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
Sorrow (The McCoys song) of subsequent covers demonstrate the Merseys' single was highly regarded among British musicians. An excerpt of the song features in the Beatles song, It’s All Too Much, which was featured on their 1969 album Yellow Submarine. David Bowie's remake of "Sorrow", recorded in July 1973 at Château d'Hérouville, Hérouville, France, was the only single released in the UK from his Pin Ups covers album, reaching No.3 on the UK Singles Chart, and staying in the charts for 15 weeks. It was also Bowie's first number one hit single in Australia, where it topped the charts for 2 weeks in February