The Beatles-Yesterday And Today LP RECORD Vintage Vinyl

$

58

NEVER PLAYED FACTORY SEALED MINT--UNPEELED COVER-EDITION

Capitol  / ST 2553 STEREO Release date: 20th June 1966 Track listing: [Side A]: Drive My Car / I’m Only Sleeping / Nowhere Man / Doctor Robert / Yesterday / Act Naturally [Side B]: And Your Bird Can Sing / If I Needed Someone / We Can Work It Out / What Goes On / Day Tripper Highest chart position: Billboard) #1; Cashbox) #1; Record World) #1
It stayed top for 5 weeks (from 30th July 1966) Weeks in chart: 31 (from 9th July 1966) Sales figures: after 3 weeks – over 1 million; to date – over 2 million; Certified Gold on the 8th July 1966; Certified Platinum on the 10th January 1997

Because Capitol had been holding up a few songs from old LPs, they found that they nearly had enough for a whole extra album, so they purloined the first three songs from the Revolver sessions and put this out. The British fans were livid, because that meant that the Americans got to hear them first. Worse was to follow with the cover, though… The Beatles were growing sick and tired of the same-old photo sessions all the time (Bob Whitiker’s previous session for the Beatles 65' LP was about as boring as it got) so he decided to liven it up… He took one box of sausages, a plate of raw meat, two hundred nails and the dismembered heads of baby dolls and told them to sit and smile. I was just trying to show that the Beatles are just flesh and blood like everyone else, he said. There is nothing more amazing about Ringo than anyone else on this earth.

Trouble started brewing as soon as Brian got the photos back. He was wary of them ever getting out, because he could see damage being done to their public persona, but John insisted. So he stuck them on the Paperback Writerads and the front cover of Disc magazine in the UK. The Beatles were dead chuffed and insisted that they appear on the cover of their next Capitol album as well – but the sales reps started having hissy fits: The sales department came to me and said, ‘Look at this album cover, how can we sell this?’ said Alan Livingston. I called Brian in London and said, ‘Brian, I can’t put this album out with this cover, I need another cover.’ And he argued with me; he wouldn’t listen. So I said finally, ‘I’ll tell you what, we’ll have some printed up and we’ll put them out, send them to disc jockeys, our distributors and sales managers and see what happens. Two days later the factory pressed up 750,000 copies.

The result was immediate. Everyone hated it. We got frantic phone calls, he recalled. The stores wouldn’t handle it. He was forced to push the release date back a bit so he could recover the albums and press up some replacement sleeves. The idea was to destroy all the covers and use a stock shot of The Beatles sitting on a packing trunk. But after half of them had already been incinerated, someone hit upon the good idea of gluing it over the top. This would save them a stack-load of money and get the job done in half the time. All-in-all, it is estimated that nearly half of the 750,000 run ended up with these paste-overs (making it one of the world’s most common ‘rare-records’).

Because of the extra cost of replacing the sleeves, the album didn’t make a lot of money. But in an amusing little irony, it has since gone on to become one of their most collectable items! A butcher cover is a highly sort after item these days, but it’s not the rarest – and not even the most valuable. (That honour is reserved for various versions of Introducing The Beatles and Jolly What!) But if you ever come across a copy (and we can only dream!), then there are four versions to look for. A ‘First State Butcher’ is an original pristine copy, with no paste-over. A ‘Second State Butcher’ is one with the paste-over still in place. These have become even rarer than the ‘First States’ over the years, because people have been peeling all of the covers off.

 SORRY BIDDERS, I PUT THE PICTURE OF MY MONO COPY ON THE LISTING BY MISTAKE. HERE IS THE CORRECT STEREO PICTURE I TOOK OF THE LOT.

 RIAA#4