tukhmanov’s apartment. I’d listen to different music, talk with David—who was usually sitting at the piano—and think. Then came the paper, the pen, and the work.
Back then, the Art Council had total ideological and artistic power. I was an artist, and I always did what I felt was right. The first version of the cover was fully hand-drawn. The council said it was “incompatible with the ideals of socialist realism” and banned it.
The second version was just a gradual stripping away of the drawn imagery. The censors literally cut it up with scissors, and what remained is what got released. No one asked for my approval.
I’m happy to be recognized as the author of the first Soviet album cover, but from an artistic standpoint, it was completely ruined.”
Variations
There are a bunch of original editions, plus a few modern versions of the cover:
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