See also: The Beatles' North American releases

Having been deleted from Capitol's catalogue in 1986, Yesterday and Today was reissued on CD in 2014. Since some of Capitol's pressing plants merely pasted the trunk image onto the existing LP covers, the album also encouraged a phenomenon of stripping back the top layer of artwork in the search for a banned butcher cover. The original LP became a highly prized item among collectors. The album's title plays on that of the song ' Yesterday'. In response to outrage from record retailers, the LP was withdrawn and the cover replaced with a shot of the band posed around a 'steamer' trunk. Others interpreted it as the Beatles protesting the record company's policy of 'butchering' their albums for the North American market.

Although the photo was intended to be part of a larger work critiquing the adulation afforded the Beatles, the band members insisted it was a statement against the Vietnam War. Known as the ' butcher cover', it was taken by photographer Robert Whitaker and shows the band dressed in white coats and covered with decapitated baby dolls and pieces of raw meat. Yesterday and Today is remembered primarily for the controversy surrounding its original cover image. Among its 11 tracks are songs from the EMI albums Help! and Rubber Soul, and three new 1966 recordings that would appear on Revolver in countries outside North America. Typical of the Beatles' North American discography until 1967, the album contains songs that Capitol had withheld from its configurations of the band's recent EMI albums, along with songs that the group had released elsewhere on non-album singles. Released in the United States and Canada in June 1966, it was their ninth album issued on Capitol Records and twelfth American release overall. and Today in part of the original packaging) is a studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. Yesterday and Today (also rendered as 'Yesterday'.

Beatles album covers