Even though Elvis Presley deserved to be there, he’s not on the cover of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Paul McCartney explained why this was the case. Interestingly, some of the “Hound Dog” singer’s contemporaries are on the album cover.
Elvis Presley isn’t on The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’ cover but Bob Dylan is
The cover of Sgt. Pepper pays tribute to people from all fields, including non-fiction writers, fiction writers, actors, athletes, political leaders, and religious leaders. Surprisingly, only a handful of these figures are musicians. Headshots of 1960s icons Bob Dylan and Dion DiMucci are visible on the record, and a doll wears a shirt reading “Welcome The Rolling Stones Good Guys.” Singer-actors like Shirley Temple, Diana Dors, and Marilyn Monroe are part of the artwork as well. Despite this, the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll is nowhere to be seen.
According to the History Channel, Paul explained this conspicuous absence. “Elvis was too important and too far above the rest even to mention,” said Paul. “He was more than a pop singer. He was Elvis the King.” Is Paul implying that Dylan and Dion didn’t matter as much to him as Elvis did? It’s up to fans to decide.
The Beatles met the ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ singer before ‘Sgt. Pepper’ came out
Elvis met The Beatles in 1965, two years before the release of Sgt. Pepper. During a 2018 interview with Wired, Paul discussed that experience. “It was just like a dream, really, meeting Elvis,” he said. “We’d fantasized about him since we were kind of young teenagers and here he was in the flesh. So it was great. It was lovely.”
Paul was taken aback when Elvis showed off his fancy new remote control. “I think the most amazing thing besides actually just meeting him was he had the first remote television channel changer that we’d ever seen, ’cause you know, it was that year when they came out,” Paul recalled. “He was just aiming it at the TV, and the channels were changing and we go ‘Whoa! He is indeed the mighty God. He can turn the channels without approaching the television set!’ So we were very impressed by that.”
Elvis Presley should have been part of that album cover
Of course, The Beatles were not obligated to put Elvis or anyone else on that album cover. However, in retrospect, Elvis’ exclusion feels like a missed opportunity. Putting him on the album alongside dead legends and his contemporaries would have been a great way to pay tribute to his importance in rock ‘n’ roll history.
Who knows how a shout-out like that might have impacted Elvis’ career? Considering the record came out in 1967, The Beatles could have put Elvis back in the headlines before the ’68 Comeback Special. The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll covered a few Beatles songs like “Hey Jude” and “Get Back,” but he never recorded any tunes from Sgt. Pepper. He probably would have taken a shot at a Sgt. Pepper song if he was on the album.
