The world's biggest source of lying remains WIKIPEDIA. Carl e-mailed us about this claim made about Marvin Gaye's LIVE AT THE LONDON PALLADIUM:
In late 1977, Live at the London Palladium remained in the top 10 for thirteen weeks and went on to sell two million copies becoming one of the top ten best-selling albums of that year in America
"Seems strange," he wrote. "Wondered what Ava and C.I. thought."
What do they say?
1) The sourcing goes to notes in a CD booklet. That's suspicious.
2) It was not a best selling album. It could not have been. That's reality. It's a three disc album. Multi-disc albums always struggle to sell. Whether it's a live, five disc Bruce Springsteen album or Fleetwood Mac's TUSK (released one year after Gaye's live album). They may make the charts -- especially in the 70s when the charts were based upon the number of albums shipped to stores each week and not what actually sold -- but they don't sell the way a single album disc album does. The pretense that a three-disc album could have been a best seller is really difficult to believe.
3) By the second half of the 70s, MOTOWN was finally paying to have their albums certified and, for auditing purposes, artists were demanding it -- especially at MOTOWN where artists long complained that they were ripped off. Check the RIAA certifications for Marvin Gaye and you'll find it did not even go gold.
4) Because it was a multi-disc, to go gold, it only needed to sell about 160,000 copies. The rule on a gold album is that it has to sell 500,000 . . . if it's a single-disc album. This was a three-disc album so it only needed to sell 160,000. It didn't even sell that.
5) On BIlLBOARD's best selling albums for 1977, it came in at number 45. Number 43 was Rita Coolidge's ANYTIME . . . ANYWHERE to provide some context.