Robert Whitaker (13 November 1939 – 20 September 2011) was a British photographer, best known internationally for his many photographs of The Beatles, taken between 1964 and 1966, with his best known work, the "Butcher Cover", which featured on the band's 1966's US-only album Yesterday and Today. He also worked with the rock group Cream, photos from which were used in the Martin Sharp-designed collage on the cover of their 1967 LP Disraeli Gears.
Biography
Early life and career Robert Whitaker, born in Britain in 1939, described himself as "one part Aussie lad" since his father and his grandfather were both Australian. According to Whitaker, his grandfather built the Princes Bridge in Melbourne. Although he has worked mostly in Britain, Australia and Australian connections featured significantly in his life and career.
Whitaker began work in London as a photographer in the late 1950s but he moved to Melbourne in 1961, where he began studying at the University of Melbourne and became part of the small but flourishing Melbourne arts scene. According to art historian David Mellor, it was his three years in Australia that transformed Whitaker's work as a photographer. A major influence was undoubtedly his friendship with two of the leading figures of the Melbourne art world, Georges Mora and Mirka Mora, and through them he came into contact with numerous major figures in Australian art and letters including John Reed and Sunday Reed, Ian Sime, Charles and Barbara Blackman, Barrett Reid, Laurence Hope, Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan and Joy Hester, as well as his own peer group including Martin Sharp, Richard Neville, Barry Humphries and Germaine Greer. He photographed many of these people including Georges and Mirka Mora and their three sons, Philippe Mora (who became a noted filmmaker), future gallery owner William Mora and Tiriel Mora, later a successful Australian actor who featured in the satirical TV series Frontline and the acclaimed comedy film The Castle.
Meeting The Beatles Whitaker was running a freelance penthouse photo studio in Flinders Street, Melbourne when he had his fateful meeting with The Beatles and their manager Brian Epstein, during their 1964 Australian tour. His meeting came about more or less by accident, when he was asked to accompany a journalist friend to an interview with Brian Epstein for an article for Melbourne community newspaper The Jewish News. Whitaker's first published photograph featuring the group depicted Paul McCartney and George Harrison each holding up boomerangs presented to them by their Australian fans.
Robert Whitaker: "I photographed Epstein, saw he was a bit of a peacock and a cavalier, and put peacock feathers around his head in photographic relief. He was knocked out when he saw the picture. After that, he saw an exhibition of collages I had at the Museum of Modern Art and immediately offered me the position of staff photographer at NEMS, photographing all his artists. I initially turned it down, but after seeing The Beatles perform at Festival Hall I was overwhelmed by all the screaming fans and I decided to accept the offer to return to England ".
Whitaker accepted the job three months later, but before he left he spent one final Sunday at the Aspendale beach house of his friends Georges and Mirka Mora, taking a set of historic pictures which were exhibited for the first time in the Monash Gallery of Art's 2003 exhibition of his work. In one photograph, "Aspendale Beach", the Mora family – Georges, Mirka and their sons Philippe, William and Tiriel – are pictured in slouched, single file on the beach with Martin Sharp and architect Peter Burns. In another photograph, "Goodbye Bob", the same group of people sit holding a sign which reads: "GOD bless thee and keep thee … ASPENDALE 1964".
On his arrival in England in August 1964, Whitaker set to work photographing the members of the NEMS stable including Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas, Gerry & The Pacemakers (including cover shots for the How Do You Like It and Ferry Across The Mersey LPs) and Cilla Black (including cover shots for the Cilla and Cilla Sings A Rainbow LPs). He also did several photographs of the hugely successful Australian folk-pop group The Seekers, including the cover shots for Seekers Seen In Green (1967); his Seekers photos were also later used for the CDs Live At The Talk Of The Town and The Seekers Complete boxed set and a more recent photo of Judith Durham was used on the cover of her 2001 solo CD Hang On to Your Dream.
But it was with The Beatles and especially John Lennon, with whom he became close friends, that Whitaker created his most famous and enduring work. One of his first assignments was photographing The Beatles during their triumphant second American tour, including the historic Shea Stadium concert in New York. He spent the next two years travelling with the Beatles and shooting them at work, at rest and at play—on their tours, at home, in the recording studio, during private moments, and in formal photo sessions. Among his best-known images of The Beatles are the album cover photos featured on their 1966 LP Revolver and the compilation album A Collection of Beatles Oldies.
With almost unlimited access to the band, Whitaker quickly became a key figure of the London underground scene. He has been quoted as saying that "there were about 100 people who ran the Sixties," and that he had met, worked with, and/or photographed virtually all of them.
As the group's "court photographer," Whitaker was able to photograph the Fab Four in many moods and situations. He accompanied The Beatles on their 1966 tour of Japan. In Tokyo the tour promoter gave him a Nikon 21mm wide-angle lens with which he took numerous shots of The Beatles relaxing in their hotel room at the Tokyo Hilton. These include several photographs of the four at work on a collaborative painting Images of a Woman, the only such artwork they ever undertook, and a colour photo of the group inspecting antiques, which was used on the back cover of the compilation album A Collection of Beatles Oldies.
