Kent Hartman > Quotes

“Kosh’s design work for the Eagles on the acclaimed Hotel California album package from the year before, which included an extravagant gatefold and poster, cost only $42,000 for the finished product.”
― Kent Hartman, Goodnight, L.A.: The Rise and Fall of Classic Rock -- The Untold Story from inside the Legendary Recording Studios

“While other successful rock-and-roll acts of the day such as Gary Lewis and the Playboys, the Buckinghams, and the Grass Roots remained perfectly content with the status quo of putting out a new album every six months that contained a couple of hoped-for hits and eight or ten unremarkable “filler” tracks, the Beatles would have none of it. They raised the bar for one and all with Sgt. Pepper’s by making every tune matter. The melody, the lyrics, the instrumentation, the arrangement, the cohesion, the sequencing, the message, the cover art—it was all inextricably entwined. Albums were now to be listened to from beginning to end. No more cherry-picking among the cuts just to hear the latest hit song from the radio. The record labels, of course, still tried to pick the hits via 45-RPM releases to AM radio, but the public increasingly wanted the entire album to matter. Listening had become a full-blown, immersive, even communal experience. Accordingly, new LP releases were alternately ogled, examined, discussed, dissected, deconstructed, reconstructed, criticized, embraced, rejected, cherished, and generally played until the grooves wore out.”
― Kent Hartman, Goodnight, L.A.: The Rise and Fall of Classic Rock -- The Untold Story from inside the Legendary Recording Studios

“Having been on a veritable cinematic tear after his much-publicized release from a two-year Army hitch, Presley was in Florida to film no less than his fifth postservice flick in a mere fifteen months, this one to be called Follow That Dream.”
― Kent Hartman, Goodnight, L.A.: The Rise and Fall of Classic Rock -- The Untold Story from inside the Legendary Recording Studios

“Mere afterthoughts until Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles came along in 1967, the cardboard jackets surrounding vinyl albums suddenly began to matter. By the mid- to late seventies elaborate, expensive-to-produce LP covers and their associated inserts such as posters, stickers, and booklets had become commonplace. With recent releases by all sorts of front-line music acts—from Earth, Wind & Fire to Yes to Led Zeppelin—selling millions of copies with extraordinarily rendered artwork and sleeves, the better a record’s packaging looked, the thinking went, the better the chances were to increase sales.”
― Kent Hartman, Goodnight, L.A.: The Rise and Fall of Classic Rock -- The Untold Story from inside the Legendary Recording Studios

“Album-wise, the seeds of sonic change came two years prior with the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles in 1967. The first true rock-and-roll concept album (though some would argue that Pet Sounds in 1966 by the Beach Boys got there first or even the Beatles’ own Revolver), the artistically adventurous Sgt. Pepper’s astonished listeners in countless ways, perhaps chief among them because every song on the LP was good. As in, really good.”
― Kent Hartman, Goodnight, L.A.: The Rise and Fall of Classic Rock -- The Untold Story from inside the Legendary Recording Studios

“Vietnam War along with rampant poverty, political corruption, and long-festering civil rights issues made peppy pop ditties like “Sugar, Sugar” and “I Think I Love You” almost laughable to anyone not in elementary school.”
― Kent Hartman, Goodnight, L.A.: The Rise and Fall of Classic Rock -- The Untold Story from inside the Legendary Recording Studios

“He wanted his group to be just like the Fab Four, who met the only set of criteria that mattered to him: they wrote their own music, played their own instruments, looked like they were having a good time, and, perhaps most important to a kid with a turbulent home life, were self-contained—the Beatles were in control.”
― Kent Hartman, Goodnight, L.A.: The Rise and Fall of Classic Rock -- The Untold Story from inside the Legendary Recording Studios