Sad Wings of Destiny two weeks in November and December 1975 at Rockfield Studios in Wales with producers Jeffrey Calvert and Gereint "Max West" Hughes, and Chris Tsangarides as co-engineer. Calvert and Hughes were the main members of the pop group Typically Tropical who topped the UK charts in 1975 with "Barbados", Gull's first hit. The band stayed sober during the recording sessions, which lasted from 3:00 pm until 3:00 am. Mixing took a week at Morgan Studios in London. David Howells of Gull records commissioned Patrick Woodroffe to provide the cover art, a piece called "Fallen Angel" depicting a struggling, grounded angel surrounded
The Shadows the album "String of Hits" on EMI which topped the album charts, the success of this mooted EMI to a follow-up album, akin to a 'String of Hits-volume 2', with 13 old tracks (including a Marvin solo track) and one unreleased track from the 'String of Hits' sessions plus selected tracks from albums released in 1967, 1969, 1970, 1973, 1975 and 1977 of cover versions of hit singles; this was eventually released as ""Another String of Hot Hits"" in 1980. After 20 successful years together the Shadows and EMI parted company and the group signed a 10-year contract to Polydor