BEATLES BUTCHER COVER INSANELY RARE ORIG WITHDRAWN LP

$

211

    
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·       BEATLES - YESTERDAY AND TODAY - ORIGINAL 1966 CAPITOL RECORDS MONO LP T-2553

·       ORIGINAL U.S. PRESSING

MONSTRUOUSLY RARE ORIGINAL “BUTCHER COVER”– ONE OF THE RAREST AND MOST COVETED RECORD ALBUMS

·       THIS IS A “SECOND STATE” (UNPEELED PASTEOVER) COVER, WITH THE “TRUNK” PHOTO PASTED OVER THE OFFENSIVE IMAGE OF THE BEATLES SHOWN WITH THE BUTCHERED BABY DOLLS AND BLOODY CHUNKS OF MEAT).

·       THIS IS THE ORIGINAL, AUTHENTIC, FIRST U.S. PRESSING; THIS IS NOT A REISSUE, AN IMPORT, OR A COUNTERFEIT PRESSING.

·       THICK, HEAVY CARDBOARD COVER, AMERICAN STYLE.

·       SORRY, WE DO NOT HAVE A RECORD; ONLY THE COVER IS BEING OFFERED.

·       This album has NEVER been available on legitimate Compact Disc or in any other way, manner or format.

(►PLEASE SEE THE IMAGE OF THE COVER, LABEL OR BOTH, SHOWN BELOW)

(Note: this is a REAL image of the ACTUAL item you are bidding on. This is NOT a "recycled" image from our previous auction. What you see is what you'll get.  GUARANTEED!)

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Of course, what we have here is a legendary Beatles "BUTCHER COVER" album, unavailable anywhere outside of US in this form (other than a cheap replica). Yes, folks, this is the real thing: 100% guaranteed, original, genuine pressing of one of the rarest albums in existence.

The album is such a critical part of the Beatles legend and record-collecting lore, that we feel anything we could say on the subject would be entirely redundant. Arguably, everyone knows everything that there is to know about it.

Nonetheless, let’s give it a shot: in 1966, as the Beatles stopped touring and their American label (Capitol) began fearing that the group would not be able to compete with the nascent psychedelia – what with their family-friendly, warm and fuzzy mass appeal – the label decided to add some gravity and oomph to their market image. Not having any clue how to proceed (that’s Capitol for you, folks – forty years later, they still don’t have a clue, although they are now a little better than their competitors, courtesy of their Blue Note reissue program), the label made – even by record label standards - a remarkably idiotic decision to portrait the Fab 4 as – gasp! – a bunch of  Jack-the-Ripper types holding dismembered and disemboweled babies and chunks of bloody red meat (and, if that was not enough, wearing blood-stained butchers’ aprons) – and, get this: grinning profusely, as if deriving some strange libidinal gratification from this unseemly act. Yikes!!! A lifetime achievement Academy Award for corporate cretinism! Haliburton and Enron have NOTHING on this!

I can only try to imagine the look of shock and disbelief on parents’ faces as they entered the local Sears store the morning the album was released. I’ll be willing to bet 95% of them walked away in total disgust, not wanting to even touch the piece, let alone buy it for their teenage kids. (Oddly enough, the

 subplot would return to haunt the Beatles on a number of occasions for the rest of their career: during the making of the White Album, as a possible Charles Manson connection, during the Paul-is-dead controversy, and so on and so forth).

And, therein lies the reason for the rarity of the album: fearful of the “satanic” implications of the cover (mind you, Roman Polansky’s Rosemary’s Baby was shot that very same year), the buying public voted with their feet, and the vote was a resounding NO. Realizing (duh!) what they had done, fearing the backlash from the alienated public and dreading the possibility that the “new” Beatles album (which, in fact, was a composite of preceding three UK albums with a few hit singles tossed in for good measure) may become the first Beatles album not to go gold in the States, Capitol promptly pulled any and all already distributed copies from the stores (most of whom were a part of the Sears chain), filled up a giant landfill (literally – we kid you not) and rolled a bulldozer over each and every copy they could retrieve.  They may well have thrown the entire corporate management into that hole and get it over with.

