by Bob Spitz
The gist of the message took the Beatles completely by surprise. “We had certainly not intended to do that,” Paul recalled, “but probably when you turn anything backwards it sounds like something… if you look hard enough.” John Lennon, no shrinking violet, claimed to be “shocked—and delighted.” It was even more delicious than his parting contribution: inserting a high-pitched whistle only dogs could hear immediately after the piano chord but before the gibberish began. To John, it seemed only fitting that every dog had its “Day.”
Throughout early March, as sessions for Sgt. Pepper’s accelerated and the album’s novel concept edged into focus, the Beatles batted around ideas for a cover that would complement the music. The situation, they agreed, called for something fresh, daring, and grand. Not merely a cardboard slipcase, but something radical: unusual art, psychedelic design, an entertaining sleeve, extra goodies. Perhaps it was necessary to reinvent the entire article, to offer a genuinely new vision of what an album could be.
Before the cover ever materialized, the Beatles hired a fledgling London ad agency, Geer, DuBois, to field and generate ideas. Instantly they set about experimenting with forms. New designs demanded new approaches, new ways of regarding an album. Instead of a one-dimensional surface, they proposed, maybe it should open like a book. That way, it was possible for the Beatles to include sleeve notes to their hearts’ content. One of the project coordinators, Gene Mahon, suggested printing the songs’ lyrics inside, superimposed over pictures of the Beatles. Lyrics! It had never been done. As routine as this practice seems now, the idea was trendsetting and attracted a serious challenge from music publishers, fearing it would cut into their sheet-music sales. Even so, the Beatles persisted. “We wanted the sleeve to be really interesting,” Paul insisted. “Everyone agreed.”
One thing was for certain: there wouldn’t be a standard studio shot of the four mop tops on the cover. Compared with their images on any of the early albums or even Revolver’s stark collage, Sgt. Pepper demanded a bold departure. Initially, Paul had made pen-and-ink sketches of the Beatles, dressed in Salvation Army–type Lonely Hearts Club Band uniforms, standing in front of framed photographs of their heroes. Another series depicted them being presented to dignitaries on a platform, in front of a garish floral clock. Although generally disdainful of Paul’s increasing thirst for control over such details, the other Beatles apparently approved of his design. They also commissioned the Fool, the Dutch design group, to paint an acid-inspired dream landscape for the inside gatefold. The spectacular mural was a mishmash of composition and flamboyance. Several panels of overlapping scenes served up a kaleidoscopic vision of the universe filled with silvery unicorn-like beasts, mystical birds, shamanistic images, peacocks, flowers, rainbows, and, of course, the Beatles, striding out from lush vegetation into a spectral clash of color, all crammed in beneath a comet-streaked sky. It was crude, embarrassingly puerile—and the Beatles loved it.
The arbiter of this material was Robert Fraser, Paul’s art dealer and confidant, who had been enlisted as a consultant for the Beatles’ album design. Like Victor Waddington and Mateusz Grabowski, Fraser was among the small, daring band of London gallery owners who brought the new wave of modern art to hip, young British collectors. In 1962 Fraser reportedly gave the first show in London of American pop art, and he represented an impressive array of clients, including Claes Oldenberg, Jim Dine, Eduardo Paolozzi (Stuart Sutcliffe’s mentor), Richard Hamilton, Colin Self, Harold Cohen, and Bridget Riley. Rock and movie stars alike were drawn not only to his exquisite taste in art but also by his charismatic personal style. A dapper, raffish, irrepressibly arrogant man with a drop-dead smile, he had a showman’s panache coupled with a quick, caustic wit and an alluring coterie of friends. He was also a doyen of the fashionable gay drug culture, with a gourmet taste that ran from young boys to heroin. It was a combination that attracted eclectic crowds to his gala openings and his posh flat on Mount Street.
