20 JUNE 1966
The Beatles album 'Yesterday... And Today' was released in the US on this day. This was one of the series of albums that Capitol released in North America that were markedly different to what was being released on the other side of the Atlantic.
This stemmed from Capitol being behind with releasing very early Beatles’s material in the US, and then carving up all their subsequent albums (up to 'Revolver') from 14-track British releases into 12-or-11 track US ones, taking songs from one album and placing them on another. This resulted in the US market having about nine Beatles albums from what were only six albums in the UK.
'Yesterday and Today' featured songs that had previously been left off the US versions of 'Help' and 'Rubber Soul' ('Yesterday', 'Act Naturally', 'Nowhere Man', 'Drive My Car', 'If I Needed Someone', and 'What Goes On'), with the single tracks 'We Can Work it Out' and 'Day Tripper', and also added three Lennon songs from the upcoming UK version of 'Revolver' ('And Your Bird Can Sing', 'I'm Only Sleeping' and 'Doctor Robert'). This left the US 'Revolver' somewhat short of Lennon-penned material.
There was some controversy over the original cover for this album, depicting the Beatles as butchers holding bloody baby (doll) parts. That cover was withdrawn, and while McCartney later claimed it was a statement on the Vietnam War, it would be easy to also see it as a statement on the treatment of Beatles material by Capitol.
The song 'And Your Bird Can Sing' (above) was used as the (overly long) intro tune for the third season of the rather bizarre cartoon TV series 'The Beatles' (1967).
