Thank you for buying this record. What follows is its documentation: the pressing identified, the matrix / runout transcribed by hand from the dead wax, and the condition as assessed before it was listed. It is yours to keep with the record.

— Paul, Vinyl Curator

Leonard Cohen

Death Of A Ladies' Man

1977 · CBS S CBS 86042 · Stereo · UK · LP, gatefold · 33 1/3 RPM

Pressing details

Label	CBS
Catalogue number	S CBS 86042
Year	1977
Mono / Stereo	Stereo
Country	UK
Format	LP, gatefold
Speed	33 1/3 RPM
Genre	Rock - Singer-Songwriter
Producer	Phil Spector
Composer	Leonard Cohen, Phil Spector
Musicians	Leonard Cohen (vocals); uncredited on the jacket: members of Phil Spector's studio ensemble including backing vocalists and a large horn, string and percussion section assembled across the Whitney, Devonshire and Gold Star sessions

Matrix / Runout

Side A:  CBS.S86042-A1 D
Side B:  CBS.S86042-B1 D

Condition

Cover: EX
Vinyl: NM

Variant chronology

1977 - US Warner Bros Records BS 3125, original US issue
1977 - UK CBS S CBS 86042, orange-to-yellow CBS gradient label, CBS exclusive UK licensee  <- this copy
1977 - Japan CBS/Sony 25AP 834 with obi
1985 - Spain CBS 32661 reissue - no documented sale found for this variant

This Pressing

1977 UK CBS first-issue pressing (stereo) - S CBS 86042 orange-to-yellow CBS gradient label, contemporaneous with the US Warner Bros. BS 3125 edition of the same release.

The Album

Death Of A Ladies' Man paired Leonard Cohen's spare, literary songwriting with Phil Spector's dense, orchestral Wall of Sound production, an unlikely collaboration born when the two writers began trading songs in Los Angeles in the mid-1970s. The sessions, cut at Spector's favored Los Angeles studios, became notoriously fraught, with Spector reportedly taking control of the mixes and, by some accounts, barring Cohen from the studio during final mixing. The result was a jarring departure from the hushed folk settings of Cohen's earlier records, burying his voice beneath layered strings, horns, and choruses of backing singers. Arriving in Cohen's catalogue between the austere New Skin For The Old Ceremony and the stripped-down Recent Songs, it stands as the most sonically maximalist and most divisive record of his 1970s output. Contemporary critics were largely baffled or hostile, and Cohen himself later expressed deep ambivalence about the finished album, at one point saying he wished he could withdraw it. Over the decades it has undergone considerable critical reappraisal, with the title track and “Memories” now counted among the more compelling vocal performances of his career.

Tracklist

Side 1

1. True Love Leaves No Traces
2. Iodine
3. Paper Thin Hotel
4. Memories

Side 2

1. I Left A Woman Waiting
2. Don't Go Home With Your Hard-On
3. Fingerprints
4. Death Of A Ladies' Man

The Label

The side labels show the CBS orange-to-yellow gradient design with the white CBS wordmark and the eye-in-box logo above it, the double-headed stereo arrow at left, and the rim text naming CBS Inc. as the exclusive UK licensee - the standard CBS UK label format used through the mid-to-late 1970s. Both labels carry the ℗ 1977 CBS Inc. credit and MADE IN ENGLAND, placing this pressing within the label's 1977 UK release window for the title rather than any later reissue era. This is the UK CBS counterpart to the simultaneous US Warner Bros. Records issue (BS 3125) of the same November 1977 release, not a subsequent repressing with a redesigned label.

Fidelity

Engineered by Larry Levine under Phil Spector's production, the mix is famously thick and reverb-heavy, often cited by collectors as one of the murkier-sounding entries in Cohen's catalogue regardless of pressing. This UK CBS pressing, manufactured at CBS's own Aston Clinton plant, is generally regarded as solid but unremarkable fidelity-wise, neither notably better nor worse than the contemporaneous US Warner Bros. cut. No audiophile remastering or specialist reissue series exists for this title, so collectors largely treat original-era pressings, UK or US, as sonically equivalent, with differences in condition mattering more than mastering source.

Notes

This is a 1977 UK CBS stereo pressing of Death Of A Ladies' Man, S CBS 86042, issued the same month as the US Warner Bros. edition. The labels carry the ℗ 1977 CBS Inc. credit, CBS's standard late-1970s orange-to-yellow gradient design, and MADE IN ENGLAND; the pressing plant is not named on the label itself. The runout carries the catalogue number as an etched matrix with a stamped stamper suffix typical of CBS's UK production for this title.

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