Fraser’s involvement with rock stars was nothing new. His best customers, according to gossip, were the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. He sold them dozens of paintings, including most of Paul’s René Magritte collection (including au revoir, which would become the Beatles’ green Apple logo). He provided a relaxed arena where they could learn about modern art and develop an instinct for quality. It was the perfect stimulus for ambitious, newly rich young musicians. With a revealing mix of fondness and admiration, Paul later admitted that, aside from John Lennon, Fraser was “the most formative influence for me.”
Fraser took one look at the Fool’s slapdash work and, with a flick of the hand, dismissed it as “not good art.” It lacked tension. “In years to come, this will be just another psychedelic cover,” he told them. “You’ve had good covers up [un]til now, you’ve had a high standard. Why don’t you ask a fine artist to do it?” At Fraser’s insistence, they consulted two of his other clients, photographer Michael Cooper and pop artist Peter Blake.
It stood to reason that they’d find a sidekick in Blake. A devotee of fantasy and abstraction, his fascination with toys and badges played right into the Beatles’ wiggy sensibility. He painted to rock music, and what’s more, he boasted loose ties to the Liverpool arts scene: in 1963 Blake had won the junior prize at the John Moores competition—the same prize Stuart Sutcliffe won to finance the band’s first bass guitar. John had actually seen Blake’s winning entry, and when the artist wondered if he’d liked it, John replied as only John would: “No, not very much.” Hardly the ring of praise, but Blake appreciated the honesty. Besides, John had gone to several of his exhibitions at the Fraser gallery, in an entourage that included Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis, and the Stones, which delighted him. And Paul appreciated his early work, the famous pinups and the wrestlers.
The Beatles laid out their ideas for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. John described their identity as “part German marching band, part military band,” and the idea was that they had done a concert. “Perhaps we could do something in a park,” he suggested. In Blake’s recollection, the crowd concept was his, but most likely he’d been told about Paul’s sketches and incorporated them in his design. Sitting in his cozy studio with John, Paul, Brian, and Robert Fraser, he proposed framing the design around a bandstand. A collage seemed like the most expedient way to construct it. “Look, I can make a crowd with photography, cutouts, and waxworks, and so we could have anyone [in it] you really want.”
Anyone. It tantalized the Beatles, who loved the prankish quality of it. “Anyone” meant friends or heroes or family or, well, any obscure face that tickled their fancy. And it required no explanation. Let the fans go crazy trying to figure out who was in the crowd—and why. What a hoot it would be!
Blake instructed each of the Beatles, as well as Robert Fraser, to make a list of the people they’d like to include in the crowd. “It was just a broad spectrum of people,” George remembered. But his list, of those finally submitted, proved the narrowest: eight Indian holy men, including Babaji, Paramahansa Yogananda, and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Paul went mostly for artsy choices: William Burroughs, Aldous Huxley, Alfred Jarry, Fred Astaire, Aleister Crowley, Groucho Marx, Magritte, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, as well as an obscure Everton footballer named Dixie Dean, among others. John had little interest in impressing anyone; he wanted to goose them, to stir up the ooze. If he felt at all chastened by irate Christians over his now-infamous comments, then starting with Jesus seemed like a “naughty” little choice. Then he requested Hitler—which managed to piss off Paul, who wanted him to take the cover more seriously—Gandhi, Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde, H. G. Wells, and, of course, that rascal of rascals, the Marquis de Sade. John threw in his own obscure Liverpool footballer, Albert Stubbins, despite only the vaguest interest in sports. Later, for good measure, he added Edgar Allan Poe and Lewis Carroll.
When Blake collected the names, only Ringo hesitated. “Whatever the others have is fine by me,” Ringo replied. “I won’t put anyone in.”
Robert Fraser contributed Terry Southern, the author of Candy, as well as two American artists—Richard Lindner and Wally Berman. “Mine,” recalled Blake, “included Dion, one of the very few musicians on the cover… the Bowery Boys—Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall—Lex Barker, the Tarzan [figure], and the waxworks of Sonny Liston, who I was a great fan of. Richard Merkin, the painter, was a friend of mine in New York, so I put him in there, too.”