That’s it, folks. The long and short of it. The infamous story of the short life and ignoble death of the Beatles Butcher Cover.  The original cover, with the original butcher photo visible on the front panel is usually referred to as “first state”.

Ah, but wait…that’s not all. Realizing that tracking down and destroying tens of thousands of remaining copies out there – and at their expense – would be tantamount to corporate suicide, Capitol did, in fact, do something moderately intelligent: as a stop-gap measure, they altered a small group of covers by pasting over the new photo slick, showing the Fab 4 gathered around an open trunk (suitcase) – a trunk we can only suspect was originally used to store those dismembered baby dolls and chunks of meat (no tofu here!) - until a brand new, completely remade and remodeled cover was ready for the market .  These interim versions of the butcher cover are (almost) as rare as the first pressings, and can be easily identified by a few visual clues, of which the most prominent one is the V-cut on Ringo’s sweater showing through the pasted-over white paper slick.  These second versions are usually referred to as “second state” or “pasteover” butcher covers. As you can see, the copy we have here is a “second state”. We have circled (electronically, of course) the detail on the cover where Ringo’s sweater on the offensive image is visible.

How many hundreds (possibly thousands) of times are butcher covers more rare than the regular, “trunk” covers? I don’t have a clue.  I am sure that some statistics and historical data exist somewhere, but this is largely speculative in view of the fact that many “butcher covers” were effectively, well…butchered when their owners attempted to peel them off. As a result, many butcher covers were essentially destroyed or seriously damaged in the process. In other words, any existing historical data must be mitigated by the fact that many surviving butcher copies were essentially disfigured beyond recognition by their owners.  This may help explain why the butcher copies are many times rarer than any historical evidence might suggest.

To put things in perspective, the year 1966 was a big year for corporate cover censors: mind you, in this same year, the Mamas and the Papas had to endure humiliating censorship of their ►“Toilet Seat” cover, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons survived no less than three encounters with the artwork police (on their “Four Seasons sing Bacharach-David and Dylan” album), Jefferson Airplane’s first album was altered in both content and form (cover had to be changed, too), Bob Dylan (presumably on his own volition?) changed the layout on his ► “Blonde on Blonde” album, deleting the image of Claudia Cardinale; the Fugs’ first album underwent no less than 4 (four !!!) alterations, the cover of ► the Monkees’ first album had to be changed because of misperceived “transsexual” reference, ►Buffalo Springfield’s first album had to have a song excised from BOTH record AND the cover; Simon and Garfunkel’s second album (The Sounds of Silence) underwent no less than three cover revisions; Velvet Underground’s first album ►(Velvet Underground & Nico, also known as the “Banana Cover) had to have back cover significantly modified because of a legal dispute. In other words, corporate censors and self-censors were out in full force back in 1966.

Needless to say, despite (or perhaps precisely because of) the controversy, Yesterday and Today quickly became a RIAA-certified million-seller, topping the Billboard pop charts. In the sea of official “regular” covers that flooded the market, it is virtually impossible to find surviving copies of the original “butcher” covers. They are a sight unseen. We comfortably and without any reservations state that the censored covers outnumber “butcher” covers at a ratio of AT LEAST 500:1.

Some  reasons Why You Should Own Original American Mono Beatles Albums:

I.                 These are genuine historical artifacts. Rock & Roll did not produce many works deserving to be called history; albums by Beatles are a noble exception to this rule.

II.            These pressings are coveted by EVERYONE and, despite the fact that Beatles sold almost a billion records, precious few original mono albums in good shape remain on the market.

III.        Mono pressings are, almost by definition, the very first pressings. They were in print for only short period of time, ranging from only few weeks (Magical Mystery Tour) to three years (Meet the Beatles).

IV.         First, mono pressings sound MUCH better and are much more vivid than the stereo versions.

V.              Mono versions contain different versions or mixes of many tracks; in some cases mono versions contain the only "proper" versions of the songs, which are only available only in FAKE stereo on stereo albums.

