For more than 30 years, Led Zeppelin collectors have been researching an item that is considered by many to be the rarest Led Zeppelin record ever made. Only two copies of the vinyl record are confirmed to exist and there are likely just a handful of copies of the record’s sleeve in existence.
The record is an unreleased promotional interview record produced in 1979 titled “Led Zeppelin Past, Present and Future.” Created by Atlantic Records, it was designed to promote Led Zeppelin on US radio stations but was scrapped after the band and its management vetoed the idea.
The emergence in October of another copy of the record’s sleeve, which has been listed for sale with an astonishingly high asking price of $99,999, has prompted fresh questions about how many copies of the sleeve exist and how much they’re worth.
Some Led Zeppelin collectors LedZepNews has spoken to question the rising values assigned to the sleeves. Others believe this unreleased promotional record is one of the crown jewels in any Led Zeppelin collection.
LedZepNews has spoken to the dealer who first discovered the promotional record as well as the seller of the newly emerged sleeve to piece together this history.
Discovering the record
The discovery of the unreleased promotional album begins with Rick Barrett, a well-known music collectables dealer who specialised in selling Led Zeppelin items through mail order catalogues.
In the early 1990s, one of Barrett’s sources told him that an Atlantic Records employee had hung on to three record sleeves for an unreleased Led Zeppelin promotional album.
“Having never heard of this before, I certainly had an interest in them and they were Fed Ex’d to me soon thereafter,” Barrett tells LedZepNews.
“As one might imagine, I was blown away to open the package and hold three covers for the unreleased Past, Present and Future promo, by themselves, without any LPs,” he says. “Seeing the iconic image of the band standing in the field on the front and the Swan Song logo blew me away.”
The three record sleeves were all printed on the front with a colour photograph of the members of Led Zeppelin standing at Knebworth in 1979 along with the Swan Song Records logo, text reading “Promotional use only” and “not for sale”. The sleeves also had the number PR-342 printed on the front.
On the back, the sleeves explained the promotional albums would have contained the audio of Robert Plant and John Paul Jones interviewed by J.J. Jackson on August 12, 1979, the day after the band’s second Knebworth Festival appearance (although the interview was dated as August 11, 1979 on these sleeves).
A letter dated August 22, 1979 from Swan Song employee Mitchell Fox to Bob Kaus of Atlantic Records has surfaced. It contains instructions on what to print on the reverse of the sleeve.
The first sleeve sells
In 1993, Barrett listed one of the sleeves for sale on the cover of catalogue 122 for his Merit Adventures mail order business. “This is an UNBELIEVABLE find,” his advert read. “This is a great investment item that may only show up again commanding a high premium at one of the major rock and roll/entertainment auctions.”
Along with the sleeve, Barrett offered for sale a copy of a letter that he had received from Atlantic Records which explained that “these came from the Atlantic Production Department. The album was never issued and the remainder of the jackets were destroyed.” The sleeve was bought by a collector for $1,500 in 1993 following the catalogue listing.
Reuniting the records and sleeves
Shortly after the 1993 sale, Barrett made a surprising discovery when sorting through his Led Zeppelin records. “One of them was a totally blank item,” he says, “a 12” piece of vinyl with a blank white LP in a blank white cover with holes showing the front and back labels.”
“Handwritten on the 12” cover in ballpoint pen was ‘Jones interview’. I totally remember buying it for $5 at the famous Capitol Swap Meet at Hollywood & Vine streets in Los Angeles, across the street from the Capitol Records tower,” he adds.
Looking more closely at the record, Barrett realised it had text scratched into the runoff of the vinyl: PR-342. “I was obviously floored to note that it was the exact same as the Past, Present and Future album cover,” he says.
Barrett was now able to pair one of his two remaining sleeves with the vinyl record that was supposed to be contained inside it. After speaking about this discovery, one of Barrett’s friends then tracked down another test pressing of the same record, giving him two complete sets of the unreleased promotional record.
Both complete sets were sold by Barrett in the 1990s for $5,000 each. One was purchased by a Japanese collector and the other by a collector in Dallas, Texas.
More recent sales
Barrett had now sold what seemed to be the only three remaining copies of the album’s sleeve. But a handful of sleeves have surfaced in recent years. In 2005, a sleeve was sold on eBay by a US seller for $355.
