The Beatles Infamous "Butcher Cover" Photo Session And Alternate Shots (band, rock)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
As George said at the bottom of the page on this site (Thanks steel7 btw) he said "we would do some stupid things from time to time." That is true but the Beatles, and particularly John Lennon made a statement when Yesterday and Today was released. John had been critical for some time with Capitol Records, who was the U.S. label with the Beatles. Their U.K. label was Parlophone and those were superior pressings. And to prove his point, voila! here comes the chopped up babies. The Beatles weren't happy with the duophonic sound (aka fake stereo) and also felt that Capitol was trying to create another lp by lifting songs off of UK lp's, thus creating another lp available in the U.S. market.
When the original shipments of Yesterday and Today started to go out to the stores, U.S. Customs had a MOO-COW over it!! What albums that weren't destroyed were sent back to the pressing plants again and replaced with the "trunk cover", basically with the Beatles dressed in normal street clothes (not in butchers smocks). Those are known as the Yesterday and Today pasteovers. Those remaining copies, particularly the original lp's (known as first state 'butchers') go for ungodly amounts of money. As far as how many were originally pressed, they aren't rare by any stretch. It's what was left over after thousands of those first pressings got destroyed with tens of thousands more with the pasteovers. From what I remember certain pressing plants were told by Capitol Record execs to send all present copies to the landfill to be destroyed.
Coupling this was another nasty issue which was going on in the States when John Lennon made the observation "We are more popular than Jesus." And then things went bonkers for a lot of people. There were several cities in the States, particularly in the South, that had "Beatle burnings", basically burning everything Beatles from 45's to albums to songbooks to magazines-basically anything Beatles related. This went on through the Summer of 1966. Threats had been made against the group. And 1966 would be the last year that the Beatles would tour.
Good post double h. I just watched the beatles anthology (1995) & its quite obvious john was the most outspoken beatle. His comment about jesus got all bent out of shape & the people who burnt all the beatles stuff were idiots. The uk releases were better then the us releases & had more songs. Its discusting the way capitol records butchered the beatles lps. It was all about greed but it wasnt mentioned in the anthology as well as the butcher cover.
As the years went on the beatles music got better & better. They evolved quite nicely. Had john not been murdered in 1980 maybe, just maybe their might of been a beatles reunion even though paul was the main one against it. Imagine the world wide coverage & big money all involved would of made + the live reunion lp would of hit #1 for sure. If only......
I think the threats played a minimal role in their decision to quit live concerts. The Klan was at the Memphis show and apparently the show did get cut short and they were pelted with fruit. They had mentioned several times prior that they were tired of not being heard...too much screaming and no one was listening to the music.
As George said at the bottom of the page on this site (Thanks steel7 btw) he said "we would do some stupid things from time to time." That is true but the Beatles, and particularly John Lennon made a statement when Yesterday and Today was released. John had been critical for some time with Capitol Records, who was the U.S. label with the Beatles. Their U.K. label was Parlophone and those were superior pressings. And to prove his point, voila! here comes the chopped up babies. The Beatles weren't happy with the duophonic sound (aka fake stereo) and also felt that Capitol was trying to create another lp by lifting songs off of UK lp's, thus creating another lp available in the U.S. market.
When the original shipments of Yesterday and Today started to go out to the stores, U.S. Customs had a MOO-COW over it!! What albums that weren't destroyed were sent back to the pressing plants again and replaced with the "trunk cover", basically with the Beatles dressed in normal street clothes (not in butchers smocks). Those are known as the Yesterday and Today pasteovers. Those remaining copies, particularly the original lp's (known as first state 'butchers') go for ungodly amounts of money. As far as how many were originally pressed, they aren't rare by any stretch. It's what was left over after thousands of those first pressings got destroyed with tens of thousands more with the pasteovers. From what I remember certain pressing plants were told by Capitol Record execs to send all present copies to the landfill to be destroyed.
Coupling this was another nasty issue which was going on in the States when John Lennon made the observation "We are more popular than Jesus." And then things went bonkers for a lot of people. There were several cities in the States, particularly in the South, that had "Beatle burnings", basically burning everything Beatles from 45's to albums to songbooks to magazines-basically anything Beatles related. This went on through the Summer of 1966. Threats had been made against the group. And 1966 would be the last year that the Beatles would tour.
A girlfriend of mine had a copy with the pasted-over cover. The paste-over stripped off easily and cleanly, and the image, with the meat and the bloody doll parts, was much more ludicrously amusing than shocking.It was one of those 'What the hell were they think of?' moments when I first saw it. I'm sure a lot of the covers were soon destroyed by kids who wanted to see if their copy was a past-over.
Blind Faith had a similar cover controversy with their second album; the original cover showed a nude yung girl, about 13, holding a very sleek looking jet plane or a rocket. It was too much for American sensibilities, and it was also pasted over with a much more conventional band shot cover after the record was first released and hit the stands. Enough of the naked girl covers were shipped that the music stores stuck them in plain brown wrappers in the racks.
Led Zeppelin also had a back cover with a bunch of naked children on it, but it was less controversial. By then, the times had changed.
Europe just doesn't have the Puritan hang-ups when it comes to cover art the US has. Now that the recording industry no longer has a tight lock on all music production, I expect that there will be far more outrageous covers in the future, but none will have the impact of the old 33 RPM covers, as the current visual formats are so much smaller. Those old record covers all had art that could be easily seen from yards, not inches, away.
I think the threats played a minimal role in their decision to quit live concerts. The Klan was at the Memphis show and apparently the show did get cut short and they were pelted with fruit. They had mentioned several times prior that they were tired of not being heard...too much screaming and no one was listening to the music.
I remember a quote that Bill Medley of the Righteous Brothers once made regarding the crowd noise in those days- "We want people to hear us."
When I mentioned earlier about the Beatles getting threats during this specific period of time, I should have mentioned just the one incident. And that one was at Manila in the Phillipine Islands. IIRC, After a sold out concert the Beatles were invited for a breakfast function with Imelda Marcos at their palace. I've read slightly different versions as to the exact events but I'll go with this; Beatles manager Brian Epstein politely declined as they had a tight schedule, the guys were absolutely exhausted, but that the Beatles through Mr. Epstein thanked Imelda Marcos for the invitation. If that invitation was made a couple days earlier, arrangements might have been possible. At that time however they were on the second leg of the tour which included Japan and shortly after that a three week tour in the States with the final concert in San Francisco.
Marcos took it as an insult as apparently no one, either politicians or any other personality figures had done that before. That next morning when the Beatles prepared to leave, all of a sudden the arranged police protection at the airport went ***POOF!*** And several hundred angry fans were at the airport. The morning Manila newspaper had headlines at the top saying "Beatles snub Imelda Marcos!"
While I don't recall any solid evidence that the Fab 4 was physically assaulted, the same can't be said for Mal Evans, the Beatles road manager. Same with Brian Epstein; in fact, Epstein said later he encountered a shakedown amongst some government figures forcing him to pay several thousand dollars and had to sign a tax bond before letting him on the plane. And speaking of Epstein, he apologized to the TV reporters and tried to explain the circumstances to the Manila TV stations. And from what I've read that interview never made any of the news shows.
Last edited by DOUBLE H; 07-16-2012 at 03:58 PM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
