The Beatles Butcher Cover

If you are after information on the Beatles butcher cover you have came to the right place.  At the start of 1966, photographer Robert Whitaker had The Beatles in the building for a abstract art piece entitled "A Somnambulant Adventure." For the piece, Whitaker snapped a sequence of films of the band fully clad in butcher smocks and swathed with pieces of flesh and body parts from artificial real life dolls. This ofcourse ended up being the Beatles butcher cover.  The group went along with it as they were bored of the customary photo shoots and the idea was well-matched with their own "black humour". Though The Beatles butcher cover was not at first planned as an album cover, The Beatles agreed to photographs from the session for their promotional materials. In particular, John Lennon pressed to use it as an album face. A photograph of the band jolly amid the mock killing was used as promotional advertisements for the British release of the "Paperback Writer" song. Also, a comparable snap from this session was used for the cover of the 11 June 1966 publication of the British music magazine Disc.

In the United States, Capitol Records printed in the region of 750,000 copies of Yesterday and Today which had the Beatles butcher cover (the identical photograph as "Paperback Writer").  They were amassed in Capitol's four U.S. plants located in different cities: Los Angeles; Scranton, Pennsylvania; and Jacksonville, Illinois. Copies from the a variety of plants may be easily distinguished by investigating the digits printed close to the RIAA mark on the back; for instance, stereo copies from the Los Angeles plant are elected "5" and mono Los Angeles copies are distinct "6". Mono copies of the Beatles butcher cover are far more common than stereo copies by about 10 to 1, making the stereo copies far more precious today. Small portions of the unique Beatles butcher covers were sent to disc jockeys and store managers as advance copies. Response was instant. The record was instantaneously recalled. All copies were demanded to be shipped back to the record label, leading to its collectibility. It has been verified that the record was certainly for trade in some stores in limited areas, probably for only one day.

Capitol at first ordered plant managers to obliterate the Beatles butcher cover, and the Jacksonville plant delivered most of its copies to a region landfill. Nevertheless, faced with so many jackets already in print, Capitol rapidly altered course and decided in its place to stick a new cover over the old Beatles butcher cover one, cropping the open end of the album cover by about 1/8 inch to tackle problems where the new sheet was not placed exactly "square" on top of the original face. Tens of thousands of these were sent out. As word of this scheme made the rounds, people tried, sometimes fruitfully, to peel off the pasted-over cover of their copy of the album, hoping to reveal the unique Beatles butcher cover picture concealed below.

Copies that have by no means had the white cover stacked onto them, known as "first state" Beatles butcher covers, are very exceptional and demand the maximum prices. Copies with the pasted-on cover intact above the butcher picture are known as "second state" Beatles butcher covers or "pasteovers"; today, pasteover covers that have not been distorted in an effort to eliminate the white cover are also becoming increasingly extraordinary and invaluable. Beatles butcher covers that have had the white cover steamed or peeled off to expose the primary butcher image are branded as "third state" covers; these are now the most widespread (and least costly, although their value varies depending on how well the cover is separated) as people carry on to peel second state covers to reveal the butcher image below. In December 2005 a "first state" Beatles butcher cover was bought for just under $10,500.

The ex-president of Capitol Records, Alan Livingston, has in current years confirmed the survival and personal sale of twenty "first state" Beatles butcher covers, taken from his private assortment. These still-sealed immaculate items with the notorious Beatles butcher cover are the very rarest samples. The purported "Livingston Butchers" today demand prices of $40,000 and up amid collectors.

At the moment, several of the Beatles protected the use of the Beatles butcher cover photograph. Lennon said that it was "as relevant as Vietnam" and Paul McCartney said that their opponents were "soft".  on the other hand, not all of them were as at ease with it. George Harrison said, "I thought it was gross, and I also thought it was stupid. Sometimes we all did stupid things thinking it was cool and hip when it was naïve and dumb; and that was one of them." Capitol Records said sorry for the wrongdoing. Yesterday and Today was the only Beatles record to lose cash for Capitol.

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