Banned Record Covers: The Beatles "Butcher Block LP"

May of 1966 found Capitol Records (the Beatles American label) with no project for the summer that was near.

Only six tracks were completed by the Beatles for their next record. Capitol had six American single sides (including the hit "Yesterday"), plus two songs that were left out of the American "Rubber Soul" release. (Back in 60s, European and American releases did not include the same tracks, and also not in the same order, as each market supposed that met different interests.)

Capitol records asked EMI (Capitol's British parent company), for three additional tracks. George Martin made mono mixes (deadlines reasons), of three newly recorded songs by the band, "I'm Only Sleeping," "And Your Bird Can Sing" and "Dr. Robert".

In March of 1966 the Beatles did a shoot with Whitaker that included sausages, raw beef, a hammer, nails, false teeth, butcher smocks and most notoriously, dismembered baby dolls. Whitaker's approach was to show that the Beatles were flesh and blood humans like everyone else by posing them amongst the un-glamorous props while being pop-art satirical at the same time.

One photo chosen from the session was used in Britain for a trade ad promoting their new "Paperback Writer" single. The shot showed the Beatles dressed in butcher smocks covered with raw meat, while holding the pieces of the baby dolls.

Despite Beatle manager Brian Epstein reservations Beatles insisted and the photo printed.

Alan Livingston, then president of Capitol, had his own reservations so he suggested the production department only press a few hundred advance copies. A release date of June 15th had been set. Capitol's production department pressed and packaged 750,000 copies of the new album with the "Butcher" cover.

Capitol immediately received complaints from distributors and store mangers so Livingston was forced to pull the cover from production.

Capitol put into effect a recall plan they called "Operation Retrieve."

Capitol prepared a much less eye-brow raising cover that simply featured a shot of the band in casual dress, set in front of a plain white background. This would become the standard cover that most people would become familiar with. This cover is often referred to as the "Trunk" cover as the band ids posed around a steamer trunk. Capitol's distribution centers were instructed to separate the records and their inner sleeves from the covers and return them to the manufacturing plants.

After receiving the records, Capitol's Jacksonville, Illinois plant butchered their "Butcher" covers and sent them off to a land fill. Before the other plants followed suit, someone at Capitol had the more economical idea to simply paste the new cover art over the existing covers. Capitol's Los Angeles and Scranton plants had these new cover pasted over their salvaged "Butcher" covers.

A week after starting Operation Retrieve, Capitol had the new version of the album on the store shelves. Among these copies, just underneath the thin layer of artwork, many "Butcher" covers were hidden.

Collectors have come up with terms to describe each state of an original "Yesterday…And Today" cover. A "Butcher" cover unaltered, as initially produced, is called a "First State" copy. These are the rarest and most desirable.

A "Butcher" with the new "Trunk" cover art pasted over it is called a "Second State" copy. These were once the most common of the "butchers" but there have become much fewer, as many have continued to be "peeled" over the years.

A copy that has had the "Trunk" cover removed to expose the "Butcher" art underneath is called a "Third State" copy. These exist in various conditions from nearly ruined to nice, depending on how successful the removal of the top layer was.

More than forty years later the banned cover remains the crown jewel of Beatles collectibles.

By chris73 at http://www.bukisa.com