Spirit is the debut studio album by American rock band Spirit, released on January 22, 1968 by Ode Records. The album was commercially successful, spending more than six months on the Billboard album charts,[4] peaking at #31. It was voted number 658 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums 3rd Edition (2000).
The acoustic finger-picked guitar part of "Taurus" by Randy California was lifted virtually note for note by Jimmy Page for the introduction to Stairway to Heaven. Led Zeppelin opened for Spirit on an American tour in 1968, and also "borrowed" from "Fresh Garbage" in live performances of the song 'As Long as I Have You'.[5]
In 1973, Epic released a two-disc LP repackage of Spirit and Clear simply entitled Spirit.
The album was first issued on compact disc in 1996 by Sony. The original 1968 stereo mixes were not available for this release, so the album was remixed in stereo from the original multitrack tapes. This edition also includes four previously unreleased bonus tracks.
In 2017, Audio Fidelity reissued the album as a numbered limited edition hybrid SACD. This edition was remastered from the original 1968 stereo master tapes, which had not been commercially available since the LP release was discontinued in the 1970s. The 2017 edition also includes bonus tracks in the same mixes as those on the 1996 reissue.
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