The Beatles Album Covers – Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Fans might be surprised to learn that the total cost for the theatrical, vibrant cover of the Beatles‘ eighth studio album came to nearly ₤3,000, or the equivalent of ₤40,606 today. (That was quite a bit of money when you consider the fact that album covers at that time averaged around ₤50.)   

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, released in June of 1967, features an elaborate, colorful collage of cardboard models that represent approximately sixty famous writers, musicians, film stars, and per George Harrison’s request, Indian gurus. Just a few of the famous faces include Marilyn Monroe, Carl Jung, James Dean, Bob Dylan, Sigmund Freud, Lewis Carroll, Edgar Allan Poe, Karl Marx, Marlon Brando, and even the late Stuart Sutcliffe, the original Beatles’ bassist and the so-called “fifth Beatle.” (John Lennon requested that Adolf Hitler and Jesus Christ be included, but they were left out of the final cut.)   

London art dealer Robert Fraser served as the art director for the cover, and pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth came up with the innovative design. The whole project was photographed by Michael Cooper. The initial plan was to use a psychedelic artwork created by design collective The Fool, but Fraser steered the Beatles towards using Peter Blake instead.   

After settling on the crew members, the original concept was to have John, Paul, George, and Ringo dress in band uniforms, as though they were officiating a park ceremony. Then Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Haworth, Blake, and Fraser all submitted lists of real people and characters they would want to see in attendance at such an event. (Ringo Starr, ever the least pretentious band member, did not submit a list, and said he would be fine with whomever the others chose.)   

Blake and Haworth then pasted life-sized black and white photographs of the chosen attendees onto hardboard, which Haworth hand-tinted. She added an assortment of cloth dummies to the assembly, including an “Old Lady” figure and a Shirley Temple doll wearing a “Welcome the Rolling Stones” sweater. Four wax dummies of the “old” Beatles in classic mop-tops stand next to the current Beatles. Haworth then wrote “the Beatles” in flower-bed lettering, citing the municipal flower-clock in Hammersmith as her inspiration. A few other objects included in the menagerie were a nine-inch Sony TV set owned by Paul McCartney, a variety of stone figures (including one of Snow White), a hookah, a velvet snake, a garden gnome, and a euphonium.   

The Beatles wore custom-made military-style suits designed by Michael Cuevas, made of satin that was specially dyed a variety of day-glo colors. Their uniforms feature insignia from MBE (McCartney and Harrison), the Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom (Lennon), and the Ontario Provincial Police (McCartney). They stand in the center of the cover, behind a drum that proclaims the album title in paint, courtesy of fairground artist Joe Ephgrave.   

The back sleeve features the lyrics printed in full — the very first time this had ever been done on a rock release. In addition to three other awards, the elaborate cover art for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band won a Grammy in 1967 for “BestAlbum Cover, Graphic Arts.”