Beatles Sergeant Pepper Cover Photo Taken 44 Years Ago

It was 44 years ago this past week (3/30) that the photo shoot for the Beatles' legendary Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover happened.

That album cover is one of the most iconic in rock history, and one of the most studied.

When the album came out, it was a revolution in music. Everything changed after Sergeant Pepper. The music was produced to a level previously unimaginable and critics and fans listened all summer long in 1967.

The cover was also studied in detail, trying to name all of the people depicted. The Beatles wanted the Pepper cover to feature "people they liked" or more accurately, people they thought were influential.

On the cover were such notables as Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Mae West, WC Fields, Sonny Liston (in wax figure form from Madame Tussaud's), Karl Marx, Bob Dylan, Laurel and Hardy, Marlene Dietrich, and even the Beatles themselves in their mop top incarnations from Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum.

The cover also featured some clever tributes. There is a doll dressed in a shirt that reads "Welcome The Rolling Stones". That was a tip of the hat to their friendly rivalry with the Stones.

The cover was a nightmare for Capitol Records (and Apple) because they had to secure permission from every living person featured on the cover. They got that accomplished with the exception of Bowery Boy actor Leo Gorcey, who asked for $400. His picture was obscured by a painted palm tree.

For a person-by-person, item-by-item breakdown of the Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover, I found a fantastic website that has some rare outtakes from the historic photo session and a numbered "map" of the cover. It also goes into detail about all who were involved in the photo shoot. The photographer Michael Cooper definitely had a busy day. You can check out the site here at beatlesagain.com/btsgtppr.html.