VI.         Beatles mono albums are all analog pressings; whereas everything else you can currently find on the market is a …~NMLD digital mastering.

VII.     American versions of the Beatles Capitol albums have never been - and, apparently, will never again be - available on Compact Disc, courtesy of EMI/Capitol records (why, sure - if you have to pay Mariah Carey $50 million NOT to record anything, not even the lucrative Beatles catalog can save you)

VIII.The original Beatles mono albums are a terrific investment value, not likely to go the Enron way.

For additional historical or discography information on this album, including track listing ►click here

TO SEE IF WE HAVE OTHER LISTED ITEMS BY THIS GROUP OR ARTIST ►  CLICK HERE

PLEASE NOTE THIS IS A RESERVE AUCTION!

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CONDITION:

RECORD

·       SORRY, WE DO NOT HAVE A RECORD; ONLY THE COVER IS BEING OFFERED.

·       COVER

THE COVER IS ONLY ABOUT GOOD(+)

The following flaws or imperfections are noted on the cover:

-        Cover has all three seams (top, bottom and spine) partially split

-        The previous owner taped the seams liberally, randomly and indiscriminately with numerous – even overlapping -  small pieces of clear scotch tape. Some of these pieces of tape can probably be removed easily, but we did not attempt to.

-        Cover has a visible wrinkle (crease) in the cardboard base on the front panel

-        Cover has a visible wrinkle (crease) in the cardboard base on the back panel

-        Visible water stains noted across much of both panels (front and back)

-        Cover has all four corners slightly worn / dinged / bent.

-        FrontCover has a small peel-off mark, probably from the careless removal of the price sticker. (less than 1 square inch in size).  2-3 peel-off mark also noted on the back panel (about 2 square inches in size, total)

-        Cover has a sticker residue (partially peeled remnants of the price sticker or some other sticker; the buyer can probably remove these small, still affixed bits and pieces of the sticker with a minor effort)

-        Cover has a few visible wrinkles along the seams

-        The cover has a few visible scratch marks on the back side

-        Cover has some visible ring wear; On the scale from 1 to 10 (1 being the least, and  10 being the most severe), we assess the severity of ring wear as 5.

-        Cover has some visible fraying/tattering on all three seams

NO OTHER IMPERFECTIONS ON THE COVER:

-        No cut-out (drill) holes.

-        No cut-out corners

-        No saw-marks or indents

-        No writing

-        No stamps

-        No stickers or labels

-        No wax, glue, paint or liquid drops on the cover

-        No glue traces or wax residue.

-        No bar codes

-        No RIAA stamps or stickers. 

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POSTAGE & SHIPPING:

We offer THREE postage rates for both Domestic and International Mail: Media Mail, Priority Mail and Express Mail for domestic, and First Class, Priority International Mail, and Express International Mail for international orders. INTERNATIONAL CUSTOMERS PLEASE NOTE: WE RECOMMEND that you pay for USPS International Priority Mail OR International Express mail when making a payment in order to obtain tracking information, which is NOT available for First Class International shipments.

INTERNATIONAL POSTAGE rates vary from country to country. For SPECIFIC international and domestic postage rates ►click here. While you can be rest assured that ►our packaging is careful, sturdy and impact-proof, please note that damage, loss or theft in transit is always possible, and in the case of some countries even PROBABLE. To discuss this potential problem and ensure flawless delivery, please contact us thru eBay BEFORE placing a bid.

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OUR REFUND POLICY :

WE OFFER UNCONDITIONAL MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE WITHIN 7 DAYS FROM THE RECEIPT OF THE MERCHANDISE, NO QUESTIONS ASKED (THE BUYER PAYS FOR THE RETURN POSTAGE); Still sealed items MUST be returned sealed in order to be eligible for a refund Some restrictions apply. Please read our complete refund policy before placing a bid. ►Click here  for the full text of our policy

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