328: Meat - The Beatles with Erika White

Summary

Something About the Beatles – Episode 328: Meat – The Beatles with Erika White

June 25, 2026 | Host: Robert Rodriguez | Guest: Erika White

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Episode Overview

This episode focuses on the fascinating backstory of the Beatles’ infamous “Butcher cover”—the original cover for the 1966 North American album Yesterday and Today—featuring the band in white smocks draped with raw meat and doll parts. Host Robert Rodriguez and guest Erika White (author of the forthcoming book MEAT the Beatles) dive deeply into how this provocative image came to be, the artistic ambitions and context behind it, the fallout it caused, and its lasting symbolism in Beatles history.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Origins and Context of the Butcher Cover

• The Yesterday and Today album was a Capitol Records compilation that drew songs from previous UK releases and singles. To US fans, despite being “bastardized,” it was a beloved entry into the Beatles’ catalogue (02:13).
• Unlike other US compilations, this album is famous for the “Butcher cover,” a surreal photo shoot by Robert Whitaker showing the Beatles in white coats with meat and dolls. Originally, this photo was never meant to be an album cover (02:40–04:40; 32:06).
• Erika White’s book uniquely investigates not just the session itself, but the deeper personal, cultural, and artistic currents that enabled its creation and controversy (05:40).

2. The Beatles’ Shifting Artistic Sensibilities

• 1966 was a year of disruption and reinvention for the Beatles, following controversial interviews (John’s “more popular than Jesus” comment, Paul’s condemnation of American racism, etc.) and a conscious abandonment of “Beatlemania as usual” (04:05–06:00).
• White traces the group’s restlessness—including their alignment with avant-garde art and experimentation with new forms—back to their early days, showing that the desire to “break out” was part of their DNA (09:11).

Quote:

“There’s no template for a pop star reaching 25 or 30 and what to do after… They’re in such this amazing, out-of-time moment for themselves when they are discovering who they become… and Revolver, Sergeant Pepper and onwards. It’s this magical time.”
—Erika White (09:11)

3. Robert Whitaker: The Artistic Catalyst

• Whitaker, an acolyte of Salvador Dalí, approached photography with a surreal, avant-garde eye. His entrée to the Beatles was as serendipitous as his methods were unorthodox (14:54).
• Brian Epstein, recognizing Whitaker’s talent after seeing a peacock-adorned portrait, invited him into the Beatles’ circle as a documentarian and free-spirited creative force (14:54–18:47).

Quote:

“Whitaker was really an acolyte of Dali from the very beginning… He was always looking at things with kind of this slanted surrealist eye.”
—Erika White (14:54)

• Unlike previous photographers, Whitaker was bored by standard publicity shoots and sought to break patterns, sometimes to the consternation of the band’s management (19:34).

4. The Surreal Photo Sessions and the Genesis of the Butcher Image

• Whitaker’s experimental style included private, myth-laden shoots (e.g., John with a sunflower in his eye, family scenes inspired by Greek myths), blurring pop and high art (24:22–25:33).
• The Butcher session (March 25, 1966) stemmed from Whitaker’s artistic vision of creating a triptych satirizing the deification of the Beatles—originally intended as a gallery piece, not an album cover (32:06–34:36).

Quote:

“He intended it to be a private art piece… to point out the fact that deification of the Beatles was absurd and… what he was seeing when he accompanied them on a tour… it was a comment on that.”
—Erika White (32:06)

5. The Decision to Use the Butcher Cover

• The band’s artistic license in 1966, ongoing exposure to avant-garde circles, and their own appetite for risk and novelty made them open to such a bizarre concept (12:08–14:54).
• The actual selection of the butcher photo as the cover was circumstantial: Capitol’s proposed alternatives were uninspired, and John Lennon especially saw the butcher shot as a way to “break the image” (46:10–48:25).

Quote:

“I especially pushed for it to be an album cover, you know, just to break the image… We tried to do something different.”
—Beatles member (Paul or John, 48:25, 48:51)

6. Internal and External Reactions

• Not all Beatles were equally enthusiastic: George openly disdained the image (“gross and stupid,” later said in Anthology), Ringo’s attitude was ambivalent, but George’s playful demeanor in the photos is noted (67:44).
• Brian Epstein was reportedly aghast when he saw the actual photos in print, yet acquiesced—partly out of loyalty and fear of losing relevance within the Beatles organization as their roles and needs evolved (52:35–54:57).

Quote:

“Brian’s influence and usefulness was receding… Lennon wanted something from him. He believed in it, he [Brian] does not interfere in their musical choices ever, and so this is another artistic choice.” —Erika White (52:35)

• Capitol’s reaction was equally mixed: President Alan Livingston was shocked, but their art director, George Isaki, embraced the chance to make a pop art statement with the cover design (54:57).

Quote:

“Alan Livingston received this photo and his first reaction was, ‘What in the hell is this?’ … But their art director, George Isaki, saw the value in it. He thought it was cool.” —Erika White (55:14)

7. The Fallout: Recall and Mythmaking

• Capitol printed about 60,000 copies before the backlash forced a recall. “Paste-over” covers (the “trunk” version) became collector’s items (48:25, 66:35).
• Various explanations were floated—art protest, anti-war statement, Capitol “butchering” the Beatles’ albums. Most lacked foundation; the true origin was artistic but misunderstood and sensationalized (62:23–62:47).

Quote:

“It got that after-the-fact meaning attached to it… it just seems like, like you said, a shoot from the hip thing that if Paul… throws Vietnam on the table… But I think the point was lost simply through the outrage people had over their initial shock at the visual.”
—Robert Rodriguez (62:47)

• Whitaker himself viewed the appropriation of his work for an album cover as a misfire—his artistic concept was lost: “A cock up. He did not like it.” (69:14–70:28).

8. Aftermath and Legacy

• Whitaker left working with the Beatles after they stopped touring and drifted from photography, later becoming a war correspondent, then a farmer. He never finished the original triptych (70:33–76:28).
• The Butcher cover’s legacy influenced later moments in pop culture—a precursor to more fearless, controversial album art (e.g., Two Virgins, Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers) (78:07–82:42).
• Calls exist for an official, full, high-quality release of the Butcher cover, recognizing its place in Beatles history and pop art (88:38).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Beatles’ evolution:
  “They were always looking for something new, something to push the barrier… At that point in their life, especially Paul, I think, was naturally getting into avant-garde and surrealism…”
  —Erika White (12:08)

• On the Butcher cover’s unintended role:
  “Whitaker did not intend that. He intended it to be a private art piece… it snowballed in a way that he never expected.”
  —Erika White (32:06)

• On the recall and confusion:
  “I think everybody knows the approximate story… at some point, we have to recall what’s going on… What was the reaction like? Do we know what Whitaker thought of all this?”
  —Robert Rodriguez (68:42)

  “He was more mad that the album, that the photo was repurposed as an album than that it was the whole recall… He called it… a cock up. He did not like it.”
  —Erika White (69:14–70:28)

• On the cover’s mythmaking:
  “You can only be incredible once.” —Beatles Member (Paul or John, 78:07)

• On its place in music history:
  “If you look at it in context… there’s nothing unusual or random or in bad taste about it. It fits perfectly.”
  —Erika White (84:17)

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Key Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment / Topic | |:-------------:|:--------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:13 | Introduction to the episode, context for Yesterday and Today | | 09:11 | The Beatles’ discomfort with fame and drive to disrupt norms | | 14:54 | Whitaker’s artistic background and first encounter with the Beatles | | 24:22 | Whitaker’s private shoots (Lennon family, surreal images) | | 32:06 | Butcher shoot’s original intent as art, not an album cover | | 46:10 | How uninspired alternatives led to Butcher photo’s selection | | 48:25 | Lennon’s push to use the image, initial release and recall | | 54:57 | Capitol and Brian Epstein’s ambivalent responses and justifications | | 62:23 | Myths and after-the-fact rationalizations about the cover | | 69:14 | Whitaker’s feelings about the album use and recall | | 70:33 | Whitaker’s post-Beatles career and the aftermath | | 78:07 | Direct line from Butcher cover to later artistic statements | | 88:38 | Ongoing desire for an official, respectful release of the cover |

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The Legacy and Why It Still Matters

• The Butcher cover is not just a weird footnote—it’s a case study in pop iconography, artistic risk, and how the meaning of art can warp in the face of business, miscommunication, and public outrage.
• Both Rodriguez and White advocate for a renewed appreciation of the context and artistry that birthed the image, seeing it not as a blunder but a sign of the Beatles’ and Whitaker’s willingness to push boundaries (84:37–84:46).
• White’s forthcoming book (and possibly a future documentary) seeks to further illuminate “not just what happened, but why it happened” (82:42).

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For Listeners Who Haven’t Heard the Episode

This discussion is rich in rarely explored backstory, tracing the Butcher cover’s roots through the Beatles’ shifting identities, Whitaker’s career, management dynamics, and 1960s pop culture tides. Whether you’ve only heard of “the album with the meat and dolls” or you’re a deep Beatles historian, the episode re-frames the event as a collision of art, accident, and the peculiar circumstances of the world’s most famous band at a creative crossroads.

