Yesterday and Today

This article is about the album by the Beatles. For other uses, see Yesterday and Today (disambiguation).

Yesterday and Today
The Beatles dressed in butchers' coats and draped with pieces of meat and body parts from plastic baby dolls.
Studio album by
the Beatles
Released15 June 1966 (1966-06-15)[1]
Recorded
  • 14–17 June 1965
  • 13 October – 4 November 1965
  • 17 April – 6 May 1966[2]
StudioEMI, London
GenrePop[3]
Length27:33
LabelCapitol
ProducerGeorge Martin
The Beatles North American chronology
Rubber Soul
(1965) 		Yesterday and Today
(1966) 		Revolver
(1966)
Singles from Yesterday and Today
  1. "Nowhere Man"
    Released: 21 February 1966
Alternative cover
The Beatles pose around a steamer trunk

Yesterday and Today (also rendered as "Yesterday" ... and Today in part of the original packaging)[4] is a studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. Released in the United States and Canada in June 1966, it was their ninth album issued on Capitol Records and twelfth American release overall. Typical of the Beatles' North American discography until 1967, the album contains songs that Capitol had withheld from its configurations of the band's recent EMI albums, along with songs that the group had released elsewhere on non-album singles. Among its 11 tracks are songs from the EMI albums Help! and Rubber Soul, and three new 1966 recordings that would appear on Revolver in countries outside North America.

Yesterday and Today is remembered primarily for the controversy surrounding its original cover image. Known as the "butcher cover", it was taken by photographer Robert Whitaker and shows the band dressed in white coats and covered with decapitated baby dolls and pieces of raw meat. Although the photo was intended to be part of a larger work critiquing the adulation afforded the Beatles, the band members insisted it was a statement against the Vietnam War. Others interpreted it as the Beatles protesting the record company's policy of "butchering" their albums for the North American market. In response to retailers' concern over the gory subject matter, Capitol immediately withdrew the LP and replaced the cover image with a shot of the band posed around a steamer trunk.

The album's title plays on that of the song "Yesterday". The original LP became a highly prized item among collectors. Since some of Capitol's pressing plants merely pasted the trunk image onto the existing LP covers, the album also encouraged a phenomenon of stripping back the top layer of artwork in the search for a banned butcher cover. Having been deleted from Capitol's catalogue in the early-mid 1990s, Yesterday and Today was reissued on CD in 2014.

  1. ^ Miles 2001, pp. 233, 234. "June 15: ... The album Yesterday ... and Today was released in the US as Capitol T-2553 (mono) and ST-2553 (stereo) ... June 20: ... The album Yesterday ... and Today was re-released in the US with a new innocuous sleeve."
  2. ^ MacDonald 1998, pp. 139, 147–57, 176–78.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Billboard was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Spizer 2000, p. 128.