The Masked Marauders - 1969 - The Complete Deity Recordings (2001)

The Masked Marauders - 1969 -
The Complete Deity Recordings (2001) @320

Toward the end of 1969, rumors began circulating about an unprecedented event in Rock history: all of The Beatles except Ringo teamed up with Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger in an isolated recording studio on the shores of Hudson Bay in April of 1969, and spent three days recording an album together. Solomon Penthaus, the president of Deity Records, famed for their Sounds of Nature series, obtained the tapes, and was impressed enough to make it the label's first rock album. Owing to the legal difficulties of properly crediting these iconic performers, Deity called the group The Masked Marauders upon release of the album. Rolling Stone reviewer T.M. Christian obtained a test pressing of the album and raved about it in the October 18 issue, leading Reprise Records to pick it up for national distribution, making the album the music event of 1969.

Or so a lot of people really wanted to believe...

The truth was that Rolling Stone's reviews editor Greil Marcus had grown annoyed with all of the Supergroup pairings that proliferated in 1969 (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Blind Faith, Al Kooper's Super Session album), feeling that they were peddling subpar music purely on the strengths of their famous names. Marcus and a friend jokily started speculating what a Supergroup with the biggest names in Rock might sound like, concluding that they'd do "the same stupid things that everybody else was doing". Marcus tossed off a review of the fake album, which Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner loved and agreed to publish. Almost immediately, the magazine was inundated with letters from fans and record store owners asking about the availability of the album, which amused Marcus, since he'd thought the review was so patently silly (what with the album allegedly containing McCartney doing a cover of "My Mammy", plus a "sensitive, yearning" rendition of "Kick Out the Jams") that no one could possibly take it seriously.

Marcus and fellow Rolling Stone staffer Langdon Winner decided to extend the joke further. They asked The Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band, an eclectic Bay Area Folk Music group with a sly sense of humor (their one and only album had been called The Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band Greatest Hits), to cut actual Real Life versions of three of the songs mentioned in the review: Bob Dylan singing lead on the Doo-wop standard "Duke of Earl", Dylan fronting a countrified Instrumental called "Cow Pie" on guitar and harmonica, and Mick Jagger doing a grungy "instant classic" Blues number called "I Can't Get No Nookie". Winner took tapes of the songs to two San Francisco radio stations where they were played on the air. Most listeners got the joke, but still somehow dubs of the songs got distributed to radio stations throughout the country. Several record labels, some under the misimpression that it really was Dylan, et. al., contacted Winner and Marcus with immediate financial offers (Motown reportedly offered $100,000—upwards a million in today's money), before they signed with Warner (Bros.) Records for a deal with Reprise Records. Marcus, fearing conflict-of-interest problems with his Rolling Stone position, dropped out, but Winner and the other musicians regrouped to finish the album.

Unleashed on an unsuspecting public right before the holiday season, accompanied by an ad campaign that kept things deliberately vague about the album, the combination of people who knew it was a joke, and those taken in by the ruse, led to sales of over 100,000 copies and a run on the Billboard Top 200 album chart (peaking at #114, while cracking the Top 100 on the rival Cashbox album chart). It's retained a place in music lore, and has sustained a minor cult following. (TVTropes)

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