In 2015, the Dallas collector contacted Barrett seeking to market his entire Led Zeppelin collection and that copy of Led Zeppelin Past, Present and Future, complete with one of the two vinyl records Barrett had sourced, was offered for sale online for $6,000.
The record initially didn’t sell, but it was eventually sold to collector Robert Musco. “In August of 2015, I took possession and I am now the caretaker of this rare piece of Led Zeppelin history,” Musco writes on his website An Extra Nickel.
Tracking down the copies of the sleeve
Only a handful of copies of the sleeve are known to exist. There’s the first copy sold by Barrett in 1993 without a record to a collector, the full set initially sold to a collector in Dallas, Texas by Barrett and now owned by Musco and the full set sold to a Japanese buyer.
Other examples have surfaced on the Zepfan website run by Mark McFall. These sleeves are owned by collectors Mark Linchner and Ronald Girouard.
An image of the record was published in the book that accompanied the super deluxe edition of the 2015 remaster of the Led Zeppelin album In Through The Out Door. It’s unclear whether this sleeve is a new example owned by someone connected to the band or if the image repurposes a collector’s sleeve.
According to Musco, it’s likely that as many as 10 copies of the record sleeve exist, up from the initial three discovered by Barrett.
The $100,000 record sleeve?
A newly surfaced record sleeve emerged in October with a remarkably high asking price of $99,999. The seller, a record store called Infinity Records in Massapequa Park, New York, posted photos online of the rare sleeve. They show this sleeve has distinctive tape marks on the back, showing it’s different to the sleeves owned by Musco, Linchner and Girouard.
LedZepNews spoke to the store’s owner Joseph Ostermeier, who explained that he obtained it as part of a bulk deal for a collection belonging to a former Atlantic Records employee.
“I acquired this from a retired Atlantic Records employee who was working in the art department of the label at the time 1975 – 1985,” he says. “She decided to sell her collection of albums and memorabilia to me last year and it included this copy which would be the fourth known copy in existence.”
Ostermeier says he settled on the $99,999 price tag as an “arbitrary” figure for the sleeve. “[I] only put up at that price to get the buzz on it out in the world, and due to the rarity and me having never come across one in my 50 years of collecting records and memorabilia,” he says.
“If a sealed stereo first state butcher cover has sold for $35,000 to $75,000, and it is not as rare as this, I thought why not start high,” Ostermeier continues. “This is mega scarce and Led Zeppelin is one of the most important bands in our lifetime. You can always go lower, but you cannot raise the price after the sale.”
The record store owner says he has had “great interest” in the sleeve but “no amazing offers yet”.
“I will sell it once I get a serious collector with some cheese in the bank to make a decent offer,” he explains. “Of course I could put it in a major rock auction at some time, which is in the back of my mind. For now I am happy to be the current owner. It will need a good home soon.”
The emergence of this previously unseen record sleeve means there are now seven known copies of the sleeve in circulation, assuming the 2005 eBay listing and Linchner and Girouard’s sleeves aren’t the same sleeves as earlier sales. Collectors are closely watching the newly surfaced eBay listing to see if it sells and if so, how much for.
Here’s a handy breakdown of all known copies of the Led Zeppelin Past, Present and Future sleeve:
- The first sleeve. Sold by Rick Barrett in 1993 to a Led Zeppelin collector for $1,500
- The first full set with the vinyl record. Sold by Rick Barrett to a collector in Dallas, Texas in the 1990s for $5,000 and then purchased by Robert Musco in 2015
- The second full set with the vinyl record. Sold by Rick Barrett to a buyer in Japan for $5,000
- Mark Linchner’s sleeve
- Ronald Girouard’s sleeve
- A sleeve sold on eBay by a US seller in 2005 for $355
- The newly emerged sleeve offered for sale by Infinity Records for $99,999
Is there a digital copy of the interview from this vinyl album available online?
Thanks, Jim
It’s in the You Tube link above.
Remarkable! I remember the catalog that had the picture of the sleeve….think I still have it. Funnily enough I had enough money to buy one a year ago…. I would’ve bought it had the sale been current at the time. Oh well!