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End of Summary

Transcript

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[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

What do you think about this photo on the last single disc you have had in England with a knee on your shoulder and blonde? It wasn't on the last single. They don't have photos on singles in England. It was a photograph on an LP in America. I've seen it. Advertising. Yeah, but it's not. It's only an advertisement. It's just us with some meat. That's all it is. Look at it again. Just a picture of us with some meat. Lousy picture.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Hello and welcome to episode 328 of Something about the Beatles Podcast. And we are just now at a little bit past the 60th anniversary of the 1966 release of the Yesterday and Today album in North America. And of course this is the Capital produced compilation album drawing from the UK Rubber Soul, plus three advanced cuts from Revolver as a work in progress and a couple of singles yesterday. Act naturally and we can work it out. Day Tripper to put together a album for American fans that, you know, a lot of people look at as a bastardized collection of Beetle tunes. While the millions of Americans that heard this back in the day, including beyond the 60s into the 70s like myself, who was among their first Beatle albums for sure got into the music this way. So it holds a soft spot in our hearts for sure. But this one, unlike say Beatles 6 or the early Beatles or Beatles 65, was one of those things that got an Extra amount of attention, as you all know, due to the so called butcher photograph of the Beatles in white smocks with slabs of meat and doll parts on the COVID taken by Robert Whitaker as part of an unfulfilled concept piece that he got the boys to agree to do in March of 1966, just when they were sort of breaking away from beetling as usual. As became evident as time went on that year, this was just on the heels of doing the interviews with Maureen Cleave. That of course got a lot of controversy, mostly John's, but no less Paul calling out American racism and George talking about religion. So definitely a lot of stuff going on where they're not sticking to the script this year, as it happens. But anyway, I talked about a little bit in my Revolver book back when, and other people have talked about it here and there, but nobody to this point has gone all in a deep exploration of not just the session, not just the use of the photograph on the COVID of this Capitol compilation, but going way back to sort of trace the arc of how this thing came to be, why the Beatles would have agreed to it, and how Whitaker came up with this concept that I don't even know if they were fully aware of what he was going for. But in this telling, in this research and this exploration by Erica White, you really get the full feel of how it came to be, why it felt like the right thing at the right time, and what the repercussions were, not just for Capitol Records, but going forward, the sort of mindset that they carried on that would certainly manifest a couple years down the road in another infamous album cover and how they came to view it in the later years. So this is a story that, as I said, has not been explored to the great deal of depth as it is in Erica's book, which isn't quite out yet, but I did get to read parts of it in advance as they were being sent to me from her publisher. So you've got that to look forward to the book being called Meet M E A T the Beatles, and it is due out November this year, coinciding with the Everything Fab four festival in Asbury Park. Hopefully the publisher will stick to that timetable, but in any event, I thought this being close to the 60th of the actual album coming out, it'd be a cool thing to talk about. And so we are, and we have. It's great to have Eric on the show. I'm sure we haven't heard the last of her on. On Satby, but if you want to hear her any other time? There's BC the Beatles podcast that she's been hosting for a number of years now with Alison Boran. So there is that. Anyway, the show is brought to you by Distrokid, and you can go to distrokid.com VIP satb to get 30% off your first annual membership here. Now, my conversation with Erica, I was mentioning to you off the air that the Yesterday and Today album, I always take the COVID and I try and

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

peel back to look for the dead babies. Yeah.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

What.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

How did that happen? That that album cover that never saw the light of day, or if it

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

did, got pulled off, it went out. We took the pictures in London, one of those photo sessions. By then we were really sort of beginning to hate it. Photo session was a big ordeal. And, you know, you had time to look normal, you know, and you didn't feel it. And the photographer was a bit of a surrealist, you know, and he brought along all these babies and pieces of meat and doctor's coat. So we really got into it and that's how we felt.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Yeah, a lot of 60/0 this year. Was that kind of what informed you wanting to do this book to begin with, was knowing that this was a great topic that hasn't been explored to this depth?

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Yeah, I mean, I wanted to do it a couple of years ago when I was just looking for a content for my podcast. It's like, oh, the butcher cover. I love that image. I wonder what this. You know, I wonder what the real story is behind it. And I spent all night, literally, I stayed up all night doing the research for it, because I found the whole thing so fascinating the more I got into it. And then I was thinking, well, in a couple of years, maybe I can find a way to get this thing out for the 60th anniversary. And I think we're making it just under the wire unless publisher delays that. But that's. Who knows? But hopefully it'll be out by November.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

You really make the case a lot more fleshed out than I was able to, because that was just a small part of my book to talk about that, because it's sort of in the trajectory to why did Revolver happen? Why are they thinking outside the box? It's no longer business as usual. And this is absolutely in a direct line along with the Maureen Cleave interviews. And you trace it back that much further. And I love the fact that you had traced who they were as people going back to 1960 and the initial photo shoots with Astrid and their own sensibilities. As we're different from our peers, we're forward thinking, we're not going to repeat ourselves, we're thinking outside the box instead of everything that's been done before. That's who they were. So, yeah, of course they're gonna run with the Whitaker somnobulent adventure as soon as it gets floated. So no one's connected the dots in that way before. So. I'm so happy that this book is happening.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Oh, great. I'm so happy to hear that. Yeah. Actually, my first intro chapter starts on the day that John met Paul. And trying to go back as far as I could about the spark of these two people meeting with, you know, opposites on the outside, but such, you know, disruptors in every sense of the word. And just the juxtaposition and the tension between Brian Epstein's brilliance as a manager and the things that he had to do to get them in the door, to get their talent to be heard by the world. But then the discomfort that settles on them as they become this Persona of the Beatles in the world and have this kind of moment where they don't know exactly how to break out or what that means even to break out. Because there's no template for a pop star reaching 25, you know, 30 years old and what to do afterwards. And they're in such this amazing sort of out of time moment for themselves when they are discovering who they become and Revolver Sergeant Pepper and onwards. And it's like this magical time to me. And it's been so much fun to explore it.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

It's amazing. And it all makes sense when you connect all these dots together, that all these things were happening. It's a year that they in effect blew themselves up. But to clear the way for the Pepper and everything that came after it and the Magical Mystery Tour, just. We can't achieve our artistic goals by being on this treadmill of Beatlemania pop stars to this point, which would have been business as usual for anybody in their position at that point, but they were willing to torch it all to the ground to move forward. That's why we love them, that's why they're Beatles, that's why all these bands went to Hamburg, but only one came back to Beatles. And you can say that over and over again throughout their career. This was a subject that as soon as I saw the title, the first thing I thought of was the Mark Shipper book, Paperback Writer. Did you ever read that back in the day?

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

I've seen. I haven't read it. I've seen it.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Okay, meet the Beatles. And I was thinking, oh, that's perfect. It's an homage to a book that the right people will get and everybody else. It just makes sense on a surface level of the Butcher.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

I do hope so.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

It's kind of like an inside joke, which I thought was perfect. It is the 60th anniversary of the Yesterday and Today album being released to much fewer that you get into great detail about. But I get the sense from reading your book that there's an inevitability about the Beatles doing something like this, even though the way it seems to sort of come back is they sort of back into it through circumstance. But given their sensibilities that seemed fairly fully formed in their earliest days, do you think doing something so outre was going to happen eventually?

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Yeah, I think it would have been something. I mean, they were experimenting with everything from the beginning. I mean, whether we're talking about the substances that they use throughout each era of their lives or small things like the feedback and I feel fine. They were always looking for something new, something to push the barrier. And I think a lot of that, it's not planned from the outset that they're going to do this genius thing or that genius thing. They're just doing everything. They're trying anything. They're seeing what works for them, seeing what sticks. And at that point in their life, they were especially Paul, I think, was naturally getting into avant garde and surrealism and all of the things that maybe as young men they had no exposure to, but now they're in this world of culture, you know, hanging out with Barry Miles at Indica Gallery and all of these things, you know, Magritte, all of these painters and playwrights that they were so excited about. And I think that they probably were so immersed all of a sudden into this world of avant garde art that they would have tried something like this. You know, somebody comes along and says, hey, why don't we do this crazy photo shoot? They're like, okay, yeah, let's. Let's try it. It might not have been their idea, but I think that they got it immediately. At least John and Paul certainly got it immediately. And later on, John decided to turn it into, you know, something for his own ends. But I think they, they got the. The initial message to begin with, the

