Beatle\u00a0fans in 1966, maybe especially the ones who lived in small upstate NY towns, had a very remote connection with the band, no matter how fanatical their devotion. Especially perhaps upstate 16-year-old fans whose family didn\u2019t own a television. That would be me.<\/p>\n
I had all the albums and the singles, generally two of each, so I could go to sleep at night with one side playing and the flip side ready to drop off the changer and play. News of The Beatles was seldom in the newspapers, occasionally there\u2019d be something in Life<\/em>, Look<\/em> or The Saturday Evening Post<\/em>, the large format picture-type magazines, and sometimes in Time<\/em> or Newsweek<\/em>.<\/p>\n Without a TV, it was easy to miss The Beatles occasional appearances on American television. I recall once standing in the lobby of a local restaurant waiting to see the band on the Ed Sullivan Show<\/em> in 1965 when a lightning strike knocked the transmission off the air. Otherwise, if I knew they were going to be on television, I\u2019d have to go to watch them on my grandparent\u2019s TV. \u00a0I\u2019d be concentrating every atom of my being on their bewilderingly brief appearance and fending off my grandparent\u2019s observations. \u201cThey look like girls. Look at that hair.\u201d \u201cThey must be wigs. Men can\u2019t grow their hair like that.\u201d \u201cHow can you tell the songs a part. They all sound alike.\u201d \u201cWhich one is Ringo?\u201d<\/p>\n Adults all knew about Ringo. They didn\u2019t know John, Paul, George.<\/p>\n So for me, The Beatles existed almost entirely in still photographs and magazine articles. (The best article I\u2019ve ever read about The Beatles, accompanied by the best photograph I\u2019ve ever seen, appeared in the Saturday Evening Post<\/em>\u00a0and will be the topic of my next blog!) A wonderful enthusiast, fan and editor was Gloria Stavers of 16 Magazine<\/em>. Invariably there were Beatle\u00a0photos (\u201cpix\u201d they were called) and interviews (made up I\u2019m sure) and gossip about the Fab Four. \u201cPaul married?\u201d \u201cJohn divorced?\u201d \u201cGeorge leaving?\u201d \u201cRingo quitting to run a beauty salon?\u201d More mature but still a fan magazine with more in-depth coverage, was Datebook<\/em>. Datebook<\/em> became notorious for innocently reprinting the interview John Lennon had given months earlier in England to Maureen Cleave, a confidante of the group. It caused no stir in England but his remark that The Beatles were more popular than Jesus caused a serious controversy in America. The Beatles had been wanting to break with their \u201cfour mop tops\u201d image and this, at least, adroitly accomplished that.<\/p>\n Which brings me to my story. Also on deck was the new Capitol Records Beatle album. Yesterday and Today<\/em>. As usual, for the American buyers, Capitol had patched together an album consisting of tracks from the British LPs Rubber Soul<\/em> and Revolver<\/em>, singles, flip sides of singles and British EPs\u00a0(extended play records, a format little known in the U.S.) and a couple of tracks intended for future release in the UK. Suddenly, a rumored Dadaist-like\u00a0Beatle album cover that the group had pushed for\u2014with the obvious intention of breaking the mop top image\u2014had become superfluous and counterproductive. John\u2019s \u201cJesus\u201d remark had done that in spades and now there was need for some American damage control. No further provocation necessary.<\/p>\n The \u201cfanzines\u201d carried this news. A few copies of the album with the offending cover had actually been released and then pulled from the shelves. Other already printed copies were unpacked from the shipping boxes and had the initial cover removed and replaced. The replacement cover, incidentally, featured four deadbeat, bedraggled, slovenly Beatles standing around a sort of footlocker\/packing case staring deadpan and bleary-eyed at the camera. Paul sits in the trunk, John sits cross-legged on top of it, George and Ringo stare blankly. In and of itself rather an extraordinary album cover for the pop music phenomenon of the 20th Century. However, in the hurry to get Beatle product to insatiable fans, Capitol in a few cases simply pasted the new cover over what became known as \u201cThe Butcher Album\u201d cover photograph.<\/p>\n The photographer, whom John described while stinting as a deejay on WPLJ in NYC as \u201ca bit of a surrealist,\u201d was Robert Whitaker. Robert Freeman had been the photographer whose soft focus images of The Beatles had graced most of their album covers (With The Beatles, A Hard Day\u2019s Night, Beatles For Sale, and Rubber Soul<\/em>) and it was Freeman\u2019s evocative photographs that fixed the early image of the group. It was this \u201cimage\u201d that John especially was out to break. He resented the rebellious image cultivated by the Rolling Stones and felt that it was gained at the expense of The Beatles. (Insiders were later to say that the Rolling Stones were gentlemen passing themselves off as thugs while The Beatles were thugs passing themselves off as gentlemen.)