When John Lennon released the album Two Virgins in 1968, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were politely shocked. While they tried not to get caught up in the public outcry over the album cover — which featured full frontal nudity from Lennon and Yoko Ono — they didn’t approve of it. Lennon said it surprised him that McCartney and Harrison were so prudish.
John Lennon said Paul McCartney and George Harrison were surprisingly prudish
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Lennon and Ono chose to pose naked on the cover of Two Virgins because they wanted to reveal all of themselves to the public. It was a bold choice that brought the couple a great deal of blowback.
“It was insane!” Lennon said in The Beatles Anthology. “People got so upset about it — the fact that two people were naked. I didn’t think there’d be such a fuss. I guess the world thinks we’re an ugly couple.”
He found it particularly surprising that McCartney and Harrison did not seem to approve of the cover.
“George and Paul were a little shocked, that was weird. That really shocked me, the fact that they were prudish,” Lennon said. “You can’t imagine — it was so uptight in those days. It’s not that long ago, and people are uptight about nude bodies. We didn’t create nudity, we just put it out. Somebody else had been nude before.”
McCartney wasn’t sure this was the case.
“I was slightly shocked but, seeing as I wrote a liner note for the sleeve, I obviously wasn’t too uptight,” he said.
Harrison agreed. While he didn’t particularly love the cover, he thought it was “harmless.”
Ringo Starr was more shocked by the album cover
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While Lennon labeled McCartney and Harrison as prudish, Ringo Starr was the only Beatle who admitted to being completely shocked by the cover.
“The cover was the mind-blower — I remember to this day the moment when they came in and showed me,” he said. “I don’t really remember the music, I’d have to play it now. But he showed me the cover and I pointed to the Times: ‘Oh, you’ve even got the Times in it…’ as if he didn’t have his d*** hanging out.”
Ultimately, though, Starr’s biggest problem with the cover was that he knew the other Beatles would have to answer for it.
Paul McCartney and George Harrison shared their thoughts on the John Lennon album
McCartney and Harrison both denied being overly shocked about the Two Virgins cover. This didn’t mean that they had nice things to say about the album itself.
“I don’t think I actually heard all of Two Virgins, just bits of it,” Harrison said. “I wasn’t particularly into that kind of thing. That was his and her affair; their trip. They got involved with each other and were obviously into each other to such a degree that they thought everything they said or did was of world importance, and so they made it into records and films.”
McCartney felt similarly. Though he wrote the liner notes for the album, he didn’t particularly like it.
“The Two Virgins record itself I didn’t find that interesting; the music wasn’t shocking to me because I’d made a lot like that myself,” he said. “I think John may have got some ideas from when I had a couple of Brennell tape recorders.”
