The Shocking & Censored Covers

The Beatles: Yesterday and Today (1965) At the height of their popularity, the Beatles' labels (EMI in Britain, Capitol in America) tended to let them create as they pleased. Yet the stateside versions of their albums were chopped into different song lists for commercial reasons, much to the musicians' dismay. As a comment on the "butchering" of their "babies," the Beatles posed for this outlandish shot (brainchild of photographer Robert Whitaker) with dismembered dolls and chunks of meat. On the album's early, limited release, a public outcry indicated that this time the lads had gone too far. A pressing of 750,000 was recalled and many became collectors' items, as did thousands of sleeves on which a bland replacement shot was pasted. (Resourceful collectors figured out how to steam off the new cover.) -- JC