Bob Dylan Reportedly Hid The Beatles’ Faces on an Album Cover

In 1967, Bob Dylan and The Beatles both released albums. Dylan, along with many other people, made an appearance on the cover of The Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. When he released his album John Wesley Harding several months later, people wondered if Dylan had returned the favor and put The Beatles on the cover. 

Did Bob Dylan hide The Beatles’ faces on his ‘John Wesley Harding’ album?

Dylan’s 1967 album John Wesley Harding had a snapshot of him standing in front of a tree with three men. It was a good fit for the album, which had a relatively simple production value compared to the psychedelic rock his peers were releasing at the time. 

When listeners looked closely at the album cover, they began to wonder if faces hid in the tree branches. Per Rolling Stone, when the album is upside down, at least seven faces hide near the top of the tree. Many believed that four of these faces belonged to The Beatles. 

Rolling Stone reported that they once asked album photographer John Berg about the hidden faces. He “acknowledged their presence but was reluctant to talk about it.”

“It’s like Dylan,” Berg said. “Very mystical.”

The Beatles put Bob Dylan on the cover of ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’

Dylan is one of the many figures on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. He is clearly there, positioned at the top right of the photo. If The Beatles are on the cover of John Wesley Harding, they’re very well hidden.

If Dylan did include pictures of The Beatles on his album cover, it might have been to poke fun at them for using his image. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d done something like that. 

When Dylan first heard The Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood,” he felt slightly irritated about how similar it sounded to his music. He reportedly wrote the song “4th Time Around” as a parody of “Norwegian Wood,” much to John Lennon’s disappointment.

“I was very paranoid about that. I remember he played it to me when he was in London. He said, what do you think? I said, I don’t like it. I didn’t like it.”

He added that he immediately grew worried Dylan was poking fun at him.

“I was very paranoid,” he said. “I just didn’t like what I felt I was feeling – I thought it was an out and out skit, you know, but it wasn’t. It was great. I mean he wasn’t playing any tricks on me. I was just going through the bit.”

Dylan might have seen his face on the cover of Sgt. Pepper and decided to get back at the band like he had with “4th Time Around.”

The Bob Dylan album drew comparisons to The Beatles

Ultimately, Dylan’s album caused people to bring up The Beatles in critiques. This wasn’t because it sounded anything like Sgt. Pepper. Instead, John Wesley Harding sounded so different from albums at the time that it surprised critics.

“For an album of this kind to be released amidst Sgt. Pepper, Their Satanic Majesties Request, After Bathing at Baxter’s, somebody must have had a lot of confidence in what he was doing,” critic Jon Landau wrote, per The Ringer. “Dylan seems to feel no need to respond to the predominant trends in pop music at all. And he is the only major pop artist about whom this can be said.”