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Jackson Browne: The rare and original 'Water Bag' used for the debut album Jackson Browne, circa 1972, image 1
Jackson Browne: The rare and original 'Water Bag' used for the debut album Jackson Browne, circa 1972, image 2
Jackson Browne: The rare and original 'Water Bag' used for the debut album Jackson Browne, circa 1972, image 3
Lot 36

Jackson Browne: The rare and original 'Water Bag' used for the debut album Jackson Browne,
circa 1972,

20 – 30 June 2025, 12:00 PDT
Online, Los Angeles

Sold for US$5,632 inc. premium

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Jackson Browne: The rare and original 'Water Bag' used for the debut album Jackson Browne,

circa 1972,
burlap water bag, mounted, reading Saturate Before Using to the top, Los Angeles to the lower margin, printed face of Browne, title of the album hand colored in red, reverse reads Desert Brand Water Bag, Made By Ames Harris Neville, framed and glazed both sides,
bag 12 x 12in; framed 15 1/2 x 15in

Footnotes

Jackson Browne:
Jackson Browne recalls; "I always thought of album covers like a shield, the way Indians would dream up, literally dream, or imagine, or think of their "thing" that represented them and put that on their war shield. We used to spend a lot of time in the desert and I had this water bag on my wall. Gary and I were discussing ideas over the phone and I said we could make it a water bag. Our generation knows what a water bag is. It's a canvas bag, made of flax so that it expands, when you submerge it in water, probably in the tire trough at a gas station, then when you pass through the superheated Mojave desert the water evaporates through the radiator grill to help the car stay cool. On my bag it said Saturate Before Using on the back, it was a little instruction. When Gary mocked the cover up I said, 'Gary, we can't put that on there because people are going to think that it is the title of my album.' Gary said, 'No way, they never would think that. They would know that's not part of it.' After so many years of people calling it Saturate Before Using the record company finally believed that was the title and they put it on the spine of the CD."

Gary Burden has said; "When I made this cover for Jackson I tried to make it look like a real water bag. Using a black and white photograph of Jackson that Henry Diltz took, I created a high contrast image to give it a silk-screened look. The inside sleeve was a beautiful color shot of water printed on shiny paper. Later we had a billboard on the Sunset strip that was the front grill of my old ford station wagon with the water bag album cover hanging on it. It was cool."

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