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

hypnos cred that it acquired years down the road. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. It's an amazing thing that on the one hand you've got sensibilities that attract each other. So going Back to the Liverpool fate. John and Paul connecting on a level more than, hey, I like rock and roll too. It's deeper than that. You've got them in Hamburg connecting with Astrid, Klaus, Jorgen, all these kindred spirits creatively. And they stayed lifelong friends with them. Brian, they connect with him on some wavelength in a way they didn't with, say, Alan Williams. And that sets them on that journey. George Martin, the same thing. So it seems to be this kind of pattern throughout their career. And Robert Whitaker, this guy that he's half Australian, I think, based in Australia, that the Beatles come to Australia in 1964. And that's what really puts them onto his radar. Cause he wasn't really much of a rock and roll pop guy to that point. Right. He was more a guy that worked as a photographer, but his own sensibilities was he was an artist. He wanted to do something different and not necessarily mainstream commercial.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Yeah, he was really an acolyte of Dali from the very beginning. He tells this story when he was 16, he got this Salvador Dali book, a book of photographs and paintings and everything. He cut it up, he made a collage of his own. And he sent the thing back to dali as a 16 year old. And that actually started a lifelong correspondence with him. So he was always looking at things with kind of this slanted surrealist eye. And then when he moved to Melbourne, he was kind of straddling two worlds. He was both a fashion and editorial photographer. He had a lot of spreads in Australian Vogue and magazines like that. But he was also exhibiting work at the Melbourne Museum of Modern Art actually the summer that the Beatles were there. And Brian Epstein met him. And so he was trying to do both at the same time. And he seemed like he was very successful. And his encounter with the Beatles was about as random as it could have gotten. He wasn't angling to photograph the Beatles or anything. He had a friend, Adrian Rollins, who was working for the Melbourne Jewish News, who was assigned to go do a profile of Ryan Epstein. And so he brought his friend Bob Whitaker along to take the photo. So that is how Bob Whitaker got into the Beatles orbit at all. And then he took this enormous risk with Brian Epstein. The story of how Bob Whitaker gets into their orbit is to me more fascinating than the Butcher cover itself. Honestly, he's taking these pictures, he brings them back to his dark room and he looks at them and he had this impression of Brian. As he said, he's like a peacock or an emperor. There was something about the way Brian carried himself. It was like he was a new way of being an empresario or a manager. You know, he just had this, this way about him and he wanted to communicate that in the portrait, which was going to be used in a newspaper. So he goes back to his dark room and he thinks, what can I do with these things, things? And he was thinking about, I want to put like a crown of laurels around his head to sort of depict this in this Roman Emperor feeling. And he didn't have those, but he had these peacock feathers. And so he used this photographic technique where he laid them over the negative as he was developing it and he did this crown of peacocks. And many people have seen this very distinctive headshot of Brian with these peacocks around him. And he brings them back to Brian the next day, who had asked to see the photos before the Beatles left Melbourne. And this could have gone one or two ways. You know, Brian could have been offended by it, he could have been annoyed by it, but instead he was enthralled. Whitaker said that Brian had told him that it showed him in a way he'd never seen before. And he was enchanted by it. And so he made this young man, who he never met this offer. You leave Melbourne and come back to your home country of the uk. Come back and I will manage you and you can be the artistic director for NEMS Enterprise. Take photos of all the artists in NEMS Enterprise. And Monica was like, oh, maybe, I don't know, like he was a little bit on the fence about it because he'd really built up something for himself. He wasn't sure. He wasn't a paparazzi photographer, he wasn't a pop photographer. And so it took him a few months, but he finally decided, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, I need to take it. And that's how he ended up in the Beatles orbit. It's fascinating.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

That is a great story. And you're right about the risk because Brian could have taken offense and it would have been the end of the story right then and there. But he wasn't doing this angling to work for the Beatles. It was just his own artistic expression of how he saw Brian, which is an interesting thing. He acted on being true to himself as an artist and that's what he. That's where he went. And it paid off for him in that sense. Now, to this point, the Beatles had any number of photographers they'd worked with that were favorite photographers for a while. You had the Dudzo Hoffman era, you had Robert freeman, who was 64, shooting their album covers and now he's bringing in Whitaker. Do you see some sort of design? Were they expected to work alongside each other or was Brian making the decision to supplant Freeman with Whitaker?

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Well, I think that Brian did it without really thinking about those wider implications because Tony Barrow was not happy about this situation. He liked the situation they were in where they could use the right photographer for the right moment and bring people on assignment for tours and, you know, hand pick the right people. And this was a very strange assignment. It wasn't a role that they'd ever had before, it wasn't a role they ever had afterward. And it wasn't a well defined role. In a lot of senses. Robert Whitaker's role was simply to be present and document the band. It was barely even part of his scope to take the sort of pictures that would end up on an album. And you can see that like for River Soul, he did not take most of the EMI albums. Even though many of his photos ended up on the US Capitol albums. They were still using other photographers for, you know, certain, certain types of photo shoots. But he was really tasked with just documenting the day to day life of the Beatles in a lot of senses. And he did not want to take those standard publicity photos. He didn't, he didn't do well with them. He said that, you know, seeing the four, you know, smiling faces of the Beatles bored me senseless. So even when he was tasked with taking photos that would become professional use photos, he usually did something weird. If you think about Beatles 65, the US album, he's got this Four Seasons, as in winter, spring, summer, fall montage. Because the first day that he had a true photo shoot with the Beatles, he just brought all these weird props with him to try and figure out what to do with them. And the springs were one of them for spring and the umbrellas and there were, you know, there were cakes. There were a bunch of different types of photo shoots he did that day. And he very rarely just shot them straight on, you know, in like a normal, in normal poses, normal smiling poses. Another thing that he would do is he didn't like taking photos of all of them at the same time, which rendered many of his photos unusable for traditional publicity pictures because they wanted all four Beatles and he didn't have a lot of that. So it's almost like what Brian asked of him did not really align with business needs in the way that somebody like Tony Barrow would need or want for the business of Beatlemania. So they still did use other people from time to time, because I think they had to. I get the sense from my research that Whitaker was kind of a wild card sort of guy. Like, I don't know how well he stuck to the assignments in a lot of ways. Like, he would do what he had to do, but then he would get to the business of doing the art. And I think that the art is what mattered to him. And that's how he made his most brilliant photos. Butcher and non butcher.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Yeah, it's interesting when you think about it, because like you said, the photos that we associate with yesterday and today, they're interesting and quirky, but they don't seem to be the work of the guy who would later on develop what we know as the Butcher cover stuff. And in a situation where he is tasked to do something much more mundane as a standard group publicity shot. And I'm thinking of the ones in Brian's office around the trunk, which ultimately did become the Australian album cover. They're really boring. They don't pop. They're just. You could tell, they, as much as he, are completely unenthusiastic.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

And you can even see it from his first photo shoot that generated the springs. There's a few of them all sitting together, and it just kind of looks, like, awkward. There's one where you can sort of see where, like, I think it's Paul. He sort of has his arms in and he looks like he's looking down, almost shy. It's a very strange photo. They look a little, like, insecure. There's one where they're all having, like, British teacups. Like, he's just trying to get a feel for them. But anything in that, like, normal lane doesn't quite work in the same way. And when he gets to explore, though, he really blossoms. I mean, who doesn't know that photo of John Lennon with the sunflower in his eye? Right. And that was taken in a private photo shoot with the Lennon family that he did in the Weybridge house. But that's where he really was able to spread his wings artistically, I think.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Is that the same shoot where he's with Cynthia and Julian and Kenwood and there's a picture of John posing with the shovel?

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Yes.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Okay. Yeah, that makes sense because it is a little, like, random.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Yeah. And there's another one where he said he was studying the myth of Narcissus at that moment in time, Whitaker was. And so he has this photo of Lenin perched on the rim of a little lake in his house. Kind of looking into the water. And Cynthia is like perched above him, sitting up. There's another one where Cynthia is wearing this. This hat which is almost like a midsommar sort of crown, but it's full of like dead weeds and things. Like it's not pretty. And then John is standing over her outside with a watering can over it, like he's watering it. But the water can is partially covered in fur, like black faux fur. So he's just doing all these kind of weird surrealist things. Like there's I think that Oppenheimer piece called Lunch and Fur, which is like a fur covered tea set, teacup and spoon. And I think he got some of his inspiration from that.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Yeah, it seems to recall the German surrealists of the 30s for sure. Rather directly. As well as being an explicit early clue to the new direction that's going to lead us to the Butcher session. Him doing all these really artsy. Man Ray is another person that comes up in your book as a surrealist photographer. Producing these art pieces and looking at it as it would have been seen within the context of being a Beatle and being a pop star and taking publicity pictures and things like that. It seemed like an indulgence that they were allowed because they were the Beatles, because they were so successful. You want to play into this experimental stuff, you can do that. But as long as we get the stuff we need to keep pushing you as a group, we're happy. Go off and play with this weird guy if you want.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

I also think it was almost contractual in the way it was set up in that Brian offered him this role, but he wasn't on the NEMS payroll, so to speak. He was an independent contractor and he had the right to ownership of his own photos. So in a sense he could go do the publicity photos with the Beatles. And if they're all still in the studio and they want to play, they can play. Because he's kind of on his own dime at that point.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Right.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

So that allows him. Yeah, it allows him to do things. It allows him to go out to Weybridge and just shoot the Lennons. Take photos of the Lennon family as he wants to, without the other three being present for some kind of group opportunity.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

That's an amazing amount of latitude that they're giving this guy. It speaks to the trust they had in him. Anytime somebody of that stature gives you entrance and proximity, clearly they trust you and they're comfortable around you. And it speaks a ton for their regard for him, for sure. So it makes it that much Easier of a sell the day they walk into his studio in March of 66. Hey, I've got this idea I want to try out, guys.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Yeah. And to be fair, it took a while. Whitaker said he was actually quite uncomfortable when he first entered the Beatles orbit. And I think that kind of shows in that first photo shoot with the springs and all. But he said Paul would sneer when I pointed a camera in his way. And George didn't really talk to me. And, you know, he was just like, I didn't talk about music, so I didn't have anything to say. And he said that he was finally John who broke the ice, who had all of these other artistic interests beyond music that he could discuss. And they became actually close friends. And it was John that brought him in and I think allowed for more expansive relationship with all of them. And of course, it was John who walks into the photo shoot on March 25, 1966, takes a looks at the doll parts and the meat and is like, yes. And he's so excited.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

It's hard to imagine at this distance, the way the world operates these days, that this wasn't floated first. There wasn't meetings about it before it happened. You didn't get clearances and permissions. It's like, oh, by the way, I'd like try something out after we get our publicity pictures today. You okay with that?

