The War of 1916

 The War of 1916.

 Before we get into the meat of this story, we have to take a quick background trip through history. to 1812 and the assassination  of  Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the spark that set off  world war one.

   Austria-Hungary, with German encouragement, declared war on Serbia on 28 July. Russia's support of Serbia brought France into the conflict. Germany declared war on Russia on 1 August and France on 3 August.

Fast forward to 1991, enter our heroes, Motorhead, release their 16th album "1916" -- A fucking bombshell of music not to be trifled with. And gorgeous artwork to boot! But wait, something is amiss. Decorated with all of the flags of the countries who were part of the war. All except France! Which Lemmy was quick to bring to light.. 

 THE FUCKING FRENCH FLAG WAS NOWHERE ON THE FUCKING ALBUM!!! This sent Lemmy into a frenzy of outrage. until...

Enter Philly Lamf and it is his words that follow: 

 "Ah, the ‘1916’ artwork saga…… it still brings me out in night sweats thinking back to it! As I recently had to go clear out my old Storage Unit, I found a few bits that I thought had been long-lost, but there they are, so to clear out the mildew in my old brain cells, it went something like this…… Lem loved the work I’d one on the reissue of the earlier Motorhead stuff. Over a stiff drink or three after a show, he told me (again) how pissed off he was with Sony and their artwork for the 1916 album. ‘How the fu*k can you have an album about the horrors of the Somme without the French flag on it?!’ I got my thinking cap on. I contacted Sony to see about licensing the album. I had three different artists come up with a re-imagining of the sleeve. It looked like a done deal. I recall we even had some promo posters printed. Done deal…. Or so I thought. Then Sony got in touch again. Apparently, there was another UK label that had first refusal on vinyl reissues of Sony back-catalogue. This was at the time when Vinyl had supposedly ‘died’, remember, so Sony weren’t interested in doing it themselves. Anyhoo, it wasn’t all bad news, as I knew the owner of the label that had first dibs, Pure Pleasure. I knew their mastering (Ray Staff, legendary Master Engineer) and pressing (Pallas, Germany, the greatest pressing plant in Europe) was the best in the business, so ‘happy days’! I offered them the revised artwork (for free), but one stumbling block – they told me Sony wouldn’t allow ANY change of front cover. Wouldn’t budge. Bummed out. So me (and my trusty interns) got to work thinking of ways around the problem. I did manage to get my sleeve notes into the inner packaging of the reissues. Ultimately, it led to the ‘Art Print’ edition, limited to 150 copies and only available through DJB mailorder. We tried different card stocks, and different styles of printing. It was either going to be over-priced, so nobody would buy it, or I was going to have to lose money. It was important to Lem, it was important to me, so the 150 copies was a nice compromise to allow it to happen, albeit on a small scale, and whereby I’d only lose a little. I was worried at the time that when we launched it on the website, it wouldn’t sell, so we’d prepared ‘Promo Packs’ to send out to the press to get some interest, but the 7”s for the packs were delayed (!!!!), so by the time we launched it, it sold out overnight so the promo packs weren’t needed. They just got boxed up and lost in the chaos that was the DJB racking. I do remember the promo 7” (of the ‘Almost 1916’ promo interview) caused me a whole bunch of headaches. I know we had around 30 made - Lem got 1, I got 1, 5 went with the promo pack LPS and the other 10 or so were produced for f*k knows what reason!), and had to have them made at a dubplate plant – who had no idea how to etch catalog numbers– why would they, they normally did one-off 12”s for shit*y dance music DJs, and tried to push us into changing from 12” to 7”! – their first attempt, they etched the catalog number into the body of the f**king 7”! Aaaargh. After my near-coronary, they did it properly after that! Anyhoo, I found a few of each oddity, and also a pile of proof prints that had been printed on costlier stock, but which we’d had to reject because of the price. Also found a few of the press releases that had both sets of artwork on – these are slightly different to the ones that came with the PP test pressings. There ya go, there it is, the ‘1916’ artwork saga. Somewhere, in the mists of time, I remember the original artwork for this being on a 3’ x 3’ canvas, as well as a digital file."  

There you have it. If you were lucky enough to own one of these pieces of gold as it was a first come first serve situation, you were at the right place at the right time! I was lucky enough to score a 7", but promo packs, at the time they came to market, were snatched up like piranha feast. the total I think comes out to 20 or so the 7", and only 5 (!!!) lucky bastards got the promo pack

Ahhhhh... to be a collector

The Promo pack #3

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