Album Reviews
View That's how Paul McCartney describes his response to hearing "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club" Band earlier this year, and it's hard to argue with him. The album he and those other "guys" in the Beatles released in 1967 revolutionized rock & roll. The "splendid time" McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr "guaranteed for all" has lasted more than two decades - and that immensely pleasurable trip has earned Sgt. Pepper its place as the best record of the past twenty years.
After the Beatles stopped touring in 1966, they had time to explore in greater depth the possibilities of the recording studio with producer George Martin. And removed, essentially for the first time, from the nonstop hoopla of Beatlemania, they also had time to question their identity as Beatles. A chasm had begun to open between their growing musical sophistication and the public's perception of them as lovable mop tops. The magnitude of the Beatles phenomenon was starting to encroach on the band - and their experience with psychedelic drugs made that phenomenon seem increasingly surreal. Already trapped, in their early twenties, the Beatles had to find a way out. "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was born.
"Pepper was probably the one Beatle album I can say was my idea," McCartney says. "It was my idea to say to the guys, 'Hey, how about disguising ourselves and getting an alter ego, because we're the Beatles and we're fed up. Every time you approach a song, John, you gotta sing it like John would. Every time I approach a ballad, it's gotta be like Paul would. Why don't we just make up some incredible alter egos and think, "Now how would he sing it? How would he approach this track?"' And it freed us. It was a very liberating thing to do."
Clearly the "Sgt. Pepper" concept was more significant for the psychological escape route it provided the Beatles than for its specific use on the album. Apart from some relatively modest touches - the colorful uniforms, the opening theme song, the reprise near the end and Ringo's entertaining turn as "the one and only Billy Shears" in "With a Little Help from My Friends" - the alter egos make no discernible appearances on the album. But one look at the cover of "Sgt. Pepper" - festooned with the band's wildly eclectic gallery of heroes and with the wax figures of the youthful Fab Four standing next to their far more hirsute and serious-looking real-life counterparts - eloquently tells how greatly removed the group had grown from what they were. Under the guise of alter egos the Beatles had finally allowed their real selves to emerge.
Interestingly, however, the Beatles had freed themselves not merely to chronicle such weighty subjects as the joys of mind-expanding drugs, in "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," the paradoxical wisdom of Eastern religious philosophy, in "Within You Without You," or the sterile absurdity of mainstream values in the astonishing "Day in the Life." On the contrary, Sgt. Pepper is filled with sly inside jokes, broad music-hall humor and completely gratuitous novelties. It is not only the Beatles' most artistically ambitious album but their funniest.
Take, for example, the dog whistle - which humans can't hear - buried on the album's second side. "We're sitting around the studio, and one of the engineers starts talking about wavelengths, wave forms and stuff, kilohertz," McCartney recalls. "I still don't understand these things - I'm completely nontechnical. And as for John, he couldn't even change a plug - he really couldn't, you know. The engineers would be explaining to us what all this stuff was. An ultrasonic sound wave - 'a low one, you can kill people with the low ones.' We were all saying, 'Wow, man. Hey, wow.' 'And the high ones,' he said, 'only dogs can hear it.' We said, 'We gotta have it on! There's going to be one dog and his owner, and I'd just love to be there when his ears prick up.'"
And the famous "Inner Groove" - the snippet of pointless conversation that sticks in the album's run-out groove and that was not included in the original American version of "Sgt. Pepper" - has an equally zany genesis. Around the time of "Sgt. Pepper's" release, McCartney explains, "a lot of record players didn't have auto-change. You would play an album and it would go, 'Tick, tick, tick,' in the run-out groove - it would just stay there endlessly. We were whacked out so much of the time in the Sixties - just quite harmlessly, as we thought, it was quite innocent - but you would be at friends' houses, twelve at night, and nobody would be going to get up to change that record player. So we'd be getting into the little 'tick, tick, tick,': 'It's quite good, you know? There's a rhythm there.' We were into Cage and Stockhausen, those kind of people. Obviously, once you allow yourself that kind of freedom . . . well, Cage is appreciating silence, isn't he? We were appreciating the run-out groove! We said, 'What if we put something, so that every time it did that, it said something?' So we put a little loop of conversation on."
These are minor points, perhaps, in the context of the enormous achievement of "Sgt. Pepper". But such fun-loving experimentalism - born of the optimistic determination to blow away anything that "stops my mind from wandering where it will go" - is "Sgt. Pepper's" best legacy for our time. In a decade of political conservatism and stifling musical formats, of sexual fear and obsession with the past, the hopful message of "Sgt. Pepper" - that visionary breakthroughs are necessary to strive for and possible to achieve in every facet of life - is much more urgent now than it was twenty years ago today.
