The Sgt Pepper Album Cover
The People The Beatles Included in the Lonely Hearts Club Band
The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the most famous album ever. The band included 'people we like' on the cover photograph and here's a list of who's who
‘It was twenty years ago today. Sgt Pepper taught the band to play.’
In fact, it was forty, and the band is even more famous now than it was all those years ago when The Beatles first released Sgt Pepper back in the heady days of London’s Summer of Love in 1967.
The cover for Sgt Pepper (sometimes called 'People We Like') was designed by Peter Blake and included people selected by The Beatles (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr), together with The Beatles themselves at the heart of the photograph dressed as Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Many people have wondered who the people on the cover are. Have you? If so, here’s a list (more or less in the order the people appear on the cover starting from the top left hand corner).
1. Sri Yukestawar Giri (Guru)
2. Aleister Crowley (Magician)
4. Lenny Bruce (Comic)
5. Karlheinz Stockhausen (Composer)
6. W.C.Fields (Comic and film actor)
7. Carl Gustav Jung (Psychologist)
8. Edgar Allen Poe (Writer)
9. Fred Astaire (Actor)
10. Richard Merkin (Artist)
11. Das Varga Girl (by Artist Alberto Vargas)
12. Leo Gorcey (Actor, who was painted out because he wanted a fee. A bad career move!)
13. Huntz Hall (Actor with Leo Gorcey, one of The Bowery Boys)
14. Simon Rodia (Creator of Watts Towers)
15. Bob Dylan (Musician)
16. Aubrey Beardsley (Illustrator)
17. Sir Robert Peel (British politician)
18. Aldous Huxley (Writer)
19. Dylan Thomas (Poet)
21. Dion (di Mucci) (Singer)
22. Toni Curtis (Actor)
23. Wallace Berman (Actor)
24. Tommy Handley (Comic)
25. Marilyn Monroe (Actress)
26. William Burroughs (Writer)
27. Sri Mahavatara Babaji (Guru)
28. Stan Laurel (Film actor)
29. Richard Lindner (Writer)
30. Oliver Hardy (Comic)
31. Karl Marx (Philosopher)
32. H.G. Wells (Writer)
33. Sri Paramahansa Yoganandu (Guru)
34. A wax hairdressers' dummy
35. Stuart Sutcliff (Artist, former Beatle who died in 1962)
36. Another wax hairdressers dummy)
37. Max Miller (Comic)
38. The Petty Girl (by artist George Petty)
39. Marlon Brando (Actor)
40. Tom Mix (Actor)
41. Oscar Wilde (Writer)
42. Tyrone Power (Actor)
43. Larry Bell (Artist)
44. David Livingstone (Missionary & explorer)
45. Johnny Weismuller (Swimmer and actor – ‘Tarzan’)
46. Stephen Crane (Writer)
47. Issy Bonn (Comic)
48. George Bernhard Shaw (Writer)
49. H.C. Westermann (Sculptor)
50. Albert Stubbins (Soccer Player)
51. Sri Lahiri Mahasaya (Guru)
52. Lewis Carroll (Writer)
53. T.E. Lawrence (Soldier, ‘Lawrence of Arabia’)
54. Sonny Listen (Boxer)
55. The Petty Girl (by Artist George Petty)
56. Wax Model of George Harrison
57. Wax Model of John Lennon
58. Shirley Temple (Actress and politician)
59. Wax Model of Ringo Starr
60. Wax Model of Paul McCartney
61. Albert Einstein (Physicist)
62. John Lennon
63. Ringo Starr
64. Paul McCartney
65. George Harrison
66. Bobby Breen (Singer)
67. Marlene Dietrich (Actress)
68. Mahatma Ghandi (Indian leader who was painted out in case his inclusion offended Indians)
69. Legionnaire
70. Diana Dors (Actress)
The photographs for the Sgt Pepper cover were shot on 30th March 1967. A number of people, including Jesus and Hitler (both of whom John Lennon had wanted to include) were left off. In total, in addition to The Beatles themselves, almost 60 life-sized photographs were used for the Sgt Pepper cover, together with nine waxwork models loaned from Madame Tussaud’s.