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

It wasn't. And Whitaker said, brian Epstein gave me full attitude to do what I wanted. And I think probably that's part of the way their relationship started was that he did these strange photos of peacocks. There was another photo where Whitaker himself is like sitting on either side of a photo of Brian, kind of superimposed, ghostly on both sides of him. That was another photo he gave Brian that first day. So their relationship and this unusual job offer was forged in this experimental photo style. So he comes to his new role thinking, this is what I'm here for, this is what I'm supposed to do. And I don't think in Whitaker's mind that the. The events of the Butcher day were all that much different in lineage from the events of the Brian photos. Obviously, the subject matter was more pointed and the props that he used were definitely gorier and more in your face. But the principle underneath it, I think was the same. And if he wasn't getting any pushback for, let's say, the US Tour program, which I have right here, which is the Beatles on their red, white and blue Styrofoam, and this paper that they had, where subsequent photos they're ripping it up and that's. You can see them like stomping all over it. And this is used for a major tour program. Like they're accepting his work. Things like, I think in the same session he brought a dog in. There's a dog in some of these photos. And that was used for like a French single cover or something. Like they were farmed out and used professionally. So I don't know if in Whitaker's mind, coming from this idea where these are, this is what I do and this is what I'm paid for, that he probably didn't see much avenue for controversy around it. So he didn't think he had make an approval process for it.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Yeah, and what I'm thinking of is the day they did the promo film shoots in November of 65. It's just a few months before this, where they're sitting on assault horses or on exercise equipment. They've got fake snow drifting down or holding umbrellas. It's like all this oddball stuff in the service of promoting their music. You're accepting of that. You're totally game for that. Including the one where they're sitting on the floor eating their fish and chips, which I guess Brian didn't like that one.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

I mean, he didn't like the meeting on stage, wouldn't have liked that. It's the meeting part, not actually the scene.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

So it seems to be all of a piece when you put it together like that. Of course, March 25th, this would have made sense because we've been kind of moving in this direction already and you've got all this latitude. They trust you. Brian, seemingly on impulse, brought you into the fold because he was flattered. But I would like to think it was more than that. He saw possibilities with his boys being on the forefront of artistic broadening of the paradigms. And this is just the guy to do it.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Absolutely. I think that a lot of this is about Brian's sensibility and his instincts and the conflict in him. I mean, he knew that there was a measure of propriety that needed to be kept. And that is why the Beatles had their synchronized thous and their suits and all of the things that made them the early Beatles. But on the other hand, I feel like he was always looking for new opportunities for his artists to promote them. I mean, everything from Scylla at the Savoy to the fact that he had a car dealership that caters specifically to helping people in his world get these super cute fancy cars that they wanted. Like every business opportunity that he went into. And everybody he engaged with seem to be for this ultimate end of progressing his artists in some way or another and presenting them in new ways. And I think that for this particular session, in Brian's mind, I mean, it kind of went over the line of propriety in a lot of ways, you know, because the props were disgusting. And I think that that probably bothered him and more of a. Just a visual sensibility than anything else. But also for the butcher cover itself, we've got to remember that it was never intended to be an album cover. Whitaker did not intend that. He intended it to be a private art piece. This three panel triptych that he was going to do a lot of post production work to sort of make it look like Russian religious iconography and use various scenes from his day of photo shoots to point out the fact that deification of the Beatles was absurd and to point out what he was seeing when he accompanied them on a tour. What John, especially all four of them, were very uncomfortable with, with sick children being brought to them to be touched by a beetle, some kind of faith healers. They hated it. And all of this was a comment on that, but a comment that I think he would have expected to be in an art gallery or an exhibit, certainly not an album cover. He said very clearly the photo was kind of taken from him and that was all beyond his control. So yeah, it snowballed in a way that he never expected.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Yeah, all that is really interesting because I think to the average Beatle fan, they're aware of it being on an album cover, they're aware of an outrage that it sparked and not the original intent behind it. Again, this is an off the books shoot, not intended for public consumption only to the extent that if he'd gotten to complete this triptych, which is the three paneled art piece we were talking about guilt being applied to it and halos above the Beatles heads and. And seemingly the concept which he explained throughout the years in various interviews made complete sense to him. A few other people, there's the Beatles with the girl's back and the umbilical cord of sausages tying them, joining them to each other. There is the George pounding these spiked long nails into John's head because he's as ordinary as a piece of wood. The 1 million sign or whatever the

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

number was, which is not exactly the population of the earth at that time, but you get the point.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

So all of this, it's interesting as hell to read about and to find out about, but you just wonder, you know, this is the year the Beatles have been immersing themselves in lsd. I'm just wondering how much Whitaker was on when he was conceptualizing this whole thing because, yeah, it makes sense to him and it would have been had he fulfilled his vision. And really, when I think about this, when I was reading your book, that when they were in Brian's office in April 66. So this is after the butcher shoot and they're being interviewed by Bravo magazine and Whitaker is there. And so he shoots what we've come to know, the trunk series that ended up being the final for the Yesterday and Today album cover. Very deadpan, dull, boring, underwhelming pictures. Those get sent over to Capitol in America because they're working on the Yesterday and Today compilation album. And they send a proof back, a series of proofs back of their mock up design, which seems to land with the Beatles. May 19th and 20th 66, the two days that they're shooting the promos for Paperback Rider and Rain. The first day they're at EMI Studios miming through the songs. The next day they're at Chiswick House. That's that beautiful color Michael Lindsey Hogg series of films that they were shooting. And evidently where they're at EMI, they've got these full 12 by 12 transparencies. They shoot the introduction for when they're gonna scream the promos on the Ed Solomon show first week of June.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Hello, Ed, how are you?

[Interviewer/Radio Host]

Hello. Hello, Ed.

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

All right, well, I'm sorry we can't be there in person, you know, to do the show. But everybody's busy these days with the washing and the cooking.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

The four Beatles are holding up in front of their face these transparencies and they pull them down, they're playing peekaboo with them viewers. 1966 wouldn't have known what the hell they were doing other than they're just being playful Beatles. But you see the next day shoot over Brian's shoulder, he's looking at the transparency of the proposed album cover. All this a long way of saying, had Capital not come up with such a dull, boring design, there might not have been a butcher cover. Right. If they'd come up with something that the Beatles embraced, maybe they would have gone with it saying, okay, not, no, we're not going to do this. And then John gets the idea, why don't. Because they'd have already seen the products of the butcher shoot. Why don't we give them this?