His most celebrated work is the 1966 photo which was appropriated for The Beatles’ infamous Yesterday & Today album cover in the USA.
"The Butcher Sleeve" On 25 March 1966 The Beatles went to Whitaker's Chelsea studio for a session intended to take photos for the cover of (and/or to promote) their forthcoming single, "Rain/Paperback Writer". Band and photographer were all determined to create something more than the run-of-the-mill publicity shots. Among the resulting images was that which has since become known as the "Butcher" photo, depicting The Beatles wearing white coats and draped with dismembered doll parts, artificial eyes, slabs of meat and false teeth.
This now-legendary image, one of the most famous images of the group, was originally conceived as one of a triptych of photographs, and intended as a surreal, satirical pop-art observation on The Beatles’ fame. Whitaker's inspirations for the images included the work of German surrealist Hans Bellmer, notably his 1937 book Die Puppe (La Poupée). Bellmer's images of puppets were first published in the French Surrealist journal Minotaure in 1934. Whitaker has also cited Meret Oppenheim as another important influence, notably her most famous creation "Lunch In Fur" (1936), a disturbing creation in which she covered a cup, saucer and spoon entirely in fur.
Whitaker: "It's an apparent switch-around of how you think. Can you imagine actually drinking out of a fur tea cup? I did a photograph of the Beatles covered in raw meat, dolls and false teeth. Putting meat, dolls and false teeth with The Beatles is essentially part of the same thing, the breakdown of what is regarded as normal. The actual conception for what I still call "Somnambulant Adventure" was Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai with the Ten Commandments. He comes across people worshipping a golden calf. All over the world I'd watched people worshipping like idols, like gods, four Beatles. To me they were just stock standard normal people. But this emotion that fans poured on them made me wonder where Christianity was heading".
It has been claimed that The Beatles intended the Butcher Sleeve to be a protest at the way their music was being "butchered" by their American label, Capitol Records. In a Nov. 15 1991 interview with Goldmine magazine, Whitaker discussed the Butcher Sleeve at length, and unequivocally put the "protest" claims to rest:
Goldmine: "How did that photo, featuring the Beatles among slabs of meat and decapitated dolls, come about? Was it your idea or the Beatles?"
Whitaker: It was mine. Absolutely. It was part of three pictures that should have gone into an icon. And it was a rough. If you could imagine, the background of that picture should have been all gold. Around the heads would have gone silver halos, jewelled. Then there are two other pictures that are in the book (The Unseen Beatles), but not in colour.
Goldmine: How did you prepare for the shoot?
Whitaker: It was hard work. I had to go to the local butcher and get pork. I had to go to a doll factory and find the dolls. I had to go to an eye factory and find the eyes. False teeth. There's a lot in that photograph. I think John's almost-last written words were about that particular cover; that was pointed out to me by Martin Harrison, who wrote the text to my book. I didn't even know that, but I'm learning a lot.
Goldmine: Why meat and dolls? There's been a lot of conjecture over the years about what that photo meant. The most popular theory is that it was a protest by the Beatles against Capitol Records for supposedly "butchering" their records in the States.
Whitaker: Rubbish, absolute nonsense. If the trilogy or triptych of the three photographs had ever come together, it would have made sense. There is another set of photos in the book which is the Beatles with a girl with her back toward you, hanging on to sausages. Those sausages were meant to be an umbilical cord. Does this start to open a few chapters?
Goldmine: Were you aware when you shot it that Capitol Records was going to use it as a record cover?
Whitaker: No.
Goldmine: Were you upset when they did and then when they pulled it and replaced it with another photo?
Whitaker: Well, I shot that photo too, of them sitting on a trunk, the one that they pasted over it. I fairly remember being bewildered by the whole thing. I had no reason to be bewildered by it, purely and simply, because it could certainly be construed as a fairly shocking collection of bits and pieces to stick on a group of people and represent that [the "butchering" of the Beatles' records] in this country [the U.S.].
Interviewed at the time (1966) in the British music magazine Disc and Music Echo, Whitaker said:
"I wanted to do a real experiment - people will jump to wrong conclusions about it being sick, but the whole thing is based on simplicity -- linking four very real people with something real. I got George to knock some nails into John’s head, and took some sausages along to get some other pictures, dressed them up in white smocks as butchers, and this is the result -- the use of the camera as a means of creating situations."
Whitaker was later quoted as saying that the basic motivation for making "A Somnambulant Adventure" came from the fact that he and The Beatles were "really fed up at taking what one had hoped would be designer-friendly publicity pictures"; in the interview conducted just before his death in 1980, John Lennon confirmed this.
"It was inspired by our boredom and resentment at having to do another photo session and another Beatles thing. We were sick to death of it. Bob was into Dalí and making surreal pictures."