The Beatles Butcher Album: How raw meat created a rare vinyl.
The Beatles Butcher album cover isn’t their most notorious scandal. It doesn’t hold a candle to the time they snubbed the Queen or dissed GOD. But the image of the lovable mops tops draped in raw meat while holding decapitated baby dolls did create a stir. It also created one of the most sought after pieces of Beatles vinyl and memorabilia.
Back in June, 1966, The Beatles Yesterday and Today Butcher Album was deemed too offensive for the public. The world’s biggest band had their album pulled from distribution. Get Back fellas.
Cut to May 9, 2019 and a John Lennon signed and owned Yesterday and Today First State Butcher Album sold for $233,193.00 at Julian’s Auction Music Icons: The Beatles In Liverpool.
The album has always been one of the Beatles most collectible of collectibles.
Even without the signatures of John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, First State Butchers can fetch $40,000.00. The Beatles Butcher sold at Julian’s Auction is truly one of a kind. The Beatles owned and signed stereo prototype also has a John Lennon doddle on the back cover.
The Julian’s Auction website states that John had the album hanging on the wall of his New York City Dakota apartment until he gave it to Beatles’ fan Dave Morrel in exchange for an alternate recording of Yellow Matter Custard.
Beatles Butcher covers are rarer than a Yoko Ono fan at Paul McCartney’s house.
Thousands of copies were produced, but very few made it into the hands of fans. Reacting to a backlash of the photo, the executives at Capitols records pulled the album from distribution.
Some of the covers were destroyed, while most of the others were altered with a new cover photo glued on top of the original. This is the Trunk photo. The Beatles Butcher covers that survived unscathed are what collectors call First State. These are the rarest and most valuable.
Second State Butchers are albums with the Trunk image glued on top of the original photo.
Third State Butchers are Second State Butchers that have had the Trunk photo removed. The success of this procedure greatly influences the value of the album.
You can find Beatles Butcher albums of varying degrees at discogs. The quality varies and the prices I saw at the time suggest that none were First State.
Needless to say, Beatles Butcher are a big deal in the Beatlesverse. There’s a ton of digital ink spilt over the album cover including entire sites dedicated to not only educating, but restoring altered covers.
While The Beatles White Album 0000001 is the most expensive album ever sold, every First State Butcher album is worth good money.
In other news, someone spent 500 bucks on a lock of Ringo’s hair. I wonder if this gave Ringo’s current hair dresser any ideas?