It's a Beautiful Day is the debut album by San Francisco band It's a Beautiful Day. This album's song "White Bird" was the band's biggest hit. The album rose to number 47 on Billboard'sTop LPs American albums chart.[3]
The cover
The cover, designed by George Hunter and painted by Kent Hollister, was based on the 1912 painting Woman on the Top of a Mountain by Charles Courtney Curran. The design used an old version of the Columbia Records logo because George Hunter believed it fit better with the feel of the rest of the cover.[4][5] The album cover is number 24 on Rolling Stone's list of 100 greatest album covers.
Album content
The group's signature song "White Bird" was inspired by the experiences David and Linda LaFlamme had while living in Seattle, Washington. For a few weeks in December 1967 the group members lived in the attic of an old house while playing and rehearsing at a Seattle venue originally known as The Encore Ballroom. The band's manager, Matthew Katz, had recently assumed control over the club and renamed it "San Francisco Sound". In an ironic twist on the band's name, the song was partly inspired by Seattle's rainy winter weather. In a later interview David LaFlamme said:
Where the 'white bird' thing came from ... We were like caged birds in that attic. We had no money, no transportation, the weather was miserable. We were just barely getting by on a very small food allowance provided to us. It was quite an experience, but it was very creative in a way.[6]
A substantial part of the theme and arrangement of the song "Bombay Calling" was used by Deep Purple as the basis for their song "Child in Time".[7]
Critical reception
Lindsay Planer at AllMusic, gave the album four stars out of five, writing:
It's a Beautiful Day were no less memorable for their unique progressive rock style that contrasted well with the Bay Area psychedelic scene...It's a Beautiful Day remains as a timepiece and evidence of how sophisticated rock & roll had become in the fertile environs of the San Francisco music scene.[1]
In popular culture
The song "White Bird" is used in three episodes of the 1980s television series Knight Rider. It is the theme song for the relationship between main character Michael Knight and his one true love, and appears in the episodes "White Bird" in season 1, "Let It Be Me" in season 2 and "The Scent of Roses" in season 4. The song was also featured in the 2015 movie Focus with Will Smith. The album cover is used in Naoki Urasawa's 2018 one-shot manga "It's a Beautiful Day".
