Katie Allen
Associate Specialist
Lot 75
Gary Burden's Personal & Working Sketchbook 12 featuring 'The Mama Cass Story', and designs for Crosby & Nash, Terry Reid, Jackson Browne, David Cassidy, and Neil Young, Gary Burden (American, 1933-2018), circa 1975-1976,
20 – 30 June 2025, 12:00 PDT
Online, Los AngelesSold for US$3,840 inc. premium
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Fred Lawton
Cataloguer
Claire Tole-Moir
Head of Department
Gary Burden's Personal & Working Sketchbook 12 featuring 'The Mama Cass Story', and designs for Crosby & Nash, Terry Reid, Jackson Browne, David Cassidy, and Neil Young,
Gary Burden (American, 1933-2018), circa 1975-1976,
bound sketchbook with black cover, approx. 100 pages with most worked on, includes handwritten notes, designs and drawings showing the direct evolution of album designs, showing designs for typography, single and album cover designs, stationary designs, vinyl labels, posters, tour merchandise, promotional material, and concept ideas, in both pen and pencil, with pages of loose notes and images and newspaper clippings,
10 x 7 1/2in
bound sketchbook with black cover, approx. 100 pages with most worked on, includes handwritten notes, designs and drawings showing the direct evolution of album designs, showing designs for typography, single and album cover designs, stationary designs, vinyl labels, posters, tour merchandise, promotional material, and concept ideas, in both pen and pencil, with pages of loose notes and images and newspaper clippings,
10 x 7 1/2in
Footnotes
Key pages in order include:
1. 13 pages of Gary Burden's biographical notes starting It began at the beginning.., in black pen and pencil. Featuring the Mama Cass story, describing the time when Burden worked as an architect on Mama Cass's house. From this, she asked him if he could help her with designing her next album, thus starting his career in album design.
2. A concept for Crosby & Nash's In Concert. With half shot polaroids of Crosby and Nash taped together, with album cover plan on tracing paper.
3. Detailed drawings both in pencil and pen of Terry Reid's Seed of Memory album cover, released in 1976.
4. A Jackson Browne album plan with lyrics from These Days to the upper margin Where do we come from, Who are we, Where are we going?, the song released in 1972 on the album For Everyman.
5. David Cassidy's album Home is Where the Heart Is (1976) cover design and sketch in pencil, changed from Fools Hotel on previous pages.
6. Album design and sketch for Neil Young's Sedan Delivery (1979), with taped clippings from Automotive Classics and article on Stephen W. Sharmat and Daniel Glass.
7. Additional Terry Reid designs, with polaroid of the image used eventually for the cover, titled See The Memories which became the album Seed of Memory. An additional photograph secured to page.
8. Album sketch for The Best Of, by Crosby & Nash, released in 1978.
9. Track listing for Jackson Browne's The Pretender (1976), followed by detailed pencil sketches for the album, with additional red and blue illustrations. Later, a detailed sketch in pen depicting the album cover used. Also t-shirt designs with Are you there?.. to the front. Plans for other promotional material following this.
10. A plan for Leslie Caron Serail initially in pencil then in blue ink, Campaign plan following.
11. Album concept sketch for Boats Against the Current by Eric Carmen, released in 1977.
12. A similar detailed pencil sketch of Crosby & Nash In Concert using the half faces. Followed by a sketch of the pair titled Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, David Crosby depicted as Sancho Panza and Graham Nash as Don Quixote.
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