The history of the triple album
The double album is a potentially unwieldy beast in music.
When hitting the spot, such twofer opuses can offer a rich and soaring journey across conceptual planes and grand narratives, or simply serve as a fascinating jumbled-up toybox of eclectic morsels, afforded proud tracklisting presence the second CD or record affords. More often than not, however, the double album reeks of an artist who’s bitten off more than they can chew, lapsing into a cumbersome bore, leaden with a lack of focus and cluttered material.
Such ambitions can pay off. The Beatles’ 1968 eponymous doubler has launched a myriad of Fab Four mythos due to its eccentric grab bag of disparate musical flavours for every Beatologist to pore over, 1979’s The Wall orchestrated an engrossing rock opera send-off to Pink Floyd’s classic era, and Smashing Pumpkins, fuelled by frontman Billy Corgan’s sheer chutzpah, pulled off Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness’ sweeping expanse as one of the finest LP efforts of the Lollapalooza generation.
Yet, for the truly aspirational, there’s always the triple album. An almost mythic LP triptych, the holy rock trinity has enticed either the intrepid or stupid, looking at the extra disc with tantalising beckon as to the extra hour-odd’s room for further artistic marvel, or bloated dud depending on the level of self-awareness.
1970’s Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More stood as many’s first taste of the triple LP, but discounting live recordings or compilation packages, it’s George Harrison’s first post-Beatles solo effort, dropped later that year, that can confidently claim as the first core, studio album spread across three discs. It was well earned. Stockpiling songs rejected by his former Fab Four principal songwriters since as early as Revolver, Harrison counted a wealth of material eager to empty out on All Things Must Pass, he and producer Phil Spector dolloping a gloop of lengthy jam takes across its third LP, the moment where the album starts to drag. Harrison had struck gold, however, as All Things Must Pass shot to album number one all over the world.
The next year, Carla Bley would release her defining jazz opera Escalator over the Hill as a well-justified tripler. Yet curiously enough, none of the era’s prog decided to have a go at the triple whammy for an album proper, Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer dropping three disc sets of live concert recordings rather than gargantuan three-suite rock blusters, a logical next step had punk’s insurrectionary upend not quashed such compositional scope practically overnight.
Speaking of punk, the triple album had muscled its way past the movement’s stripped-down attack and ‘learn three chords’ urgency and coaxed some of the era’s biggest names to try their hand at the elusive triple threat. It’s forgotten now, but Public Image Ltd’s 1979 post-punk gem Metal Box originally came packaged in three 12” records amid its metallic cannister, each side only playing around ten minutes of music due to its 45rpm speed, aptly reflecting its restless character by having to swap records so often amid its complete run.
Not content with London Calling’s paltry two discs, and buoyed by Bruce Springsteen’s recent double The River offering, The Clash conjured a mammoth over two-hour smorgasbord of spacey dub, R&B funk, and garage gospel for 1980’s Sandanista!, a triple album in the truest sense swelling to bursting point with new sonic terrain, not always on point but its wide open vistas part of its time-swallowing charm.
Triple albums seemed to fall out of vogue from then on. The ever-creative whirlwind Prince would drop Emancipation in 1996 amid a furious flurry of work impressive in its prolificacy, if not its consistent quality, but The Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs three years later truly brought the triple album back to the music consciousness, praise heaped on frontman Stephin Merritt’s myriad assortment of romantically mordant numbers. Since then, harpist Joanna Newsom eked out 2010’s Have One on Me, then pop punks Green Day somewhat bottled it by issuing ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tré! separately across the latter months of 2012, but fans knew it should have stood as a triple album statement.
The three-disc record has reared its head elsewhere, notably Bob Dylan’s Triplicate, covers love letter and rapper MF Grimm’s American Hunger, but in the digital realm of the contemporary streaming age, triple albums can’t quite command the same mammoth heft that a weighty three-disc box would, glowing with alluring gravitas. With music in flux, and many returning to the physical medium in protest of music’s online devaluing, perhaps the triple record may entice once again another band to take the ultimate album gamble in the not-too-distant future.
