John and Yoko's debut album together caused a sensation on its release. It was not the content of the album, which came as a result of their first collaboration together, but as Ray Coleman wrote, their decision to have themselves photographed naked on the front and back cover of the sleeve that ...convinced Lennon's detractors - and many of his supporters - that he had now indeed gone insane... Lennon conceived the idea for the album cover and took the photographs for it with an automatic camera. Yoko recalled that 'We were both very shy about it, really...John had the original idea. He thought it suited what we were doing at the time..' John told Ray Coleman that he was ..'testing people's reactions, and it was mostly bad..

The sleeve design immediately ran into censorship problems. Indeed, many record stores insisted that the record be placed in a brown paper bag when purchased. When E.M.I.'s chairman, Sir Joseph Lockwood, saw the sleeve design, he apparently asked John and Yoko why they didn't find some better bodies to put on the cover than their own If you had to do it, why didn't you ask Paul to take his clothes off? He's much prettier...