The actor who initially refused to be on the cover of The Beatles’ ‘Sgt Pepper’s’
By the time 1967 had rolled around, it seemed as though the faces of The Beatles were everywhere. An album a year had preceded the four years prior to it, and on each of those, the friendly and innocent faces of Liverpool’s mop-topped idols were front and centre, staring back into your souls.
You can’t blame the labels, really. This band was as bulletproof a global success as you’re ever likely to encounter, and while the music was at the very heart of that, the likely lads’ boyish charm didn’t hurt its cause either. In the mid-1960s, all industry executives had to do was merely utter the first syllables of John Lennon’s name, and the till began ringing.
So there was probably quiet trepidation when the rumblings of the band’s avant-garde chapter revealed itself. Revolver flirted with the abstract more than any of their previous work, and its success only satisfied the appetite for psychedelic exploration. Then came the release of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967, and it was open season for the band that had nothing left to prove commercially.
It was a kaleidoscopic album that threw every colour of sonic paint at the wall. In return, a psychedelic masterpiece of moving parts and wild experimentalism looked back at you from an album that was well beyond the pensive press shots of an earlier Beatles. Sgt Pepper’s demanded something else entirely, something with the creative gusto to keep up with what had been laid down in the studio.
Jann Haworth and Peter Blake, the duo responsible for bringing the visual side of the album to life, began tackling the mammoth task of crystallising the band’s myriad ideas into a succinct artwork. “I suggested that they had just played a concert in the park. They were posing for a photograph, and the crowd behind them was a crowd of fans who had been at the concert,” Peter Blake told Spencer Leigh.
After discussions with the band, the pair landed on the idea of creating a fantasy crowd. Blake explained, “The way that worked out was fascinating. John gave me a list, and so did Paul. George suggested only Indian gurus, about six of them, and Ringo said, ‘Whatever the others say is fine by me’ and didn’t suggest anyone.”
In the end, everyone in the canon of contemporary influence was included, from Bob Dylan and Marilyn Monroe to Aldous Huxley and Edgar Allan Poe. Nestled somewhere in the back row is American actress Mae West, noted for her liberal outlook on life and refusal of conservative lady-like ideals as she rose to fame in the 1910s.
Despite that, she was less than inclined to be included in The Beatles’ pursuit of liberal radicalism, citing, “What would I be doing in a Lonely Hearts’ Club?” However, when the band hand-wrote her a letter, deeply expressing their own fandom for her work, she reluctantly agreed to be included. It’s unknown whether she came around to the idea upon its release, but in 1978, Ringo Starr returned the favour when he appeared in West’s final movie, Sextette, proving there must have been some sort of olive branch extended.
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