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Yeah, so I think it's a whole chain of events that starts on March 25 and leads right to down to Capitol Records. Because they're doing this photo shoot, whether it was after hours or, you know, not on Tony Barrow's watch or whatever it was, they did it. But there probably was an expectation that whatever they could use, whatever he did take, they could probably mine it for the US albums. They were doing that already, like with Beatles 65. And that came out really nicely. That was a great album with the Four Seasons and everything. And so I would have expected that their expectation was that there'd be something usable in that. So then Tony Barrow comes back to Brian. He tells him what happened. And Brian is not happy. He knows that that's not going to be used. But if you look at the other photos that were taken, there was really only one series of other traditional photos. And that was the four of them wearing kind of matching brown tan turtlenecks and jackets, smiling for the camera, which were being used to promote the 66 US tour. That was the purpose. They didn't really get a bunch of other poses that they could use for other publicity purposes. So when I'm sure that Brian must have heard about this, not been happy about it. And then there was that day on or about April 29, 1966, the day they had this meeting with G. Thomas Bale from Bravo and they were all coming in the office, that Whitaker had also had a meeting with Brian that day. And he had brought his contact sheets along from the March 25 photo shoot. Probably the first time that anybody had really seen all of the things together. And I can imagine that Brian was actually horrified to see the things in print in his eyes. Because that photo shoot that generated the trunk cover was impromptu. And you can imagine how that might have happened. Whitaker was in the office. The Beatles are already coming with them, kind of living scattered lives now. It's harder to get them together for something if they need to be. So why not try and get something, squeeze anything usable out of our 1966 publicity store? Create something. We're going to need something else and let's just do it. Because you can tell every aspect of that photo shoot is unprepared. The Beatles themselves, who are very conscious about their visuals, even later, if you look at the Mad Day out or the Abbey Road photo shoot, they are clearly consciously dressing for something that day. They were clearly not. They are not coordinated. John is wearing a jacket he wears all the time, everywhere. George is basically wearing a shirt and just like an over suit, like an over jacket. He does not look like he is ready for taking photos. Their eyes are very suspiciously red rimmed. They do not look like they, you know, hydrated or slept well or, you know, abstained from the drugs so they could look fresh for the photos that exist day. The photos themselves are ridiculous because not only do they have this uncoordinated clothing, they use these curtains in Brian's office, which are these like blue, orange and brown, very mod, kind of garish curtains in this office. That is the worst environment for a photo because it has two things. It has heavy, heavy, heavy furniture and huge open windows. And so it's almost impossible to do a photo shoot in an environment like that and do it well without photo backdrops and lighting. And Whitaker didn't have any of that stuff with him. The only thing he had was his own camera, a light meter, which was probably, you know, it's handheld. It's something he could probably bring with him, more portable. And the steamer truck that happened to be in the office, it wasn't planned. You know, he's gotta have a prop. He can't just do it. He can't just take a photo of them because he seems like genetically programmed to do the opposite of that. So he had to find something. And what he found was the steamer truck. So he did what he had to do. There was no way to really obscure those curtains, so he had to use them to kind of block out the sun. And he did what he did. And that's. There are very few. You know, unlike the butcher cover or even the Four Seasons or any of those, there are almost no outtakes from that day because I feel like he kind of just did what he had to do and he went home. And that's what we see. You know, there are a few outtakes, but very few of them can be. Are really usable. And the photo that they did use was not really that usable. But for Brian, it's another store of photos that he has. It's recent and it's not full of raw meat and doll parts, which is great for him. That's a plus. And a couple of days later, when Capital asks him for photos for the next US album, this is what he has. And they're fine. They're fine. You know, he's going to send them off and Capitol's going to do what they do. And it's funny because the next step in this chain is that Capitol receives these photos. And in some ways they also drop the ball because they've actually done really nice work in the past with other photos. If you think about the sepia tone collage of the Beatles second album, or the early Beatles with that very highly saturated photo of the four of them kind of with a natural background behind them. It's really bright and eye catching. Or the Four Seasons thing, which they got four photos and they figured out an interesting way to do it. With this one, they didn't do much, you know, they didn't really color correct for those horrible curtains. They added more bulk by adding this dark blue and orange theme to the first draft of the album, which they were trying to tie it back to the design for the Yesterday single, which had the same kind of look, which makes sense, but it wasn't exactly the most inspired design. And it also happened to be the first time that Brian approached Capitol and said, hey, I want approval on this stuff going forward. So they had to send it to him for the first time instead of just kind of going forward with internal approval. And Brian got that first proof which had the curtains in it. And he said, absolutely not. And we don't have documentation on his reasoning for it, but I would imagine that it was just. It's just kind of chaotic visually and it doesn't look nice. And I think they wanted something that was nice. And so he sent back his rejection. And because they only had a single photo, they did the only thing that they could really do with it, which is cut out the offensive curtains in the background and send him back a proof with, you know, this is what we can do for you. And so by the time they get to the Paperback Writer and Rain shoot, which was. It's actually May 19th and 20th, they were there on May 19th. Robert Whitaker was joining them once again. This might have been the next time they saw Whitaker since the Trump photo, because this was the next official photo moment for them since then. And he was there to shoot for the Paperback Rider and Rain still photos. And he brought transparencies with him. He brought the next stage of the butcher cover with him. And which are color.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

And they'd only seen them in black and white at this point.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Right, right. They'd seen those, yeah, they'd seen the black and white, the little contact sheets. But there is a photo from the day of. The first time they saw it, the day of the trunk shoot. You can see various photos of the Beatles looking through these things. And there's a photo of John looking through it, just delighted, like he is happy. And Whitaker is standing behind him like gesticulating. You can see it, he's so excited. So they're clearly planning something or at least they have ideas about It. And so by the time we get to the end of May, it's kind of a perfect storm. The Beatles are back together with Whitaker and with Brian. Whitaker brings these photos so they get to see them in all their color glory. They're very excited about them. Obviously, they're using them in sneaky little ways during that Paperback Rider shoot because they're trying to get them in there somehow. Right. They're interested in them. And then the very next day, they see kind of the counterfactual. They see what capital is actually doing. And I think at this point, we don't have any actual documentation of how we got here. But on May 20, Brian is reviewing that trunk photo. By the 23rd, the Butcher cover is in design. It is in process. It has been sent to Capitol and they have these transparencies and they have been told to change course. And so my thought is that it was all John Lennon, that he had seen these butcher photos and he had seen that album and he did not like it and he wanted to find some way, any way of using these because he was so excited about the idea that, as he said, they broke the mold and that, you know, it showed that they weren't these innocent, you know, Fab Four boys anymore. It showed something. Something new, what that was. But, you know, maybe it wasn't. Wasn't quite definable what it was that they were the message they were trying to get across, but it was something else. It was something new and he liked it.

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

I especially pushed for it to be an album cover, you know, just to break the image, you know. And it got out in America and they printed about 60,000 got out. And then there was some kind of fuss, as usual, and they were all sent back in or withdrawn. And they stuck that awful looking picture which you have in front of you of us sitting, looking just as deadbeat, but supposed to be happy. Go Lucky foursome.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

You look very unhappy.

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

Yeah, right, right. So we tried to do something different

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

and he forced it. You know, you can see that it was kind of a haphazard decision because they were sent over to the US but they were also sent to Disc and Music Echo. And they were used in this Paperback Rider and Rain advertisement in the British magazine. It's the oddest, most disconnected design you might ever see. It was really an advertisement for, hey, look at us in our butcher outfits. Not, we have a new single coming out. That's what you see when you see it.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Yeah. The picture has nothing to do with the contents of the single.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

No, nothing at all. And it doesn't even try to connect it.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

And it should be noted that the one that was used on the COVID of disc is not the same one that's on the Capitol album. It's a more gruesome one with eyeballs and teeth in it.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Yes, but it was black and white, so it wasn't quite as bad. But then the one, the one on the COVID of, I believe it was disc and music Echo. That's the color one.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Yeah.

[Interviewer/Radio Host]

Right.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

And then there's. I think there's a black and white version of that. The ad was black and white. That's right. The ad was black and white.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

That's right, yeah. Yeah. But the COVID of disc is apropos of nothing in particular. What a carve up is the subject line.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Yeah, wonderful subject line. It's wonderful.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

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[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

So it is interesting, given Brian's resistance in being appalled at this shoot in particular, that he goes along with sending it to Capitol and be published in Britain to promote their latest single and be on the COVID of disc, which if I'm not mistaken, he Was part owner of, was he not?

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Yes, he was. He had a 50% stake in ownership in disc and it was a new venture. It had just launched this disc and Music Echo that April. So it was new for him.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

And today that would be a no brainer to go for Shock value to get something to go viral. But this is 1966 we're talking about. And so I'm just wondering what was the process for saying, yes, that's what we want on the COVID Let's go with the most controversial image yet taken of Beatles.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Well, I think it speaks a lot to Brian's psychology and motivations at the time. In that as the Beatles were getting more into discovering who they were and experiencing the avant garde and doing new things in the studio and getting away from touring and getting away from the machinery of pop superstardom at the time, Brian's influence and usefulness was receding into the background. And he knew it. People in his inner circle were all talking about wasn't just in his head or anything like that. Like he was very, very well aware. And I think that that combined with his genuine unwavering loyalty to the Beatles kind of was a perfect storm at this moment that Lennon wanted something from him. He wanted this, he believed in it. I could see Brian justifying it as he does not interfere in their musical choices ever. And so this is another artistic choice. I'm not going to interfere in this either. But he was also concerned about his own place within the organization. He knew that his five year contract was coming up the following year. He was very worried that they would kick him to the curb. I think becoming more and more obvious that regardless of the wonderful things that he did, there were a couple of financial missteps, especially with the merchandising that cost them a lot of money. And I can see that he might be quite worried that between reducing or stopping the touring altogether and maybe them making him be more accountable for some of the mistakes that were made along the way, that he would no longer be useful. So he sucked it up and he defended that thing to the teeth to capital, as if it was his own.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

So staying in their favor overrode any concern of blowback for this thing.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Yeah, but I do think it was kind of mixed. I think it was not only staying in their favor, but also just a dedication to them, a loyalty to them that he would do what they needed him to do. And if it was this, at this moment, that's what it was gonna be.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

So initially at least, Capitol itself seemed to be of two minds, with Alan Livingston, the head of the label, having the same shocked reaction that most adults would versus their specific art director who embraced it. You want to describe that?

