The Beatles released 12 studio albums – but that’s not the whole story.
For each record, there will have been singles, American versions, and album tracks. On top of that, press and magazine shoots mean that the band would have been spending a lot of time in front of a camera, let alone the lenses of the paparazzi that plagued them. The image fatigue must have been intense, constantly having to strike the same poses and smile the same smiles. So one shoot, they’d had enough – and that’s when it got controversial.
It’s confusing, though. The 12 albums counted are only official studio records when the band went into a room, meticulously crafted a record, picking a collection of songs that work as a unit, connected by a theme or united by a sonic moment. They’d title that, pick artwork to suit and release it, giving the world those iconic and defined eras for the band.
But there were many more albums than that. Especially as the group were caught between different labels in different countries, and different teams that would or wouldn’t release certain tracks, their discography gets muddled. In America, the Beatles technically had 17 albums as they were introduced to the market there with different compilations of tracks rather than the famous Please, Please Me record which never existed there.
It kept going like that, and in 1966, there was another random Beatles record in the US and nowhere else; Yesterday and Today, their twelfth album in the eyes of American fans.
It’s a random gathering of songs; some from Revolver, some from Rubber Soul, even some from as early as Help! like Ringo Starr’s cover of ‘Act Naturally’. As a theme, I guess it bridges the gap between their growing interest in folk-tinged tunes or the start of a more psychedelic phase, but pieced in with some straight-laced elements to keep traditional fans happy.
But what threw it off was the cover. Completely opposed to the clean-cut image the band had always captured, even with their mop-top hair and even as they began to be more countercultural, Yesterday and Today’s cover features an image of the four boys, bloodied and holding dismembered dolls. It’s as wild as it sounds.
Originally, it was said that it was a political statement and a way for the band to address the ongoing Vietnam War, although realistically, that would be a weak protest. Instead, Lennon later said that it was purely a move of sheer boredom.
“It was inspired by our boredom and resentment at having to do another photo session and another Beatles thing. We were sick to death of it,” he said, “Also, the photographer was into [Salvador] Dalí and making surreal pictures. That combination produced that cover.”
With both the desire to throw people off in an act of exhausted rebellion and the creative instincts of a more risk-taking mind, the result was an image that shocked everyone and was quickly hidden.
There’s a reason why you’ve likely never heard of this record or seen the image. It was swiftly taken out of print and the copies of it became a rare find with one version selling for $12,501.