The Recalled Beatles Album Cover That Became A $20,000 Collecting Prize

While it was never officially publicly released, and was then quickly withdrawn, a precious few copies of a Beatles album with a controversial cover made their way into the hands of fans. That record became a highly sought-after and extremely valuable collectors' item, and in the 2020s, one such example of an album cover detail that could make a record worth more than you think, commanded tens of thousands of dollars at an auction. 

In 1966, Capitol Records compiled a slew of semi-obscure Beatles tracks into a collection for the U.S. called "Yesterday and Today." When asked by label reps to provide a photograph they'd like to use on the cover, the Fab Four contributed an image captured during a session with their favored photographer, Robert Whitaker. Imagined as part of a three-piece set called "A Somnambulant Adventure," and inspired by the work of ambitious conceptual artists like Hans Bellmer, Salvador Dali, and Luis Buñuel, the picture depicted the smiling Beatles wearing white butcher jackets and contending with raw meat and realistic-looking baby doll parts doused in fake blood. 

Capitol printed hundreds of thousands of sleeves and sent some out before they overruled the Beatles and issued a recall. The copies that didn't get returned grew tremendously in value over the decades.

Just a few weeks after John Lennon uttered rock's most infamous remark, the Beatles met in the studio of photographer Robert Whitaker. His session theme echoed Lennon's observation that the band had become "bigger than Jesus," contrary to how Beatles fans acted in the 1960s. "All over the world I'd watched people worshipping like idols, like gods, four Beatles," Whitaker said, per his website. And so, he snapped pics of the Fab Four amidst stark and ghoulish reminders of mortality — blood and gore.

When Capitol Records executive Alan Livingston saw the cover, he was alarmed. "I showed it to our sales manager and a few other people and they turned green," he later told Mojo (via Rolling Stone). Capitol suggested the Beatles rethink the cover but were rebuffed, with the band claiming it to be an anti-war statement. 

Livingston gave the go-ahead to print the gutsy sleeve. Capitol Records pressed 750,000 copies of "Yesterday and Today" in its original version and distributed around 60,000 advance samples to various media outlets and stores. The representatives of retail outlets were so appalled that they informed Capitol that they wouldn't stock "Yesterday and Today." The Beatles, who were at the time discussing a new deal with Capitol Records, finally allowed the company to get rid of the butcher covers and reprint new ones featuring a picture of the band posing with a trunk.

To recover losing as much as possible of a reported $250,000 on the "Yesterday and Today" do-over debacle, Capitol Records took a limited amount of the returned sleeves, which featured the bloody Beatles playing with dismembered dolls, and covered the offending image with the one of the Beatles with their trunk. A sleeve of this type is even rarer, as is a stereo version of the LP inside — 85% of the recalled albums were presented in mono. That means a "Yesterday and Today" copy with the butcher cover and in stereo is one of the rarest pieces of Beatles or rock 'n' roll memorabilia imaginable.

On more than one occasion, high-end goods management firm Heritage Auctions has handled the sale of "Yesterday and Today" copies that avoided return or destruction. In 2016, they auctioned off a sealed, stereo copy in perfect shape for $125,000. In December 2025, a stereo version with the redone cover went for $20,000.