the panels would be the inner gatefold spread or, alternatively, the front and back cover. The butcher photo was to appear in the central portion of the triptych or on the back cover. He planned to reduce the image to just "two-and-a-quarter inches square" and set it in the middle of the panel; bejewelled silver halos would be added behind the band members' heads, and the remaining space would be designed as a Russian religious icon in colours of silver and gold. Whitaker said: "The meat is meant to represent the fans, and the false teeth and the false eyes is the falseness of representing a god-like image as a golden calf." For the front cover, or left-hand portion of the triptych, Whitaker planned to use a photo of the Beatles holding two strings of sausages, symbolising umbilical cords, that appeared to connect to the belly of a woman whose back was to camera. This photo would be set inside another image, showing a woman's womb, thereby representing the Beatles' birth and emphasising their human qualities. The third part of Whitaker's triptych was a photo of George Harrison hammering long nails into Lennon's head, suggesting trepanation. Apparently in a state of transcendence, Lennon's face would be rendered as wood grain and a horizon would be added in which ocean and sky were reversed. Whitaker credited Man Ray as a partial inspiration for this idea and said it again emphasised the band's human qualities over their idol status. Cover images The Beatles submitted photographs from the session for their promotional materials. Contrary to Whitaker's original vision, the band chose the butcher photo as the cover image for Yesterday and Today, and Lennon and Paul McCartney insisted that it was the Beatles' statement against war, particularly the Vietnam War. Capitol president Alan Livingston was immediately against using the image, but Epstein told him that the Beatles were adamant. In a 2002 interview published in Mojo magazine, Livingston recalled that his principal contact was with McCartney, who pushed strongly for the photo to be used as the album cover and described it as "our comment on the [Vietnam] war". Capitol's art director was more impressed with the image and prepared it to appear like a painting, with a canvas effect. The cover photo was soon replaced with a picture of the four band members posed around an open "steamer" trunk. This image was