Album covers: Yellow Submarine

YELLOW SUBMARINE

Yellow Submarine – Heinz Edelmann

The Beatles eleventh official album release was issued as the soundtrack album of the cartoon film Yellow Submarine. So for the cover a special drawing with the characters from the movie was made.

The art design is by Heinz Edelmann.

Derek Taylor was asked to write the liner notes for the back cover, but “he decided that not only he had nothing new to say…” so he simply attached a review of The Beatles by a journalist from the London Observer, Tony Palmer.

For the American public, Capitol asked Dan Davis to write some new liner notes, that situated Yellow Submarine on a timetable starting “between the years 700 and 750 (anno Domini)”. Therefore the printing style and layout of the back cover are completely different from the U.K. issue.

But also the front differed: the first UK cover had two red lines, one below the drawing of the Beatles and Yellow Submarine and another one below the liner note. On the U.K. and France pressings, the words “NOTHING IS REAL” are printed at the center of the front cover. These are omitted an the U.S. and Japanese pressings.

Yellow Submarine back cover

This article was written by Patrick Roefflaer. The previous incarnation of this article can be found here.

Captions by me

Sources:

Books: ‘Yesterday’ by Robert Freeman, The Beatles Anthology book, ‘Many Years From Now’ by Miles, ‘In My Life’ by Pete Shotton, ‘The complete EMI Recording Sessions’ by Mark Lewisohn and ‘The Beatles London’ by Mark Lewisohn and Peter Schreuder. And countless websites.