A Star Wanted $200 to Appear on The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’ Cover
The final cover of The Beatles‘ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band doesn’t reflect the Fab Four’s original idea. The Beatles removed one star from the image for financial reasons. The star might have made a huge mistake when he corresponded with The Beatles.
An artist said the creation of The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’ cover was ‘pretty funny’
Jann Haworth was one of the artists behind the Sgt. Pepper artwork. Famously, the record includes the visages of many celebrities, writers, and historical figures. During a 2017 interview with Good Times, Haworth said The Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, decided the band needed permission to use the famous figures’ images late in the creative process.
“And the story as it’s written up is that EMI thought of this, but as it was presented to me it was Brian saying ‘Oh my god, we’ve got to get this straightened out,'” she recalled. “And so it was at that point, when it was all done, that telegrams and letters went flying out. Which was pretty funny. And I remember that it was pretty panicky.
“And so the letters went out, and the first things back were affirmative, and then there was one from Leo Gorcey saying he wanted $200,” she added. Gorcey was a member of The Bowery Boys, a comedy troupe. Gorcey was more of a B-lister than an A-list star.
Jann Haworth said The Beatles weren’t interested in giving Leo Gorcey any money
The Beatles and company did not care much for Gorcey’s request. “We weren’t going to have that kind of money go out,” Haworth remembered. “So we just took him out of the photograph.”
Gorcey’s request was probably a bad idea. He might’ve benefited from the free exposure of appearing on the cover. At the very least, The Beatles’ hardcore fans would’ve remembered him. Today, audiences have forgotten Gorcey completely. More popular 20th-century comedians like the Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and The Three Stooges eclipsed him in the popular memory.
How the cover of ‘Sgt. Pepper’ went on to inspire other musicians and writers
The cover of Sgt. Pepper went on to become iconic. Frank Zappa’s band, The Mothers of Invention, spoofed the image with their record We’re Only in It for the Money, as did Peter Hitchens in his book The War We Never Fought. The Simpsons is filled with Fab Four references, and the artwork of the tie-in record The Yellow Album mimics Sgt. Pepper, but with all your favorite Simpsons characters in place of Marilyn Monroe, Aleister Crowley, and the other famous faces on the Fab Four’s album.
During a 2001 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Capitol Records Vice President Tommy Steele said The Beatles’ artwork had a huge legacy. He said the band was the first to try to make their album covers works of art, a dubious claim if there ever was one. Steele said musicians came to him all the time wanting to create record covers similar to Sgt. Pepper.
Gorcey didn’t make the cut but The Beatles’ artistry still inspired generations to come.