At the last minute, John, to his credit, insisted they include Stuart Sutcliffe.
The legwork was left to Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans, who canvassed the local libraries for photos of the famous crowd. Blake, along with his wife, artist Jann Haworth, made the final selections, blew them up to life-size proportions, and retouched the images before pasting them on a hardboard surface. A set was constructed in Michael Cooper’s studio in Chelsea. “We made a rough kind of wooden frame, tacked up all the figures, and stood in the waxworks,” Blake recalled. “Built a little platform where the Beatles would then come and stand. I had a drum [skin] painted by a fairground painter [Joe Ephgrave], with the Sgt. Pepper’s symbol on it. I also asked [the Beatles] to bring in favorite objects that we might use.” The whole thing came together in less than two weeks’ time. Aside from Paul’s early sketches, there were almost no working drawings. Most of the detail was improvised on the fly. The mock-ups were placed haphazardly, the mementos patched in at will. Even the flowers for the intended floral clock were ordered as if one were sending a dozen roses. As a result, there weren’t enough stems to pull it off properly, “so the delivery boy [from Clifton Nurseries] made a guitar with them instead.”
In the shadow of Blake’s spectacle, the Beatles went to work on their outfits for the cover. It had been decided that a takeoff on soldiers’ uniforms would be appropriate. John, whose recent outing in How I Won the War gave him some experience in this field, directed his mates to Berman’s, the theatrical costumers who had supplied wardrobe and plumage for the movie. “We just chose oddball things from everywhere and put them together,” recalled Paul. Color triumphed over substance; anything bright, garish, or remotely psychedelic was given serious consideration. No one worried that anything might clash or offend—and if so, all the better, all the cooler!
Cool—they had always seemed able to define that very term. There was nothing they didn’t do naturally that had failed to catch the popular drift: their style of hair, the choice of clothes—from pointy-toed boots to collarless sport coats to loud, flower-print shirts to army jackets—the granny glasses, the handlebar mustaches, everything they touched became vogue. Meanwhile, as individuals, they had become even more handsome than their teenage years indicated, growing into faces that once only suggested the sensuality but now burst into full bloom. The Beatles had always been easy to look at. But in the early days, the spectacle of hair had drawn too much away from their appearance; it made their features less intimate, more like caricature. Now, with everybody wearing long hair, they revealed themselves.
None of this was lost on Robert Fraser, whose appreciation of young men rivaled his eye for fine art. On March 30, as the cover photo session transpired, he instructed Michael Cooper to shoot a series of portraits of the Beatles that might be used inside the gatefold. The Beatles were still committed to the Fool’s psychedelic design, but they didn’t resist the opportunity to sit for Cooper, whose lens captured them in a pose as strong and penetrating as any in their career.
The album, as a package, was almost complete. There were attempts to include a transparent envelope filled “with goodies”—stick-on tattoos, badges, sergeant stripes, and little gifts that would vary from pressing to pressing. But production costs were insurmountable and it would have made the album too bulky and impossible for EMI to ship. In a more practical approach, the Beatles created a less-expensive souvenir cutout kit, with a Sgt. Pepper’s Band bass drum, mustaches, and badges that could be slipped into the fold.
As it was, the cover costs alone soared into the stratosphere. A label like EMI usually budgeted anywhere from £25 to £75 for the standard cover photograph, but the bill for Sgt. Pepper’s topped £2,800. “Joe Lockwood was furious,” recalled Fraser, who was called into the EMI chairman’s austere chambers to account for the “folly.” Glowering like Zeus, he thundered, “I can hire the London Symphony Orchestra for that!”
