How many famous actors, writers and historical figures on the Sgt Pepper’s cover can you name?
IT has been named the Greatest Album Cover of all time. While Paul McCartney is credited with its inspiration, those behind the art reveal more. TEST YOURSELF
IT has been a source of endless fascination and feverish trainspotting for 50 years, a curiously motley crew of celebrities and notable persons.
Close inspection of the Greatest Album Cover Of All Time — the psychedelic mishmash of art and history that graces Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band — has become a rite of passage for any serious music fan.
From The Beatles themselves — as humans and wax works — to an eclectic crowd of comedians, actors, politicians, gurus and writers, the famous and the infamous who made the cut of 71 people and figures in the collage are as intrinsic to the folklore of Sgt Pepper’s as the album tracks.
As are those who didn’t make it.
Do you know who’s who in this famous album cover?
Test your knowledge, then scroll down for the answers below.
Hitler was proposed by John Lennon and unanimously shot down. The cheeky musician also wanted Jesus on the cover but only a year had passed since his comment that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus”.
His band mates and record label weren’t interested in rekindling the controversy and sparking protests ahead of the release of their eighth studio record.
Gandhi was also removed from the artwork at the insistence of EMI chairman Sir Joseph Lockwood who feared the presence of the Indian independence movement leader would jeopardise album sales in the country.
The cover design began as a few ink drawings by Paul McCartney who had conjured the concept of reinventing The Beatles as the Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on the flight home to the UK from a Kenyan safari.
Beatles road manager Mal Evans, a good friend of McCartney, inquired what the S and P letters on the satchels which came with their in-flight meal.
As the musician explained they were Salt and Pepper, the conversation ended as the mangled Sgt Pepper as the pair traded jokes about it.
In one image, McCartney had drawn himself, Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr wearing long, military-style coats and moustaches, carrying instruments.
The Edwardian military look was in vogue in London’s Swinging sixties as the boutiques of Carnaby Street and the King’s Road transformed the grey old town into a kaleidoscope of clashing colours and patterns.
McCartney’s sketches also featured images of famous people, most notably Brigitte Bardot, and a floral clock which would eventually inspire the flowers spelling out the band’s name at their feet in the cover image.
“I did a lot of drawings of us being presented to the Lord Mayor,” Paul said in the Barry Miles biography Many Years From Now, “with lots of dignitaries and lots of friends of ours around, and it was to be us in front of a big northern floral clock, and we were to look like a brass band.
“That developed to become the Peter Blake cover.”
The team who would bring this psychedelic imagining to life was assembled by English art dealer Robert Fraser and included pop artist Blake, his artist wife Jann Haworth and photographer Michael Cooper.
Haworth has disputed some of McCartney’s memories of the genesis of the cover and suggests a sketch by Lennon which was recently offered at auction was drawn after the design concept had been decided.
The contribution of Haworth, who pioneered soft sculpture in the 1960s with her life-size dolls in cloth, has often been lost in the Sgt Pepper’s myth.
It is her Shirley Temple doll perched on the right of the assembled crowd on the cover and she also brought the cloth grandmother prop.
She claims it was her former husband’s idea to place the band in front of a collage of famous figures as that was part of his style and he often asked students to paint their heroes.
Haworth grew up on films sets including Some Like It Hot and The Longest Day, where her father was the production designer and would craft scenes with two-dimensional cut-out figures populating the background to make it look like a crowd.
She drew from that childhood memory to suggest the front row of the Sgt Pepper’s collage would feature the three-dimensional band members with mannequins, dolls and celebrity faces behind them.
Blake and Haworth asked the band members to nominate their heroes. Lennon and McCartney forwarded about 20 names, Harrison listed his gurus and go-with-the-flow Starr decided to leave it to everyone else.
Child star Temple ended up on the cover three times, standing to the right of Marlene Dietrich, peeping out between the wax figures of Ringo and John — on loan from Madame Tussaud — and as the doll wearing the T-shirt “Welcome The Rolling Stones”.
Far from being rivals, The Beatles and The Stones were good friends and the T-shirt was a shout-out to their bonhomie.
Bob Dylan was one of the few musicians nominated by the band to feature. Actors included Marilyn Monroe, Fred Astaire, Bette Davis (barely invisible), Marlene Dietrich, Marlon Brando, Tyrone Power and Tony Curtis.
Well known writers featured are Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, Dylan Thomas, William S. Burroughs and James Joyce.
