Yesterday and Today (rendered as "Yesterday" …and Today on the record label and in most published discographies) is the ninth Capitol release by the The Beatles, and was issued only in the United States and Canada. The album is remembered primarily for the controversy surrounding its original cover image, the "butcher cover" featuring the band dressed in white smocks and covered with decapitated baby dolls and pieces of meat. The album's title is loosely based on the song "Yesterday". Early album cover proofs show the word "Yesterday" in quotes.^[1]

Overview

This album saw the release of all of the tracks from the previous two British releases that were not included on their American counterparts: Help! ("Act Naturally" and "Yesterday") and Rubber Soul ("Drive My Car", "Nowhere Man", "If I Needed Someone", and "What Goes On").^[2] The recent single "Day Tripper" / "We Can Work It Out" was also included, as were three tracks from the upcoming LP Revolver: "I'm Only Sleeping", "Doctor Robert", and "And Your Bird Can Sing", issued here in preliminary mixes.^[3] This cutting up of their albums irritated the Beatles, who felt they had "put a lot of work into the sequencing" of the British versions.^[4]

Released in June 1966, this album's controversial cover marked the first time that the Beatles' judgment was severely criticised by the media and the public.^[5] Nevertheless, the album reached #1 on the U.S. Billboard charts by July 30, 1966 and was certified gold soon after. Apart from the butcher cover, this album is of interest to collectors for the appearance of unique mixes of Revolver-era tracks unavailable elsewhere. Because of Capitol Records' haste to release new product, "fake stereo" mixes of "Dr. Robert", "And Your Bird Can Sing", and "I'm Only Sleeping" were made from the original UK mono mixes and were treated with a degree of compression and reverb not found elsewhere.^[6]

Track listing

All songs are credited to Lennon-McCartney, except where noted.

Side one

1. "Drive My Car" – 2:30
2. "I'm Only Sleeping" – 3:01
3. "Nowhere Man" – 2:45
4. "Doctor Robert" – 2:15
5. "Yesterday" – 2:08
6. "Act Naturally" (Morrison-Russell) – 2:33

Side two

1. "And Your Bird Can Sing" – 2:01
2. "If I Needed Someone" (Harrison) – 2:24
3. "We Can Work It Out" – 2:15
4. "What Goes On" (Lennon-McCartney-Starkey) – 2:51
5. "Day Tripper" – 2:50

The "Butcher cover"

In early 1966, photographer Robert Whitaker had The Beatles in the studio for a conceptual art piece entitled "A Somnambulant Adventure." For the shoot, Whitaker took a series of pictures of the group dressed in butcher smocks and draped with pieces of meat and body parts from plastic baby dolls. The group played along as they were tired of the usual photo shoots and the concept was compatible with their own "black humour".^[4] Although not originally intended as an album cover, The Beatles submitted photographs from the session for their promotional materials. In particular, John Lennon pushed to use it as an album cover. A photograph of the band smiling amid the mock carnage was used as promotional advertisements for the British release of the "Paperback Writer" single. Also, a similar photograph from this shoot was used for the cover of the 11 June 1966 edition of the British music magazine Disc.^[7]

In the United States, Capitol Records printed approximately 750,000 copies of Yesterday and Today with the same photograph as "Paperback Writer".^[7] They were assembled in Capitol's four U.S. plants situated in different cities: Los Angeles; Scranton, Pennsylvania; and Jacksonville, Illinois. Copies from the various plants may be easily differentiated by examining the number printed near the RIAA symbol on the back; for example, stereo copies from the Los Angeles plant are designated "5" and mono Los Angeles copies are marked "6". Mono copies outnumbered stereo copies by about 10 to 1, making the stereo copies far more valuable today. A small fraction of the original covers were shipped to disc jockeys and store managers as advance copies. Reaction was immediate. The record was immediately recalled. All copies were ordered shipped back to the record label, leading to its collectability. It has been substantiated that the record was indeed for sale in some stores in limited areas, probably for only one day.^[8]

Capitol initially ordered plant managers to destroy the covers, and the Jacksonville plant delivered most of its copies to an area landfill. However, faced with so many jackets already printed, Capitol quickly changed course and decided instead to paste a new cover over the old one, cropping the open end of the album jacket by about 1/8 inch to address problems where the new sheet was not placed exactly "square" on top of the original cover. Tens of thousands of these were sent out. As word of this manoeuvre made the rounds, people attempted, sometimes successfully, to peel off the pasted-over cover of their copy of the album, hoping to reveal the original image hidden below.

Copies that have never had the white cover pasted onto them, known as "first state" covers, are very rare and command the highest prices. Copies with the pasted-on cover intact above the butcher image are known as "second state" or "pasteovers"; today, pasteover covers that have not been altered in an attempt to remove the white cover are also becoming increasingly rare and valuable. Covers that have had the white cover steamed or peeled off to reveal the underlying butcher image are known as "third state" covers; these are now the most common (and least valuable, although their value varies depending on how well the cover is removed) as people continue to peel second state covers to reveal the butcher image underneath. In December 2005 a "first state" copy of the album was sold for $10,500.^[9]

Then-president of Capitol Records, Alan Livingston, has in recent years confirmed the existence and private sale of twenty "first state" butcher covers, salvaged from his personal collection. These still-sealed pristine items with the controversial cover are the very rarest specimens. The so-called "Livingston Butchers" today command prices of $40,000 and up among collectors.

At the time, some of the Beatles defended the use of the photograph. Lennon said that it was "as relevant as Vietnam" and Paul McCartney said that their critics were "soft".^[7] However, not all of them were as comfortable with it. George Harrison commented, "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."^[4] Capitol Records apologized for the offense. Yesterday and Today was the only Beatles record to lose money for Capitol.^[7]

Trivia

This title cover was referenced in a season two episode of Lost entitled Fire + Water (Lost) where Charlie Pace's father was a butcher cutting the heads off dolls. ^[10]

Notes

External links

• The history of the butcher cover
• The butcher cover