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Review 1 of 11
jeraldsblues writes:
I like the Sgt. Pepper's album the least. I disliked the album in general except for a few songs that really stand out like '' a day in the life", which is a brilliant Lennon-Mccartney collaboration, "she's leaving home" , "lovely rita", "lucy in the sky with diamonds" and most of all "within you without you"; a great indian masterpiece by Harrison. The album was obviously dominated by paul. even on the beatles anthology book, george disliked the album as well. (just check it why). How i wished "strawberry fields forever" was included instead of "fixing a hole". john could have contributed more songs or george. as for john, we can't blame him, he was a different beatle by the time this album came out compared to who he was during the early years; dominating and creative. for me the White Album is much better; it was a mixture of heavy blues, rock and roll, ballads, folk, and a lot more. followed by Abbey road and probably, Revolver. but i still rate the Sgt. pepper's LP high enough due to its influence on other musicians of this era. thanks for reading guys. email me.
Jul 24, 2008 19:20:19
Review 2 of 11
dennis23 writes:
I don't think any 'splainin' needs to be said:
SPLHCB is the fulcrum upon which rock/pop music in the West tilted from mere teen-age pasttime to mature art.
It is not my favorite Beatle CD,(Revolver is their greatest Rock record,IMHO),but Pepper is the most important and best crafted and represents the Beatles at the zenith of their creativity (esp. that of McCartney-which is another reason why I like Revolver more,it is much more a group effort than is Pepper).
Revolver represents the most metallic of the Beatles recodings-"Pepper" is their most refined.
Jan 16, 2008 14:52:28
Review 3 of 11
misterpfeffer writes:
i'm only giving this five stars for the impact it has made on western culture-no, it is not the best beatles album and it is a showcase for all of their own pitfalls, pratfalls, and self-indulgences-their own "kiss of death", if you will-they'd been learning studiocraft and trickery under the tutelage of meister-producer extrodinaire george martin for several years now and this album topped every release by any artist-released 6/1/67 no other artist attempted what the fab four had accomplished-the first-ever concept album(well, that's how it started out, anyway)it soon falls apart, but that does not go without saying that the individual songs are terrible-far from it-it just seems to lack the focus that rubber soul and revolver had-and mostimportantly the group spirit-soon after it's release every band jumped on the wagon and churned out overwrought mellotron laden acid drenched pixie/mushroom fantasies-but you can't really blame the boys for everyone wanting to just like them-even though the failure of this album as a whole does not detract it from the quality of the songs-it is and will always be a classic
Nov 11, 2007 18:14:26
Review 4 of 11
AAtheCritic writes:
An amazing album yes.
But nothing on Abbey Road.
Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band has been called mindblowing, incredible, experimental, and breathtaking.
Abbey Road has been called a musical songasm of songwriting and harmony.
Oct 26, 2007 23:44:39
Review 5 of 11
Mati writes:
Definitely this is not the best Beatles album.You know why? Because we mustn't confuse IMPACT and EXPERIMENTATION with songwriting quality.And I didn't say musical quality 'cause is undeniable that the sound Paul and the rest create (it was his idea from the beginning and the other three simply agreed) is really clean and full of new studio effects and amazing arrangements.I'm talkin about THE SONGS THEMSELVES.Let's be true and face it: you've got a few incredible, great, inspiring songs like "Lucy in the sky with diamonds" "Being for the benefit of Mr. Kyte!" "She's leaving home" "Sgt. Pepper's lonely hearts club band"(the 1st one) and "A day in the life".The rest ladies and gentlemen (and forgive me for being honest) isn't in the list of Beatles best songs masterpieces.Besides the true value of "Sgt. Pepper" is more for what it meant (the first album recorded really as an album, not only a group of songs picked for a record) than what in songwriting matters it actually is.
Oct 8, 2007 09:56:30
Review 6 of 11
ledbeatles writes:
I love this album since this was released in the beatles later years it is much more experimental than other albums they made. Alot of the songs are more calm with not many heavy guitar riffs. It is a very good album overall.
Sep 13, 2007 12:20:00
Review 7 of 11
listeningtoGOODmusic writes:
Arguably the beatles best album, Sgt. Pepper is obviously a classic. Most will agree when I say that this was definitly a turning point in the beatles' career. Some think that "Revolver" was it but I beg to differ. Every song is different and you can hear the creativity that it presents. As pointed out many times, even the cover art for the record was un-heard of. The best beatles song[in my opinion]is on this album, "A Day In the Life" which describes a car crash and an average every day morning. My next favourite on this album is "strawberry fields forever". The sheer brilliance and myticism that John shows in his lyrics blows my mind. I always felt that paul tried to hard:]
Jul 4, 2007 20:11:48
Review 8 of 11
tasxidriver writes:
what to say 40 years ago after the first hearing and the first trip. the beatles go for it and come up with the prize. songs, music, attitude its all here in a cornucopia of sound that will probably never be equalled for invention and purpose and the end result that wil remain forever as a signal of the changes in the world and how to make music for everybody
Jun 3, 2007 16:11:59
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