After John Lennon completed his album Two Virgins, he took the cover photo to Ringo Starr to view. This was a moment The Beatles drummer said he would never forget. He was shocked by the nudity in the image and slightly annoyed that he’d likely have to answer questions about it. Still, his first instinct was to point to an extremely minor detail in order to draw attention away from Lennon’s nudity.
Ringo Starr recalled how he felt when John Lennon showed him the ‘Two Virgins’ cover
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In 1968, Lennon and Yoko Ono released Two Virgins. They worked on the album at the very start of their relationship and wanted to express that they were freshly in love. They also wanted to use the album to bare themselves to the public. To achieve this, they took a very literal route, posing completely naked on the album cover.
When Lennon showed Starr the cover, the first thing he did was point to the newspaper in the image. It lies at Lennon’s feet in the bottom left corner of the image, showing that Starr was trying to look everywhere but his bandmate and his new girlfriend.
“The cover was the mind-blower — I remember to this day the moment when they came in and showed me,” he said in The Beatles Anthology. “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.”
Ringo Starr was a bit irritated with John Lennon over the cover
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After the initial shock, Starr began to feel irritated. The Beatles were still together, and he knew that they would all have to answer questions about the controversial cover.
“I said, ‘Ah, come on, John. You’re doing all this stuff and it may be cool for you, but you know we all have to answer. It doesn’t matter; whichever one of us does something, we all have to answer for it.’”
Lennon’s response calmed Starr.
“He said, ‘Oh, Ringo, you only have to answer the phone.’ I said, ‘OK, fine,’ because it was true,” Starr said. “The press would be calling up, and just at that point I didn’t want to be bothered — but in the end that’s all I had to do: answer the phone. It was fine. Two or three people phoned and I said: ‘See, he’s got the Times on the cover.’”
Paul McCartney also knew the album would generate controversy
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Paul McCartney wrote the album notes for Two Virgins, but he still found the cover photo a bit shocking. Like Starr, he also knew it would bring controversy.
“I know it was shocking, but I’m not sure whether us lot were too shocked by it — we just knew he’d have a bit of flak,” McCartney said. “Obviously, the minute the newspapers saw a shot like that, they were going to be on the phone. I knew John was inviting a lot of that. In the end, he’d invited a lot more than they wanted and they started to get busted and things. Quite an oppressive campaign started against them and it probably began with that cover.”
Still, Lennon stood firmly behind the artistic choice to pose naked.
