The album art from Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles is one of themost popular album covers in music history.

The cover is a collage of more than 60 famous people. Most of the people selected for the collage were requested by The Beatles. For example, George Harrison requested the three Hindu gurus who appear in the collage.Lennon requested Adolf Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi and Jesus Christ. However, Jesus and Hitler were rejected because the record label feared a public backlash. The record label was nervous because of the controversy over the US Butcher Cover a year earlier. Mahatma Gandhi was excluded because EMI was worried about a negative reaction in India.EMI needed the permission of all living persons in the collage, creating a nightmare for their legal department. All the celebrities in the collage gave their permission. Only one person, Leo Gorcey was removed from the collage because he demanded a payment of $400.

The following is the complete list of all the people on the cover of Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band:

Top Row- from left to right
Yukteswar Giri – Hindu guru

Aleister Crowley – Magician

Mae West – Actress

Lenny Bruce – Comedian

Karlheinz Stockhausen – German Composer

W. C. Fields – Comedian

Carl Jung – Psychologist

Edgar Allan Poe – Writer and Poet

Fred Astaire – Actor

The Vargas Girl – Fictional Pin-up Girl

Richard Merkin – Artist

Huntz Hall – Actor

Simon Rodia- Designer

Bob Dylan – Musician

Second Row
Aubrey Beardsley- Illustrator

Sir Robert Peel- 19th Century British Prime Minister

Aldous Huxley – Writer

Dylan Thomas – Poet

Terry Southern – Writer

Dion – Singer

Tony Curtis – Actor

Wallace Berman – Artist

Tommy Handley – Comedian

Marilyn Monroe – Actress

William S. Burroughs – Writer

Mahavatar Babaji – Hindu Guru

Stan Laurel – Comedian

Richard Lindner – Artist

Oliver Hardy- Comedian

Karl Marx- Political Philosopher

H. G. Wells – Writer

Paramahansa Yogananda- Hindu Guru

Sigmund Freud – Psychiatrist

Second Row
Stuart Sutcliffe- Musician / Former Beatle

Max Miller- Comedian

A Petty Girl – A Series of Cartoon Pin-up Girls by Artist George Petty
a second petty girl appears in the front row

Marlon Brando – Actor

Tom Mix – Actor

Oscar Wilde- writer

Tyrone Power- Actor

Larry Bell- Artist

David Livingstone – Missionary

Johnny Weissmuller- Actor

Stephen Crane – Writer

Issy Bonn – Comedian

George Bernard Shaw – Playwright

H. C. Westermann – Sculptor

Albert Stubbins- English Football Player

Sri Lahiri Mahasaya – Guru

Lewis Carroll – Writer

T. E. Lawrence- The Historical Lawrence of Arabia

Front Row
Sonny Liston- Boxer

Shirley Temple (appears three times on the cover)

Albert Einstein – Physicist

The Beatles (John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney and
George Harrison) all appear twice – once as wax models.

Bobby Breen – Musician

Marlene Dietrich – Actress

Diana Dors – Actress

A few additional facts about the Sgt Pepper Album Art:

• Two figures in the cover photo are hairdresser’s wax dummies.
• It was the first UK album to have the lyrics printed on the inside cover.
• There was a long running urban legend that the green plants in the photo are cannabis.