The Fab Four caused a stir with the album cover for this butchered collection of songs cut from the American versions of their albums. It was pulled off the shelves the first day and the ultimate Beatles collector's item was born. For years, Capitol Records had redesigned and reconfigured the songs on their albums as they were produced in Britain on Parlaphone Records. The explosion of Beatlemania in the US created a huge demand for their music that was exploited by Capitol by skimming tracks from the UK versions to create more albums to be sold to an eager American public. '“Yesterday” ...and Today' was built around the hugely successful single 'Yesterday' and its flip-side 'Act Naturally' which had been kept off of the US version of 'Help!'. The chart topping double-single of 'We Can Work It Out' and 'Day Tripper' was also included. Four tracks were taken from the UK 'Rubber Soul' album 'Drive My Car', 'If I Needed Someone', and the number one single 'Nowhere Man' and its b-side 'What Goes On'. Three songs were skimmed from the UK 'Revolver' album for which the sessions were still happening.
The controversial album cover photo was taken by Robert Whitaker as part of his conceptual art piece 'A Somnambulant Adventure'. The lads were dressed in butcher smocks with pieces of meat and plastic baby doll parts. John Lennon said the shoot was "inspired by our boredom and resentment at having to do another photo session and another Beatles thing. We were sick to death of it." Paul McCartney pushed for its use as an album cover as "our comment on the war". This "pop art satire" caused a stir among vendors and customers. It was recalled very quickly and many copies were destroyed; but most were recovered with a new photo of the band around an open "cabin trunk". Lennon said that the butcher photo was "as relevant as Vietnam" and McCartney called their critics "soft". Ringo Starr says it was a comment on how Capitol Records "butchered" their original albums. George Harrison thought the idea "was gross, and I also thought it was stupid. Sometimes we all did stupid things thinking it was cool and hip when it was naïve and dumb; and that was one of them."
Harrison also called it "the definitive Beatles collectible." Capitol Records president Alan Livingston took a sealed case of the butcher albums and two decades later released twenty-four copies for sale. One of these recently sold at auction for nearly forty thousand dollars!
'Drive My Car' was taken off the American version of 'Rubber Soul' because it wasn't folky enough. According to McCartney, it was Lennon who came up with the title: "The lyrics were disastrous and I knew it. This is one of the songs where John and I came nearest to having a dry session. The lyrics I brought in were something to do with golden rings, which is always fatal. ‘Rings’ is fatal anyway, ‘rings’ always rhymes with ‘things’ and I knew it was a bad idea. I came in and I said, ‘These aren’t good lyrics but it’s a good tune.’ ‘Drive my car’ was an old blues euphemism for sex, so in the end all is revealed. Black humour crept in and saved the day. It wrote itself then. I find that very often, once you get the good idea, things write themselves."
'Nowhere Man' was a number one hit in Australia and Canada.
The Ringo showcase 'Act Naturally' was the original a-side for 'Yesterday'. It was written by Johnny Russell and Voni Morrison and was a number one country hit for Buck Owens and the Buckaroos.
'And Your Bird Can Sing' was actually written by John Lennon with the working title 'You Don't Get Me'. He called it "another of my throwaways...fancy paper around an empty box".
'If I Needed Someone' was written by George Harrison and covered by the Hollies.
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