Yesterday and Today is a studio album by the English rock band the Beatles, their ninth album released on Capitol Records and twelfth American release overall. It was originally issued only in the United States and Canada, in June 1966. Typical of the Beatles’ North American discography until 1967, the album contains songs that Capitol had withheld from its versions of the band’s recent EMI albums – in this case, Help! and Rubber Soul – along with others that were issued on non-album singles.
The album is remembered primarily for the controversy surrounding its original cover image. Taken by photographer Robert Whitaker, and said to be the Beatles’ statement against the Vietnam War, this ‘butcher cover’ image showed the band dressed in white smocks and covered with decapitated baby dolls and pieces of raw meat. Others said it was the Beatles protesting the fact that their North American albums had been ‘butchered’ – switched around and not as originally intended.
The album’s title plays on the title of the song “Yesterday”. Having been deleted from Capitol’s catalogue in 1986, Yesterday and Today was reissued on CD in 2014.
These pictures of The Beatles cover session for the album Yesterday and Today were taken by photographer Robert Whitaker at Vale Studios in Chelsea on March 25, 1966.
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