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Yeah. So as he probably would and should have, Alan Livingston received this photo and his first reaction was, quote, what in the hell is this? And he was not happy about it. And he tried to argue the point to Brian and to John and to Paul, and he lost out. But it's interesting because what Brian was experiencing on the Beatles side, I believe Capital was experiencing it on their end, in that their contract with the Beatles was starting to come to its end and Brian was aware that they didn't have the best deal. And he was making some pretty loud conversations about, you know, to other. Other US labels about Beetles are coming up for. For renewal. What do you think? You know, and nothing serious. Nobody had bitten. And in fact, some people were saying, well, the needles are past their peak at this point, so I'll know. But nonetheless, he was doing it. And they were getting nervous. They were getting nervous about having some kind of a diplomatic issue with them. You know, it's not like their relationship started out, you know, you know, butterflies and rainbows. They were rejected four times before it actually came to pass that the Beatles were signed in the States. So I think they were nervous that if they rejected this thing that in their minds Brian Epstein wanted and was pushing for that, it would cause some kind of incident they couldn't get past. And they had two justifications for it, I think, from the business standpoint. One, the Beatles get what the Beatles want. The Beatles can really do no wrong. Have we ever seen the Beatles make a misstep? No, this would probably be fine. But then Alan Livingston tried to hedge his bets and say, let's. Let's just print a test run. Let's print like a couple of thousand. Send it out to the media, Send it out. Let's see if what I think is going to happen is going to happen before we print 750,000 albums. Well, someone didn't hear that, or they just ignored it because there was a sense of urgency within Capital this time that they weren't so good at getting all of the albums to every place in the country on the projected release date. But so they were trying really hard to push it to make that particular goal. And I think overriding the sense that Alan Livingston had to print this test run, they said, you know what? We don't have time. Brian has stalled this like two weeks now. They were so nervous, they had to keep holding It. They made six different design troops over the course of this one album, which is a lot for an album like this. And they still couldn't get anywhere with it. And I think that their ultimate reaction was like, screw it, we have to go forward. We have to just do it. And so they did it. And it wasn't until they did it that they started getting reactions to what they had done when they started sending out advanced copies to reviewers and DJs and fan club presidents and journalists. And, you know, also wasn't. Everyone hated it except John Lennon. Some people loved it. As you mentioned, their art director, George Isaki. He saw the value in it. He thought it was cool. He took pains to design the new cover with the new image in a way that was a nod to its place as an art piece. The way he saw it, he stripped out all of that heavy blue and yellow and all of these things they were using for the original design proofs for yesterday and today. He put this white background. He did, like, a texturizing of it to make it feel more like a canvas. And he used this unusual psychedelic font that was kind of paired with this minimalist San Serif font to make it feel elegant, to kind of bring home the juxtaposition of what he was seeing in the photos, which was the Fab Four smiling like they would have in 1964, surrounded by meat and dolls and, you know, false teeth and all this stuff. So, you know, I think they. They really. They did a lot of work on it, a lot of good work, and they were happy about it. So there were mixed messages all over the place.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

It makes you wonder. Yes, there's the initial revulsion that Brian had as well as Alan Livingston. So the parallel is well taken between Brian and Alan and Capitol and the Beatles will and all that stuff. Was there any explanation offered? This is the most incredibly outlandish, bizarre, borderline horrifying photo they've ever taken. And you're wanting to put this on an album cover. What is it you're trying to say here? I read about a conversation that Ellen Livingston had with Paul, who happened to be in Brian's office, where he basically sells him on the concept. And that's where Vietnam suddenly enters the conversation as related to the butcher cover.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Yes, and that's a whole new thread of it. That's kind of a random thing on its own, I think. That is. Not entirely. I mean, it certainly wasn't the objective from anybody when the photo was created. And there's also a little bit of confusion about who exactly said that? Because Alan Livingston at one point had inferred that it was Brian who had said on behalf of the boys. And then much later, much, much later he said it was Paul, which it doesn't to me. That doesn't read as a Paul thing. It doesn't feel Paul to me. So I don't know, I wonder if that, if that message got a little bit mixed up. But whoever said it, I feel like it was kind of a shoot from the hip sort of we're going to throw every argument at the wall to see if something can stick about this. And that's one thing they say. Because personally I don't know if having a blood soaked protest album against the war from the Beatles is better than having just a gory photo on the front. It seems like it would, it would strike an even more incendiary tone. So I don't, I don't know how, how truthful that was as a motivation for Len or for anybody, but it was there and they used it. It wasn't the explanation that Capital used officially. When they finally withdrew the COVID they said it was an experiment in pop art satire. Kind of citing British humor is different. And so we, we shouldn't have done this, but we didn't know that it wouldn't be funny over here.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

It's not all Benny Hill.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Yeah, right. So I don't, I don't think that was quite correct either. But I do think that the comment on the war, while it was certainly said and Lennon said it a couple of times in press conferences and places, I don't really think that that was something that anybody truly believed about it.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Oh no, I think that there are people that fans that believe that and also that believe, well, they're dressed as butchers because they objected to Capitol butchering their art. That's the statement which is equal nonsensical. It has nothing to do with Whitaker and somnambulate adventure whatsoever. It got that after the fact meaning attached to it. But it just seems like, like you said, a shoot from the hip thing that if Paul on the phone with Livingston throws Vietnam on the table, I could see, having just said in the Maureen Cleave interview where he's talking about racism in America, maybe he's in full on anti America protesting mode, I don't know. But I think the point was lost simply through the outrage people had over their initial shock at the visual. But what I found very interesting back when I was becoming a Beatle fan in the 70s and you'd go to the back of Rolling Stone and ads and buy bootlegs and things like that. I remember circulating. First of all, it was Cream magazine did a cover with the Butcher cover on it, like 76, 77, something like that. But there was posters being sold of the Butcher album cover. And I remember for sale seeing other ones that said in big red letters across the top, incredible. And I thought that was like something that came 10 years or so later. Come to find out that's how Capital was marketing it in 66. What was that? It's like, we know this is going to outrage you, so we're going to just tag it from the get go. Incredible.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Yeah, I mean, it was a very standard capital in store marketing ad. And a very similar one for the trunk version appeared in Billboard actually June 25th, I think less credible. They got the joke like they at Capital. They didn't. What else do you say? They got the joke. Not only did they write that word incredible, but they put it in bright red. I mean, it couldn't. It couldn't be. It's funny to me. I have that poster in my living room. It's huge. And I love it because it's just so funny. And it makes me happy to know that there were people there that got it. On some level. They may not have known exactly what it was, but they got it that it was funny in a lot of ways. The way they presented it from the

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

same people who two months down the road when Revolver comes out with create a poster with an actual gun at it saying bang for Revolver.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

You know, if you want to believe the myth about Capital, Butcher the Beatles. Which. The reason I think that took so much traction is because it actually logically explains something that cannot be explained. If you're looking at it without any background, which nobody had. And, you know, the Beatles were angry about it, so they sent them this thing and they had to pull it. And so the trunk photo was a direct reply to that. They took the photo of them looking angry and sullen, you know, cooped up in a trunk and mad at Capitol for pulling the record and, you know, all that. But the advertisements, if you look at the in store advertisements, they had incredible. For the Butcher cover and the corresponding ad for the trim cover just said buy Beatles here. They did not care. So, you know, you can, you can see how there were people who maybe they were a little bit annoyed that what they thought was was interesting and arty had to be canceled.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

It's just astonishing for me to wrap my head around Whitaker showing up In March to this photo shoot with the Beatles having gone to butcher shops and bought all this meat, which then got returned after the shoot.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

He said they sold it that night. Yeah, the butcher sold that meat if. I hope those people knew what their, you know, Sunday Rose was getting up to that day.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

But I wonder what happened to the doll parts. That would be fascinating. Showing up on Antiques Roadshow one day.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Oh, my God. I have been looking. You never know what's on ebay, but so far I have not found anything. I imagine he did not care about any of this stuff and he just chucked it away and landfill. But, God, if I ever find that, I will pay for it. I will pay.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Yeah, I would buy the same model just to have.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

I know

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

we know that Paul was supportive of it. John obviously was very much supportive of it, especially after the fact. But George, even in the COVID of Disc expresses his distastes pretty openly. We're never going to do any more your sick photo sessions.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

He sure does. And then later in the Anthology, his comment was, I thought it was gross and I thought it was stupid. So he made no bones about how he felt about it. Ringo said something like, if you look in our eyes, we really. You can tell we had no idea what we were doing. So I think. I think that perfectly encapsulates everything I've seen about their reactions along the way, though it was George, it is George that looks absolutely like he is having the time of his life in the photo. He's got this sadistic smile. He's got his fist shoved out the doll's head, sticking it out like. Like he looks like he's having the best time. So, you know, I question how horrible of a time he was having in that moment. He looked like he was kind of

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

enjoying himself totally inconspicuously. So, yes, it totally calls itself out. So, yeah, he's playing both sides.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Yes, he is. But, you know, it's good to have some contrarian in there too.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Mixed feelings, mixed messages. So I think everybody knows the approximate story that at some point when the cease and desist, as it were, went out, that we can't do this. We have to recall what's going on out there and we got to replace it right quick with this innocuous photo that at some point over the weekend where the employees were called in, that they started doing the paste overs, giving us, you know, the second and third state butchers that we know now. What was the reaction like? Do we know what Whitaker thought of all of this?

