Inside The Beatles' rare album cover that was inspired by Salvador Dali

5 May 2026, 11:08 | Updated: 5 May 2026, 11:34

They're a band that influenced everyone who followed.

If you were to ask most of the past half century's prominent musicians who was their greatest influence, it's very likely they'd name The Beatles.

In 1964, Beatlemania completely altered the course of music, especially where pop music is concerned.

A glut of popular music genres like rock, punk, folk, heck even metal can be traced back to The Beatles' output and the inspiration people took from their music.

Naturally, The Beatles had their own idols before they hit the big time, and drew from their own inspirations.

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They made clear that the likes of Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, and The Everly Brothers influenced them in the early days, having developed a fascination with artists from across the Atlantic.

But as their own career reached new heights, the Fab Four began to experiment as the psychedelic movement swept throughout the '60s.

Absorbing plenty of 'out there' art, psychedelia and the avant-garde made an impression on every facet of The Beatles' creativity – sonically in the studio, in their personal lives, and how they visually represented themselves.

So much so, the Salvador Dalí even inspired one of their album covers which was later banned for being too gruesome.

The Beatles' infamous "butcher" cover is one of the most controversial album covers in rock history.

Given it was banned, it's also become of the rarest collectors items associated with the band.

Even George Harrison himself later referred to it as "the definitive Beatles collectible", with its value nowadays cascading into the tens of thousands.

The banned cover was for their 1966 album Yesterday and Today, a cobbled together collection of songs released for the US market.

A photograph of the four Beatles taken by Robert Whitaker, it shows them wearing turtle necks and lab coats, whilst covered in dismembered baby dolls and cuts of raw meat.

Long before the advent of punk music, The Beatles certainly knew how to be provocative and get under censors' skin.

The band loved Australian photographer Robert Whitaker due to his bizarre and sometimes macabre sense of humour.

It was his brainchild to cover the band in bloody flesh and baby doll parts – and the band bloody loved it.

In 1980, in what would be John Lennon's final ever recorded interview for the book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, he revealed the inspiration behind the photoshoot.

"That was a repackage for the Americans called Yesterday and Today," he recalled. "The original cover was The Beatles in white coats with figs 'n' dead bits o' meat and dolls cut up.

"It 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."

"Also," he continued, "the photographer was into Dalí and making surreal pictures. That combination produced that cover."

Having seen the scale of The Beatles adoration during their final live concert at Shea Stadium, Whitaker was inspired to create a series of images that reiterated the band weren't Gods but real people. They were flesh and blood.

"I got fed up with taking squeaky-clean pictures of The Beatles, and I thought I’d revolutionise what pop idols are," he told author Jon Savage.

"All over the world I’d watched people worshiping like gods, four Beatles.

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"To me they were just stock standard normal people. But this emotion that fans poured on them made me wonder where Christianity was heading.”

Whitaker was influenced by surrealism, particularly the film collaboration between Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel called Un Chien Andalou.

It could've been very different if John had his way however, who later revealed: "My original idea for the cover was better – decapitate Paul."

This wouldn't be the only time John Lennon's paths crossed with the hallucinogenic mind of Salvador Dalí.

The Liverpudlian foursome were renowned for fraternising with the cultural and spiritual pioneers of the time, such as Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, and even the Dalai Lama.

But on this occasion it'd only be John that got to meet the Spanish surrealist, in 1969 when they had lunch together in Paris.

Whilst little information is known about what happened at this lunch, Dalí would hang a picture up of Lennon in his bedroom, so the 'Imagine' icon evidently made an impression on him.