Yesterday and Today.

 The DJ early on Thursday and Friday mornings on Little Steven's Underground Garage on Sirius XM is Kelly Ogden.

On Thursday mornings she tells an in-depth story about something pertaining to rock 'n roll.

The Beatles released an album called Yesterday and Today in June of 1966 with a very controversial album cover.

It is referred to as the "butcher cover." The Beatles are dressed as butchers (white coats) and are covered with decapitated baby dolls and pieces of raw meat. Capitol Records did not want to release it but The Beatles were The Beatles, and they got their way.

It received a huge backlash and was eventually recalled. Capitol had to come up with new album covers, at great expense of course. I know in some cases they just slapped a new cover over the old one, but I don't know if they did this for all of the recalls.

It is a collectors item, big time. Some people had the original, some people managed to peel the new label off the original.

Sadly, I don't own a copy. But I did love it - it was pretty sick.

When forced to defend the choice, The Beatles said it was their commentary on Viet Nam, which was complete bullshit.

I know the story well and enjoyed Kelly's re-telling of it.

The best part of the story, which I knew nothing about, happened 30 years later.

According to Kelly, when George Harrison was asked about the album cover in 1996 he said "Some times we did things we thought were cool and hip but were really naive and dumb."

I love the honesty. It cuts right through the pretentious artistic veil.

We as consumers of art are supposed to automatically accept any weird thing an artist says or does as cutting edge stuff, rife with meaning, when sometimes all it is is pure bullshit.

Mr. Harrison always viewed Beatlemania cynically with a biting, sarcastic wit. I always loved him for that.