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Whitaker was actually more mad that the album, that the photo was repurposed as an album than that it was the whole recall, you know, how that was happening in the States. He was actually saying, you know what, it should have been canceled, it should have been recalled because it was without context. He had said, you know, if it was with my other two photos, if it was in the triptych, if people had seen it the way I intended it, it would have made sense. The way it was done did not make sense and it shouldn't have been out there like that. Now, I maybe argue with the idea that if the average US record buyer had seen that Butcher photo next to two other odd surrealist images, one with sausages and one with big nails, being driven into Johnson, that they would be like, oh, yeah, okay, I get it. But again, his point that maybe a more artistic minded crowd seeing it in a museum or seeing it in an exhibit would have gotten it the way he intended. So he called it, and I quote, a cock up. He did not like it.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

And that having the wind taken out of his sails, you think is why he never completed it.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

I don't know. I mean, Whitaker's career is so interesting. You know, after the Butcher cover, like he just went on with his, his life with the Beatles. He was with them in Japan and that horrific week in the Philippines, he was there. But once the Beatles decided to stop touring, he parted ways with Brian and the Beatles. He never really worked with them again. He worked for Cream for a little while. He worked on the COVID of Disraeli Gears, and he photographed Mick Jagger for quite a few times. He did. He actually ended up photographing Salvador Dali for a while. Really fascinating photos of his work with, with Dolly. But that was just the two years after he left the Beatles. After that he became a war correspondent for a couple of years. He photographed the wars in Cambodia and Vietnam and he got injured out there at the war. And he came back very early 70s, hung it all up, put all his photo archives in a chicken coop and became a farmer for the next 20 years. And he didn't take photos again until the late late 80s, early 90s when Frederick realized what he had in his chicken coop and convinced him to make a book out of it. And so he finally made a book of his Beatles portraits and got a little bit more into photography over the years. And it was at that point when he still kept saying, I might finish this thing someday. And he just never did. There were, he had, he had a lot of ideas about how it should have been. And I wish he had done any of them. But I do think that after he stopped being a full time photographer that even when he was, you know, out there doing some exhibits, a lot of his work was really just a retrospective of the Beatles and other rock photography that he had done. And that maybe he wasn't doing a whole lot of new work at that time. So I wonder if maybe it was just something where it was like, I'll get to this one day. And he died fairly young, so that day didn't come and so he didn't finish it.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Yeah, it's too bad. Do you have any sense of if their parting was in agreement or did Brian say, I think we're done now, or did he want to leave when they did? Because it just seems like he would have been the perfect guy if he was brought in as artistic director and Pepper is right around the corner. What would that look like, Whitaker having his hands on a design of that?

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

I know, I think about that all the time. Whitaker had always said the parting with Brian and the Beatles was amicable, that he always had the greatest respect for Brian, never said anything but wonderful things about him. But I would think that it was probably a confusing role for everybody that this artistic advisor to Nim's situation wasn't really what anybody except Brian had envisioned. And it wasn't, it didn't. It wasn't a thing that had true form. They didn't really know what to do with him. Tony Barrow never really warmed up to him. After the Butcher cover, he never would. And after that, without touring, my sense is that Brian wouldn't have known what to do with a staff photographer type person. If the Beatles are spending so much of their time in the studio doing things that aren't necessarily traditionally photographable, really, you know, what the Beatles became visually and artistically was kind of beyond anybody's conception. Even a year prior, sergeant Pepper was. Nothing had ever been like sergeant Pepper before. There's no documentation that I have found that he was asked to be part of that process or consult on it. And I think that's a shame, you know, But I think that the ill defined nature of his role and the fact that we're kind of seeing his photographic retrospective from this vantage point of time. I'm not sure that anybody realized that Whitaker had the chops to make a sergeant Pepper in a way like his. His photos of the linens at Weybridge were more a private thing at that point. People didn't really see that, you know, it Wasn't I think until probably the 70s and beyond when people saw started getting so hungry for every moment of the Beatles in the world. You know, I would think once the Beatles were no longer an active presence in everyone's lives or mining the archives or anything and you come across this full retrospective of photographic arts that Whitaker did make, it would have taken a very long time for anybody to recognize that. And by then Whitaker was already a farmer and he wasn't interested.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

It's interesting, it's a real shame. Just like when I think of Brian dying just too soon before Apple really got going. What his talents is gifts for presentation, what that would have meant to this roster to trying to build up a new acts and break them. And you think of Whitaker as being part of that, of being the guy helping shape the image of Apple and what it would have meant. Maybe wouldn't had the Magritte inspired Apple label or something. Maybe we had something else, I don't know. It's hard to say. But the what ifs would have been. But it's hard to walk away thinking this must have been so disappointing and crushing to have this grand ambitious shoot be sort of squandered the way it was.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Yeah, I have a feeling that once it came out into the world and it was maligned in the way it was. Even though to be fair, the opinion at the time was not as uniformly negative even in America as Capitol would like it to make it out to be. But it was probably just like you can't do anything with it now. Everyone's already seen it and hated it and rejected it. And he had a very unusual career path after that, going off to be a war correspondent and then not taking photographs at all. But I think that for him, you know, sometimes I think about Whitaker almost in the way that I think about Jimmy Nicholl who, you know, replaced Ringo for 13 days actually at this exact same time that Brian met Whitaker. But he wasn't ever expecting to be the Beatles photographer or a rock photographer. That wasn't his aspiration. And he was kind of plucked out of his life into this thing. And it might have messed him up a little bit, you know, it might have like because he tried like other rock photography for a couple of years and then he went to war correspondent, which is as far from his artistic sensibilities from the early 60s as one could go. And then he completely gave it up. I think that, you know, sometimes being in the Beatles orbit has been shown to mess with people's heads and I wish that he had been around for me to talk to him and ask him about that kind of thing. Because his transition after the Beatles is fascinating and there's not very much known about it.

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

Right.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

You can only be incredible once. Do you think when I was reading your book and I was thinking about this, something that hadn't occurred to me before, but it makes complete sense to me at least, is that two versions album cover is like a direct line trajectory from the Butcher cover. This time John's calling all the shots, going for the shock value of something that he wants out there. This time, though, the guardrails are off. There's nobody to stop him except emi,

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

which is amazing that in two years we go from this is a scandal to, you know, we kind of hop over the puddle of the Rolling Stones and Beggars Banquet and, you know, that being kind of ban, but it's like we're kind of getting there. But just two years later, we have a photo of naked John and Yoko on an album like that people print that somebody printed with full knowledge of what it was. You know, that's incredible in and of itself. But I think that the most interesting thing about that lineage is that it is a direct line from what Whitaker wanted to do to what John wanted to do, in that he wasn't looking to make a sexy photo. And he certainly. He didn't, you know, he didn't make a sexy photo. And he wanted to say the same thing Whitaker was saying with the wood blocks and the dolls and the, you know, the sausages, that they're just. We're just normal people. You want to see what's underneath here? This is what it is. It's just normal people stuff. And that's what he was getting at with that naked photo in the same way that Whitaker was getting at it. So, you know, he tried again and he kind of gotten the same reaction, but almost, but just with a 1968 sensibility that allowed him to put it in a paper bag rather than totally recall it and let it kind of be out there now.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Yeah. And it makes me wonder, had they thought of paper bags in 66, if the album could have gone out that way.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Well, you know who did was Karen Beat. The newspaper in San Diego, San Francisco, the teen weekly, Teen magazine. Their cover, when the Butcher cover came out, was just a red block with a title on it that said, I think the Beatles sick, but there was an L in parentheses. So it was slick joke. It was like. It looked like it was the equivalent of a newspaper of I'm putting this in a paper bag. If you want to open it up, you can see what's inside. But they wouldn't show it. So it was like a censored sort of COVID Yeah. So, you know, someone had that idea irresistible.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

That's great marketing.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

You know, it's funny though, is that the only. The only band cover before this was the Mamas and the Papas, if you can believe your eyes and ears. And it wasn't a band cover, but it was. It's the photo of the four of them sitting in a bathtub, which I'm sure you can picture if you think. Think about it. And in the original photo to the right of them in a bathtub, it was in a bathroom. And so there was a toilet there, just a normal toilet. It was fine. But once they printed the album, they realized that this was. They thought this was obscene. And so instead of recalling the album, though, there is a whole series of these albums with different sort of like text boxes and scrolls and things that are meant like with the greatest hits, California Dreaming, whatever, like to cover that toilet.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Like hype stickers.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they. There's a whole range of these things. And they tried to cover it up for the Mamas and the Papas, but I guess with the Butcher cover, there's really no place to cover it that makes sense for that.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Yeah. It was just too little ahead of the curve thinking about things that came not that long after, like Moby Grape with the washboard middle finger and Mom's apple pie.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Yeah. Or think about the COVID of Diamond Dogs. There are things that

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

just a little too out there.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Yeah.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Huh.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Sticky fingers. Yeah. There are certain things.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

You've seen the Spanish Sticky Fingers album cover.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

That's the one with the. In the can of something, right?

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

Yeah, yeah.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Coming out like this.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Yeah. Dismembered fingers coming out of a can of syrup, which.

[Shopify Advertiser]

I love that.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

That's actually closer to Whitaker. Whitaker's vision 100% reminds me more of the baked bean scene in the who's Tommy, That kind of level of grotesquerie. But yeah, incredible. Exactly. I hope that people get this book and enjoy it and kind of see the butcher cover in a different way. Because to be fair, there is already some great information out there about the Butcher cover. Bruce Spizert has done incredible work like mapping out the beats of these three or four important days in it and talking to people like George Osaki for the first time, who is now passed away. And you know, he captured that, which is amazing. But you know what I'm hoping for this book is that it's not just about what happened, but why it happened and not seeing it as some unusual blip in good taste for the Beatles or, you know, like people still do talk about a protest against Capitol or a comment on Vietnam, that it was a whole different thing. And that if you. If you put it right there in context of everything else that happened, you know, go back as far as the day when John meant Paul. But if you think of like she's stadium. And then you have the. The three months of silence where they did nothing for the first time in early 60s 66 leading up to this. And then they get into the studio for Revolver and the Jesus comments make their way over to the States and there's KKK and burnings and all of this horrible stuff and they go to the Philippines. Like, this is a whole lineage, and this is a moment in that lineage that when you look at it in context, there's nothing unusual or random or in bad taste about it. It fits perfectly.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

It really does. And it's great to have this whole story made clear the way you do it in the book. It's great. I think it makes the Beatles look incredibly hip.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Yeah.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

And well served by these incredibly creative people around them. Did you ever talk to. I know for a while I was corresponding with Whitaker's son and I think he was trying to keep the stuff alive, marketing it and whatever. Did you get a chance. Do you talk to him during the course?

