On this day in 1966, The Beatles released their twelfth American album, Yesterday and Today

American audiences commonly missed out on smaller releases from The Beatles, including compilations and some singles. This, combined with the US industry’s preference for shorter LP’s, led to the compiling of releases for North American audiences. In this case, Capitol Records, EMI’s US counterpart, took charge of the album.

Yesterday and Today consists of songs from The Beatle’s two most recent LP’s, Rubber Soul and Help! as well as both sides of single Day Tripper / We Can Work It Out and several yet to be released tracks from the upcoming Revolver. Due to the compiling from different albums, the release covers a range of styles from the band’s musical development. The eclectic nature of the collection infuriated The Beatles as well as their manager Brian Epstein and producer George Martin.

One of the band’s primary issues with the album was the inclusion of unreleased material. Though the songs from Revolver were complete and set to be released the following month, Yesterday and Today had undermined the plans for the more significant LP’s release. In addition, the versions used were wrong, with duophonic (“fake stereo”)  mixes being utilised on the stereo version and completely different mixes appearing on the mono version of the album. Lennon later complained in 1974 that the band “put a lot of work into the sequencing” of their albums and were told that there was a rule against releasing the 14 track LPs in the US, necessitating the release of albums such as Yesterday and Today.

The biggest controversy for the album, however, would come from its original album artwork.  Shot by photographer Robert Whitaker, renowned for his love of the surreal, the photograph featured the band wearing white coats and holding body parts from baby dolls and raw meat. The band themselves decided on the butcher photo, intended as as a statement of the band’s opposition of the Vietnam War. Around 750,000 copies of the LP were prepared with this cover before outrage from retailers and disc jockeys slowed sales of the album, forcing Capitol and Epstein to decide on an alternative, a much more tame photo of the band posed around an open steamer trunk.

The cover’s controversy has only increased the value of the recalled version of the album to collectors, with some original copies selling for over $2000. This rarity was only compounded upon when Capitol decided to delete the album from the bands catalogue in 1986 in an attempt to simplify the discography. Regardless of the artwork drama, the album surged to the top of charts in both the US and Canada, though it would seen be dwarfed by the release of Revolver.