Lockwood’s chief concern, however—and justifiably so—was the label’s liability in regard to the cover images. EMI had an international reputation to protect, to say nothing about standards of taste, and as far as he was concerned, that photo of Hitler was out of the question. He also insisted they “take Gandhi out” to avoid any backlash from the enormous overseas market. “If we show Gandhi standing around with Sonny Liston and Diana Dors, they’ll never forgive us in India,” he said.
Lockwood preferred that the whole cover be scrapped. In an altogether uncharacteristic gesture, Sir Joe had the label’s in-house art department tinker with the cover and showed up with it himself, unannounced, on Paul McCartney’s doorstep. “We have some problems on this,” he reportedly told Paul, handing over the retouched version. “It had the flowers, the drum, the four Beatles—and a big blue sky,” recalled Neil Aspinall, who happened to be visiting when Lockwood arrived. “They wiped out all the people [in the crowd] behind [the Beatles] because he was frightened that they might all sue or not want to be on the cover.”
Paul refused to buckle, and détente was reached when Lockwood grudgingly approved the original cover, sans Gandhi and Hitler, as long as NEMS got proper permissions, while Paul—with no authority whatsoever—cavalierly agreed to indemnify EMI against any lawsuits arising from the design.
Right off the bat, there was friction between Brian and Robert Stigwood over the direction of NEMS. In an effort to get ahold of his life and to concentrate on developing the Saville Theatre, Brian intended to downsize the company’s roster. “He certainly couldn’t handle them, in his condition,” recalls Alistair Taylor. “Brian and I discussed drawing the line at a maximum of six groups, preferably four—the Beatles, Gerry Marsden, Billy [J. Kramer], and Cilla [Black] with Sounds Inc. to back her—but, with Stigwood on board, we went in the opposite direction, signing new acts.”
Stigwood turned up the promotion of Cream, who were on the verge of breaking wide open, and pursued three or four other acts creating buzz in the London clubs. Then, in March, Brian handed him a letter that changed the course of their relationship. It was from a group in Australia, hoping to interest the Beatles’ manager. “I don’t deal with this kind of thing,” he told Stigwood, expecting him to issue a standard refusal. Instead, Robert took a look at their head shot and “fell in love.” They were three siblings who called themselves the Bee Gees—for the Brothers Gibb—and the demo tucked in their press kit sounded incredible.
Stigwood was convinced NEMS could do something with them, but he got no support at all from Brian. “Brian became annoyed when Robert said they would be the next Beatles,” recalls Nat Weiss. “As far as he cared, that sealed their fate.” But fate had its own way of striking a responsive chord. Stigwood signed the Bee Gees posthaste and decided to originate their record deal in the United States, with Atlantic.
This only magnified Brian’s indignation. Perhaps Nat Weiss had been right, fingering Stigwood as a “carnival promoter.” But the man seemed to possess a full bag of tricks, which, thus far, had been profitable.
In a style that he copied directly from Brian, Robert decided to launch the Bee Gees in America with a splash—literally—by chartering a yacht, packing it with guests and elegant food, and sailing around Manhattan. It was an elaborate, expensive affair, and Nat Weiss remembers cornering Stigwood during the cruise and asking how he intended to pay for it. “Put it on my personal account,” Stigwood replied. The next day Weiss got a call from Brian, who had flown into a rage. “They haven’t sold one record yet and he’s chartered a yacht!” he fumed. Weiss told him not to worry. “Robert says he’ll put it on his personal account.” This
only prompted a more ferocious scream: “He has no personal account!”
By the time the American visit was over, Brian got his revenge. He described to Weiss Stigwood’s preference for good-looking young men but, contrary to Brian’s fancy, definitely not hustlers. “Robert likes to be able to win them over,” he told the lawyer. Half the pleasure lay in the challenge. “He likes the art of seduction.” Brian and Weiss found “the most used-up hustler in New York,” hired him, and arranged for an encounter with Stigwood. For months they fed on the story of how “Robert thought he’d seduced someone who could have been available [to anyone] for ten dollars.” So spent Brian Epstein his time and efforts.