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

You know, I'm actually going to be licensing a bunch of photos from the Whitaker estate, so I'm hoping that he'll do either a forward or an afterward from, like, the Whitaker perspective.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Oh, that'd be great.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Yeah, we're still working on those kind of details since I just got the first layout today. So we're kind of rushing to get everything done. But I've asked him if there's anything never before seen or rarely published because, you know, I look at those contact sheets from the Butcher cover and I see that from the two sets of contacts that we have, there's at least 100 numbers in between that I have not seen. So I'm wondering what else might be there that is usable that no one.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Can you imagine, or.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

So I'm like, I will pay for that. I will really pay. So please let me know.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

That would be unbelievable. You know, if the material exists, this would make a hell of a documentary. I know everybody says there's something for,

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

you know, I don't know if it'll Be me. But I'm hoping somebody reads this book and it's like, wow, this is weird and cool.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

It's a great story. It's a fantastic story. Visual heavy. It'd be amazing. I just don't know what talking heads are left that you would have. It's too bad the Capitol guy is gone. But it would be really cool if there was anybody directly connected still around that could have a voice in the thing.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Yeah, I mean, I think. Well, Michael Lindsey Hogg was there that one weekend. He's, you know, we are trying to go through like, who is still here that we can talk to about this, but probably would have to be thinking about like Ben Whitaker and like the. The progeny and everything. Like the second generation of everything.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Yeah, yeah, get Danny Harrison way up.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Yeah. Danny Giles. All of our sons can. Can be there. But it would be great if that could happen too, because part of the problem with the independent contractor sort of setup that you had with Brian was that there were these issues with them trying to use his work without paying for it. And, you know, the anthology was a big problem because at first I think like Neil Aspinall or whoever was working with him was trying to license all these photos. And then from Whitaker's telling, they came back to him, was like, actually we think that we own these and we should just get them for free. And then the whole conversation shut down. And so it was kind of contentious after a while. And yeah, maybe if they can make something with Apple and you know, maybe they can kind of like heal that, that little.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Yeah, well, the new regime is all about the experience. Right.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

And I think this is experiential, if nothing else. Just looking at this thing. Whitaker had said once that if he ever did an exhibit, one thing he wanted to do was have a room and have nothing in it but just an enormous floor ceiling picture of this and force people to only be able to come in one person at a time to be with this photo.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Wow.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

And he never did it. And I do wish he had because it would have been very cool.

[Interviewer/Radio Host]

Yeah.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Geez. Maybe thinking when you talked about this battle over who owns what is the 1980 Rarities album, when that came out, and from what I read originally they wanted the Butcher cover on the front, but then they put it inside the gatefold and put that silly Mad Day out picture in the front, they were still weird.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

They're still uncomfortable with. They still wouldn't do it. Yeah, yeah.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

But I remember the hype sticker includes the Butcher cover picture inside or something. Okay.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

It's another like, you know, brown paper bag sort of trick.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Very much a trunk cover in the front. It's like, this is your rarity's cover. Geez.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

I am still hoping upon hope that one day they will release it as an independent release for Record Store Day or something like that. Like, I know they did the thing with the CDs in like the US album set from two years ago where you could like put a sticker on, like you could either make it a trunk or a butcher. But that's not a relief. Like to me, they have never released the butcher cover in its full glory in the way it was meant to be with, you know, the special heavy duty angel paperling to make a perfect reproduction release. I think it would do so well. Oh yeah, you know, just, you know, I mean, I think that's why my publisher bought the book because they're imagining this photo being on a book in a Barnes and Noble. Like people will notice it. I just hope that capital comes to its senses and decides that it's a good, like you want this photo out, like, it's great, you know, own it.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Absolutely. The world's ready.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

I know, I know. 60 years, it's been too long.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

We finally got there. Yes, album covers were much simpler then, right?

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

Just walk in, take your photo and walk out. Especially in America because we, we made only say 10 albums actually in America there seemed to be 30 of them. And so we would design a cover or have control a bit more of our own covers in England. But America always had more albums, so they always needed another picture, another cover.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

Something about the Beatles. Created and hosted by Robert Rodriguez, executive producer Rick Way, title song performed by the Corgis. Something about the Beatles is an evergreen podcast.

[Interviewer/Radio Host]

Right. Well, this is the big recording session with the four. The big four that is the one and only Paul, John, George and Ringo. How about that? Absolutely. Welcome aboard. Baffles. Thank you much indeed, John. And now I'd like a few words from. From you, my Del Paulo, my host.

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

Well, it's nice to be in the actual Captain's kitchen and the Captain himself is stirring up a right old brew.

[Interviewer/Radio Host]

Thank you very much indeed. And you know, you know what this is for? This is for actually a little paper called disc.

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

Music Disc. Yes.

[Interviewer/Radio Host]

And it's going to be one of the biggest productions, of course, across the country.

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

Biggest, big. A lot of push behind it. A lot of big people behind that, you know, a lot of big people behind it.

[Interviewer/Radio Host]

Yes, mate, yes. And how about you, Paul? How About. Tell me a bit about your music writing. Yes, well, I'm rising. Thank you very much. Okay. Mr. Ringo.

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

Yes.

[Interviewer/Radio Host]

Yes. What's it like being a Beatle?

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

Oh, it's okay, you know.

[Interviewer/Radio Host]

It's okay.

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

Yeah.

[Interviewer/Radio Host]

Yes.

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

Yeah, it's okay.

[Interviewer/Radio Host]

Tell me a bit about what it's like being a married man and a beetle.

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

It's okay.

[Interviewer/Radio Host]

It's okay, you know. Aren't you. You're leaving me right in the middle of it, eh? I think you're awful anyway. I know, George. Hello. Hello. Hello there, George. Hello there, George. What do you. What do you think of this microphone I'm using? It's very nice, George. Very nice microphone. But the listeners can't really see it, can they? You're planning right now a new lp, I understand. And, well, you know, if we haven't really planned any, you know, we just sort of. They try and write a few songs and then we gather together and emerge with an lp. But we never sort of plan it, saying, this is what it's going to be, fellas. Do you plan? Engaged. But we're not planning anything. We're not planning. We're not planning. We're engaged. Yes, but not planning. I understand. Then you're engaged. Paul first to tell you when he always. Well, no, we are just good friends, all of us. I'm so good friends. I'm so glad to hear that. Let's leave it at that. No more comment. Tell me something, Paul. Do you have an actual policy of your work or do you just sort of play it off the top of your head? Just off the top of our head, Tom.

[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

Just.

[Interviewer/Radio Host]

Just, you know, for kicks. You sure of that? Sure. Plain deal.

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

Hallucination.

[Interviewer/Radio Host]

Sure, sure. Just at the top, you know. Purple hearts. Yeah. You know, all in pop groups.

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

Take them. Yeah.

[Interviewer/Radio Host]

Do you, John?

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

No, never touch them.

[Interviewer/Radio Host]

I don't think Ringo knows what they are. I like bonanzas. What are bonanzas?

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

I just made it up in case there's any vicars listening.

[Interviewer/Radio Host]

I see. What. What about morning glory seeds?

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

Never seen any. Actually, I wouldn't fancy eating a flowery, even for the laugh.

[Interviewer/Radio Host]

Okay, okay.

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

How about that?

[Interviewer/Radio Host]

A big ham. Have a big, big. Hello, this is Ed to Morrow of Big Al. Hello, Ed, how are you?

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

Okay.

[Interviewer/Radio Host]

Let's swing along with a distant jockey show. I know something that the people would like to know is what your mail that you get. What sort of. In quantity.

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

Well, we had a nice little male the other day. He was about 5 foot 3. Come around with the bread.

[Interviewer/Radio Host]

Thank you very much. That was, of course, John, he's lying to you.

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

Propaganda, you see. Learn the truth between difference.

[Interviewer/Radio Host]

Well, you see, John, I was just trying to be a good PR man.

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

Right.

[Interviewer/Radio Host]

Thank you.

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

You are a good PR man.

[Interviewer/Radio Host]

What kind of a male response do you get, Mr. Ringo?

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

It's okay. It's okay.

[Interviewer/Radio Host]

Did you answer everyone?

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

No, not everyone. You know, we're too busy for that.

[Interviewer/Radio Host]

Yeah, we'd like to, you know, but

[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

we just need more time.

[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

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[Beatles Member (likely Paul McCartney or George Harrison)]

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[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

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[Disney Avatar Promoter]

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[Robert Rodriguez (Podcast Host)]

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[Erica White (Author/Researcher)]

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