Description
Offered for sale is an original U.S. mono pressing of If You Can Believe Your Eyes And Ears by the Mamas and the Papas, featuring the withdrawn “toilet” cover.
Shortly after the album’s release, the cover was changed to place a banner promoting the album’s songs over the toilet in the photo.
About this copy: This copy of If You Can Believe Your Eyes And Ears is a 1966 U.S. mono pressing on the Dunhill label.
Note: For some reason, mono copies of this early 1966 LPs are considerably harder to find than stereo copies. Stereo copies are hard to find, but mono copies are exceptionally rare. Stereo copies likely outnumber mono copies by a 50:1 ratio.
The cover is VG+, with wear on the edges, primarily at the bottom edge, but not on the main part of the cover.
The mono disc is VG, with a number of light marks, but no deep scratches. It plays with some surface noise.
A nice copy of a very rare Mamas and Papas LP. We’ve had a few stereo copies of this album over the years, but this is the only mono copy we’ve ever seen.
Background: If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears was the debut album by the Mamas and the Papas, and it turned them into superstars overnight. Containing the hits “Monday, Monday,” “California Dreamin’,” and “I Call Your Name,” the album reached #1 on the Billboard charts.
Allmusic.com gave If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears a 4 1/2 star review:
In the spring of 1966, If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears represented a genuinely new sound, as fresh to listeners as the songs on Meet the Beatles had seemed two years earlier. Released just as “California Dreaming” was ascending the charts by leaps and bounds, it was the product of months of rehearsal in the Virgin Islands and John Phillips’ discovery of what one could do to build a polished recorded sound in the studio — it embraced folk-rock, pop/rock, pop, and soul, and also reflected the kind of care that acts like the Beatles were putting into their records at the time. “Monday, Monday” and “California Dreamin'” are familiar enough to anyone who’s ever listened to the radio, and “Go Where You Wanna Go” isn’t far behind, in this version or the very similar rendition by the Fifth Dimension. But the rest is mighty compelling even to casual listeners, including the ethereal “Got a Feelin’,” the rocking “Straight Shooter” and “Somebody Groovy,” the jaunty, torch song-style version of “I Call Your Name,” and the prettiest versions of “Do You Wanna Dance” and “Spanish Harlem” that anyone ever recorded.
The album is also interesting in that there were at least five different covers used for the album in various countries, often with variations intended to disguise the fact that the cover photo was shot in a bathroom. The most obscure cover was one with a heavily cropped photo with large black border that hides everything except the members of the group.
