Not your typical Beatles album cover huh? If you think the image of the fab four wearing butcher's overalls and covered in raw meat and baby doll parts is disturbing now, think of the effect it had when it was released by Capitol Records in June 1966. The Beatles had been darlings of both the media and public since their inception and this record cover marked the first time the band faced real criticism.
Capitol Records were appalled by the avalanche of negative press and swiftly recalled all the records. Initially the records became landfill but when Capitol realised the extent of money to be lost, they changed their minds and printed off a sticker featuring some hastily put together album art to be placed over the original album cover. The demand for this record in it's original state soared and is still highly coveted today. How in demand are these? Perfect copies are valued at 40,000 US dollars and up.
In the end, the album ended up being the only Beatles record to lose money for Capitol rather thank make it. George Harrison had this to say about the album cover "Sometimes we all did stupid things thinking it was cool and hip when it was naive and dumb; and that was one of them".
Read more about this album over at Wikipedia.
No comments:
Post a Comment