<\/p>\n Furthermore, The Beatles, and Paul especially, were upset with the liberties Capitol took with Beatle product in the US releases. The group sequenced the running order of the tracks on the UK releases with great care. Capitol, as already noted, scavenged through the available material and repackaged the album tracks as they saw fit. Irksome as this was to the group, the final straw for Paul was on the Capitol release of Rubber Soul<\/em>. Here, the quick warm-up strums that preceded the opening chords of Paul\u2019s I\u2019m Looking Through You were inadvertently included on the track as it was presented on the US album. Paul was aghast and annoyed at Capitol\u2019s carelessness. (Personally, and Paul notwithstanding, I greatly prefer the offending track on the American LP. I n a way, it\u2019s the first bootlegged Beatle song!)<\/p>\n The Beatles decided to register their complaint that Capitol had \u201cbutchered\u201d their Rubber Soul<\/em>\u00a0album. They decided that the cover photo they supplied for the next Capitol compilation album would depict the group in white butcher smocks with doll parts and cuts of meat draped around them while the band smiled maniacally at the camera. Paul merely looks innocently bemused. That was the intention of the photo but circumstances, including John\u2019s \u201cJesus\u201d remark, seemed to indicate that this time, The Beatles had quote\u2014gone too far.<\/p>\n Assiduous fans of The Beatles, even those of us in remote upstate NY were aware of the controversy and followed it carefully. It came out that a few of the albums had been shipped with a replacement cover simply pasted over the offending cover. It was revealed that it was possible to identify these rare specimens because Ringo\u2019s black turtleneck on the \u201cButcher\u201d cover was could be dimly seen coming through on the upper right hand corner of the replacement cover.<\/p>\n Ah hah!<\/p>\n Mr. Gabriel was the wonderful man who ran Olean\u2019s local record store, Melody Corner, at 235 N. Union Street. Mr. Gabriel had a listening booth lined with salmon colored acoustic tiles and he would allow us high school kids to listen to records to our hearts content. He appreciated his steady clients and I was one of them. After all I bought two copies of all The Beatle\u00a0(and Bob Dylan) albums as part of my sleeping arrangements. I informed Mr. Gabriel about this rare chance that a \u201cButcher\u201d cover might slip through. He said, \u201cI\u2019ll tell you what. My new shipment of albums comes in on Thursdays and the new Beatle album is scheduled to come in this week. You go down to the Blue Bird bus depot and pick up the package and you can be the first one to go through it and see if we get one.\u201d<\/p>\n I was at the bus depot. I picked up the shipment, brought it back to Melody Corner. Mr. Gabriel opened it and I began my inspection.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t looking good and I was getting down to the last few Yesterday\u2026and Today<\/em>\u00a0albums when I saw it. A small V-shaped black smudge showing through the upper right hand corner of the replacement cover. I paid my $3.97 and prepared to set off with my prize. Mr. Gabriel said, \u201cYou plan to steam it off and see what\u2019s underneath?\u201d I said \u201cYes.\u201d He said, \u201cRemember to take the record out of the sleeve before you steam it. Otherwise you\u2019ll warp it.\u201d That was excellent advice and I took it. The cover, held a foot or two away from the steaming spout of a tea-pot, slipped easily off and there it was. The fabulous \u201cButcher album cover.\u201d The cover was beautiful. The paper it was printed on had a grainy, fabric-like texture. The only other album I ever owned like it was Bob Dylan\u2019s The Times Are Changing Album<\/em>.<\/p>\n Like the majority of albums at that time (1966) my copy was in mono. The rarity of stereo copies makes them worth considerably more to collectors (a Wall Street Journal<\/em> article indicated that there are only seven stereo covers known to exist.) The steamed off \u201csteam trunk cover\u201d is also safely preserved.<\/p>\n All of this just goes to show that being a knocked out Beatles fan is not all fun and games.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Beatle\u00a0fans in 1966, maybe especially the ones who lived in small upstate NY towns, had a very remote connection with the band, no matter how fanatical their devotion. Especially perhaps upstate 16-year-old fans whose family didn\u2019t own a television. That … Continue reading