Prominent figures included Albert Einstein, Karl Marx, occultist Aleister Crowley and original Beatle Stu Sutcliffe.
The band’s record label were fearful they might be sued. With their manager Brian Epstein in rehab, McCartney went to the head of EMI, Sir Joe Lockwood and promised they would get permission from those whose image was being used. He also offered the boss EMI an indemnity from prosecution should any of the famous or their estates take legal action.
Temple would only give her go-ahead after listening to the album.
Actor Leo Gorcey, who starred in the Bowery Boys movies throughout the 1940s and 1950s was dropped after asking for a fee of $400 — an exorbitant amount at the time — to use his image.
And actor Mae West objected to being linked to the notion of a Lonely Hearts Club. She relented after each Beatle wrote her a personal letter asking her to reconsider granting permission, which she did.
Not only is Sgt Pepper’s the most iconic piece of album art in five decades, back then it was also the most expensive.
The photography and design cost £3000, approximately about $90,000 in real terms today.
The record also featured one of the first gatefold sleeves, opening up like a book, with the inside photograph also taken by Cooper.
Lennon is said to have teased fans with the quip that two members of the band turned up to the shoot tripping on acid and are obvious from the photo across the inside sleeve.
It also was the first of The Beatles albums to feature the complete lyrics, a device often cited later as evidence by the “Paul is dead” conspiracy theorists.
THE SGT PEPPER’S COVER STARS
Back row:
Sri Yukteswar (Indian Guru)
Aleister Crowley (black magician)
Mae West (actor)
Lenny Bruce (comedian)
Stockhausen (modern German composer)
W.C. Fields (comedian)
Carl Jung (psychologist)
Edgar Allen Poe (writer)
Fred Astaire (actor/dancer)
Merkin (American artist)
The Vargas girl (by artist Alberto Vargas)
Huntz Hall (Bowery Boy)
Simon Rodia (creator of Watts Towers)
Bob Dylan (singer)
Second row:
Aubrey Beardsley (illustrator)
Sir Robert Peel (19th century British Prime Minister)
Aldous Huxley (writer)
Dylan Thomas (poet)
Terry Southern (writer)
Dion DiMucci (singer/songwriter)
Tony Curtis (actor)
Wallace Berman (artist)
Tommy Handley (comedian)
Marilyn Monroe (actor)
William S. Burroughs (writer)
Sri Mahavatar Babaji (Hindu guru)
Stan Laurel (actor/comedian)
Richard Lindner (artist)
Oliver Hardy (actor/comedian)
Karl Marx (political philosopher)
H.G. Wells (writer)
Sri Paramahansa Yogananda (Hindu guru)
James Joyce (Irish poet and novelist) — barely visible below Bob Dylan
Anonymous (hairdresser’s wax dummy)
Third row:
Stuart Sutcliffe (artist/former Beatle)
Anonymous (hairdresser’s wax dummy)
Max Miller (comedian)
A “Petty Girl” (by artist George Petty)
Marlon Brando (actor)
Tom Mix (actor)
Oscar Wilde (writer)
Tyrone Power (actor)
Larry Bell (artist)
David Livingstone (missionary/explorer)
Johnny Weissmuller (Olympic swimmer/Tarzan actor)
Stephen Crane (writer) — barely visible between Issy Bonn’s head and raised arm
Issy Bonn (comedian)
George Bernard Shaw (playwright)
H. C. Westermann (sculptor)
Albert Stubbins (English footballer)
Sri Lahiri Mahasaya (guru)
Lewis Carroll (writer)
T.E. Lawrence (”Lawrence of Arabia”)
Front row:
Wax model of Sonny Liston (boxer)
A “Petty Girl” (by George Petty)
Wax model of George Harrison
Wax model of John Lennon
Shirley Temple (child actor) — barely visible behind the wax models of John and Ringo, first of three appearances on the cover
Wax model of Ringo Starr
Wax model of Paul McCartney
Albert Einstein (physicist) — largely obscured
John Lennon holding a French horn
Ringo Starr holding a trumpet
Paul McCartney holding a cor anglais
George Harrison holding a piccolo
Bette Davis (actor) — hair barely visible on top of George’s shoulder
Bobby Breen (singer)
Marlene Dietrich (actor/singer)
Shirley Temple (child actor) — second appearance on the cover
An American legionnaire
Wax model of Diana Dors (actor)
Originally published as How many famous actors, writers and historical figures on the Sgt Pepper’s cover can you name?