Stunt or mistake? The Butcher Cover was recalled because it was deemed too disturbing and potentially damaging to the band’s reputation (and it was). So a more conventional (and much more boring) cover replaced it.
It was 1966, and the Beatles were nearing the peak of their popularity. Their records were selling in the millions, and they had an eager world-wide fan base. By the end of 1965, they had just completed another world tour, and the live concert at Candlestick Park in August of 1965 was the last of more than 1400 live concerts that they performed since 1961.
It was also a good time for them creatively. Their new albums, Rubber Soul (1965) and Revolver (1966) were watersheds in their work. They were beginning to assert their musical independence, shifting away from the pop style that characterized their early recordings, to experiment with new sounds, instruments, and more complicated arrangements. Rubber Soul and Revolver were also their first two albums that were planned as albums in their entirety, and not as a collection of previously-released singles and covers.
That did not mean that everything was happy, however. The Beatles’ American label was Capitol Records, which had complete control over their American output. Rather than just reissuing the albums as they had been released in the UK, Capital often reconfigured the track lists and compilations, and made their own choices of tracks to release as singles. While this was an irritant, it was less of an issue when the Beatles’ albums were essentially compilations of singles anyway. But it became a problem for albums like Rubber Soul, which had a defined arc.
By this point, the Beatles – who were never passively cooperative at the best of times – had some serious commercial muscles to flex, and they flexed them at Capitol. Capitol compiled a collection of fairly unimportant singles to be released as Yesterday & Today, and required a photo of the band for the cover. What they got became a notorious legend in the music industry.
The cover was photographed by avant-garde British photographer Robert Whitaker. Whitaker had a long relationship with the Beatles as their photographer, and took some of the most iconic images of the group over the years. For this cover, he staged a photo of the boys dressed in white butcher coats, holding a jumble of decapitated baby dolls and raw meat.
Surprisingly, the cover was published and advance copies were distributed to critics and the press in June 1966. There was almost immediate backlash. This was not the Beatles that the public was accustomed to. The cover was seen as violent and disturbing, and its meaning was obscure. It immediately came to be known as the “Butcher Cover.”
Stories differ about how the controversial cover came to be. The most-shared story is that the idea was John’s, protesting how Capitol Records was “butchering” their work for American release. Whitaker, however, told a different story in later interviews. He claimed that the idea was his, and that the photo was to be one of a three-image set, backed in gold like a Russian icon. The intent, he said, was trying
“to show they were flesh and blood – which is what they are. Some people saw them as saints, which they weren’t. I also found that every time we got off the stage girls would have ripped them to bits, had they got the chance, torn them to pieces – that was something to do with the meat. The dolls are really little girls screaming away. There are a lot of false things there like false teeth, false dolls eyes. It was never meant to be the cover.”
Instead, he claimed, the photo was taken from him and sent to Capitol and used as the cover before he had finished the intended composition.*
However it came to be, Capitol immediately had second thoughts about the cover photo and tried to recall the advance copies before the album’s official release date. Their Press office rushed out a note to reviewers that stated:
“The original cover, created in England, was intended as ‘pop art’ satire. However, a sampling of public opinion in the United States indicates that the cover design is subject to misinterpretation. For this reason, and to avoid any possible controversy or undeserved harm to the Beatles’ image or reputation, Capitol has chosen to withdraw the LP and substitute a more generally acceptable design.”
They further requested that all copies be returned to them (COD) and promised a new copy with a new cover within a week or so.** In all, 750,000 copies with the original cover were printed, and the cost of replacing them exceeded $250,000 (about $2 million today) – pretty much all of the expected profits.
The new cover image, a fairly bland and static photo of the band sitting with a packing trunk, was also taken by Whitaker. New covers were made, or old covers were covered with large stickers of the new photo, as Yesterday & Today was released to the public.
The controversy was not without some success, however. As a result of the stunt, the Beatles were able to reset their relationship with Capitol, and had greater control of their releases going forward – just in time for the release of their monumental Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967.
So, just how does this long road lead to Needham? I’m so glad you asked!
After the recall, Capitol was left with thousands of copies of a record cover that was not only useless, but potentially reputation-damaging. They needed a reliable way to get rid of them.
This brings us to Joe Sobeck, Distribution Manager for Capitol Records in their Boston office, which was actually located at 71 4th Street in Needham Heights. Needham was getting the first shipments of the new album for release, but the decision to replace the Butcher cover was made almost as soon as the new copies had been shipped. Capitol was concerned that the situation generate as little public attention as possible, so the cover switch was restricted to Capitol personnel only – no contractors or temporary staff, who might not have the same loyalty to the company. Sobeck had received 50,700 copies of the album, so it was a huge job.
Disposal was also a huge job, especially since the company was trying to not attract attention. And Joe’s options were few:
Now the problem was the disposal of the Butcher Covers, all 50,700 of them. [The method was left] up to me, as long as security was maintained. Incineration was the first choice, but local installations flatly refused because the volume involved would mess up their schedules. Shredding was not possible since nobody had equipment to handle the job. Since these covers were the legitimate result of a town business and the town had to accept our “garbage” I decided that the town dump was the only feasible method of disposal… After consulting with the town dump supervisors, they agreed to take the covers and maintain security.”***
On June 28, Joe Sobeck was able to send his boss, National Distribution Manager Robert Howe, the following assurance:
Dear Bob: This memo will certify that the destruction of 50,700 Beatles’ jackets was completed on Monday, June 27, 1966… Destruction was accomplished by having a hole dug by a clam shovel in a swampy part of the Needham Town Dump. By the time the hole was ready for us it had filled with water. The jackets were dumped on the ground as close as possible to the hole and then a bulldozer pushed the jackets into the hole. The hole was then covered with about one to two feet of dirt and will subsequently be covered with garbage which will be well compacted as time goes by. The supervisor of the Town Dump has promised that there will be absolutely no digging of any sort at the burial site and I will make checks from time to time to see that these instructions are followed.
The dump at the time was not the current RTS, but Claxton Field across the street. The field was the town dump until 1968, only two years after the Butcher covers were dumped there.
Capitol Records succeeded in destroying almost all of the covers. But despite their appeals and secrecy, some covers did survive. John Lennon kept a copy, and in 2019 his cover (autographed by himself, Paul, and Ringo) sold for $250,000. Other originals are worth thousands, and even the copies covered with the sticker of the new image have some value. Alas for local collectors, though. Somewhere in a formerly-swampy corner of Claxton Field is a mass of soggy and rotted 60-year old paper pulp – useless, but with a damn good story to go with it.
Sources for this story:
*The Whitaker interview was transcribed in The Paul McCartney Project (an unofficial fan site). https://www.the-paulmccartney-project.com/1966/03/the-beatles-butcher-photo-session/
**The Capitol Records letter is reproduced by Music Goldmine. https://musicgoldmine.com/blogs/news/the-story-of-the-infamous-beatles-butcher-cover?srsltid=AfmBOopngQfNUS_qjo-mtIuq-oJozcgpigxdUSHi26kDIvxm95T_DtNl
***The Sobek correspondence and interview are also from The Paul McCartney Project. https://www.the-paulmccartney-project.com/1966/06/yesterday-and-today-butcher-cover-is-being-withdrawn/
Gloria Polizzotti Greis, Executive Director, Needham History Center & Museum