Devadip Carlos Santana and Mahavishnu John McLaughlin Love Devotion Surrender (one of the coolest photos ever!) 

Anthony Phillips The Geese and The Ghost

Genesis A Trick of the Tail -- (such a majestic album cover!)

Renaissance Novella -- (both cover versions)

XTC Mummer

Cocteau Twins Treasure -- (best song titles ever!)

David Sylvian Brilliant Trees

Nina Hagen NunSexMonkRock -- (best liner notes ever!)

Miles Davis Aura

I'm sure I'm going to think up another dozen or so as soon as I post this!

Hard to remember that far back in time , but if I look at my LP list these few come to mind as having been cover art discoveries.

Amon Duul ll - Hijack & Made in germany

Babe Ruth - First Base

Baker Gurvitz Army - Elysian Encounter

Mike Batt - Schizophonia

Caravan - Cunning Stunts

Coven - Blood on the Snow

Esperanto - Danse Macabre

Fireballet - Night on Bald Mountain

Hawkwind - Doremi Fasol Latido & Hall of the Mountain Grill

Horslips - Happy to Meet Sorry to Part

Kraftwerk - Ralf and Florian

Neil Merryweather - Space Rangers & Kryptonite

Lutz Rahn - Solo Trip

Seventh Wave - psi-fi

Morton Subotnick - Sidewinder

Yuri - Off on a Tangent

Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe

ASIA - ASIA

Budgie - Never Turn Your Back on a Friend

Earth & Fire - Earth & Fire

Greenslade - Greenslade

Magna Carta - Tomorrow Never Comes: The Anthology

Steve Howe - The Steve Howe Album

Ramases - Space Hymns

Uriah Heep - Demons and Wizards

Psychedelic Paul wrote: [EDIT] YES - The Quest: an album that's surprisingly even better than the album cover!

SIGH !...this seems to be one bone you just can't let go of.

I don't remember so well, but those I remember are (in chronological order):

Mike Oldfield  -  Tubular Bells

Mahavishnu Orchestra  -  Birds of Fire

Gong  -  Shamal

Caravan  -  In the Land of Grey and Pink

Greenslade  -  Bedside Manners Are Extra

Larry Coryell  -  Spaces (1974-release, was a disappointment though)

I know I did for Crime Of The Century, Argus and Cricklewood Green (TYA), but even for the later, I knew already I wanted to investigate Alvin & Co., but I didn't have an idea where to start. I think I could add Rising and Sad Wings Of  Destiny to that as well. 

Other potential candidates (not 100% sure whether it was the sleeve or the music supposed to be on the album that directed my choice) :

ITLOG&P

SEBTP (took me a couple years to dig it - but I preferred it to the Whitehead sleeves) 

ITCOTCK/Lizard

Abraxas

12 Dreams (gatefold)

WOTOTime

Octopus (US sleeve - took me 15 years to start loving GG)

Still Life (took me almost 15 years to love the band) 

Ash Ra Tempel

You

Zeit (that one literally spooked me for a few years too)

I suppose I could name a few Floyd sleeves, but I knew ahead of time which album I was going for. 

Ditto for Yes.  

But I guess the Dean artworks directed my choice for other bands like Budgie or Greenslade, and Hypgnosis like UFO - but I was often quite disappointed. Ditto for the Nazareth HF artworks (disappointed). 

Way too many to count, since we bought a lot of things by the artistry of their cover! However, many of the Roger Dean and Hipgnosis covers were bought because of the art work ... perfect example was Quatermass, probably one of the first of the kind.

Needless to say, a picture of the band, was not what got the album bought! 

I have never bought an album just because I liked its cover art. I always try to find a way to listen to the contents (YouTube, streaming, pirated copies etc.) before making a purchase.

If I think of any other albums I have bought because of album art alone, I will return to this thread and let you know. But nothing is as obvious to me as that album. I didn’t know what to expect when I put it on, but it absolutely was not what I heard. Mind blown. 🤯 

 

^ My first exposure to Yes; saw it browsing casually at the record store that was inside a mall and was awed by the cover..  I happened to be with one of my two close & proggy friends at the time (though we were not that proggy at the time, yet), and he said to me 'buy it! my older brother has it and it seems is great!'; so I did.. it was at a big discount too, sort of mid-price.. (one of the best return on investments I've made for sure!)

^ First thing I bought 'through the internet'..    (I had to ask my dad for his credit card number).

I think it was through CDNow.com (not Amazon) by then.. and I can't recall if I got to listen even a small sample; I mean, if that possibility even was technically available on the web page by that time.. I don't remember having listened to the songs.

It took like forever to arrive..  (months) I had completely forgotten about it. So when it arrived, I was totally off-guard... and it was awesome!

^ This one at the store.. on CD; was not that impressed on first listens.. (in relation to the cover, maybe) first track is cool. Now I was hearing it because of this thread and is good.. payed attention to some unusual passages in the 4th and last track I haven't noticed before.

^ This one, I think it was at the same store.. on CD, without listening to it.. it came on a different sort of case, cardboard, and with a slidable plastic over it. At first I found it somewhat difficult.. (today I love it). But in this case I think it was definitely the album title more than the cover what lured me.

Well, lastly, I remember Jethro Tull's covers always had an impact on us (my two school pals & proggy friends and I) when we went to the stores:

I remember having been in awe about this one's cover: 

Never got it though..  by '82 release date, maybe not what we were looking at the time.. (I still haven't checked it out).

I remember 'Benefit' was also on the radar but never got it.. maybe in terms of cover and/or album title there were others that caught our attention first.

Another counter-example maybe could be 'This Was'..  (not that impressive cover, IMO, about tastes... but hell of an album).

Quatermass - One of the first actually and got me into the Hipgnosis folks very quickly. It was way easier after that cover!

Flash - First album. Still love that cover even if folks think it is sexist. Heck like Traffic's isn't even more so!

Amon Duul 2 - Dance of the Lemmings. The fold out alone is worth the price of admission! Who's in control? Should be you not a record company!!!! Maybe some fans can relate to that ... one day!

Jethro Tull - Passion Play. For the the seminal cover that gave us the idea that classical music was dead and that here and now was the new music. The only sad part? Ian kinda never did it again, because some folks wanted more radio crap!

Babe Ruth - First Base. Awesome album that got me to go see them at The Whiskey where they made Iggy and the Stooges look bad and silly but you would never know that by the Hollywood kissypoo audience.

Hawkwind - Space Ritual. That fold out is worth the price of admission to anything listed here.

Gong - You. Nothing needs to be said!

Yes - TFTO. Still the one album I would mention if I ever did a top something!

Tangerine Dream - Stratosfear. Too good for most.

Sadistic Mika Band - Hot Menu. One of the saddest and most under rated albums ever. A truly great album that deserved more than just the break up of the bad as Mika left, for what she might have thought was a bigger time that didn't happen!

PFM - The World Became the World, and probably because it was the first show of Space Pirate Radio I was able to record in 1974. Still have 4 hours of it ... and saved on mp3. The show, still is, by very far, the best and most original of all shows. SPR's first was Hawkwind from Space Ritual I think it was (the opening) a couple of months earlier!

And the most special thing of all? It's not just an album, but Guy Guden's ability when he was on the air to do something that no one else could do ... and make the music even better. Those were moments that will never be heard by anyone else except a few of us that were associated with it and got wind of it. The "phazed" albums (my word) were so special and far out as they made the albums even better ... and if you think that there were limits, he even did Klaus Schulze's Mirage! And what an unreal and unbelievable treat that was ... no one hearing any kind of radio will EVER get that special feeling in listening to something!