#49 The Beatles- Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

You might have heard of this one...

(Parlophone)

Released: 26^th May 1967

Producer: George Martin

Topped the chart:

4^th June 1967 (for 23 weeks)

19^th November 1967 (for 1 week)

17^th December 1967 (for 2 weeks)

28^th January 1968 (for 1 week)

8^th June 2017 (for 1 week)

28 weeks total

Here it is then: the Big Boy of 60s music. A new level of artistic statement from a pop group, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is credited with this new fangled “rock” music being taken seriously. Without this LP, no Rolling Stone, no deep dives on classic albums and it’s likely this blog wouldn’t exist.

Can you IMAGINE such a world?

The LP spent 30-odd years topping “Greatest Album Ever” lists, so we revisit a question that has plagued these Beatles reviews: how the hell do you talk about an album that has received more column inches than pretty much any other? It’s all been covered—the production genius of George Martin managing to create the sounds in John Lennon’s head, Paul McCartney’s songwriting blossoming to its full potential, the fact that this was the first pop album as a statement rather than just a collection of songs (even though it is, for the most part, just a collection of songs).

It's perhaps best then to look at the place Sgt Pepper holds in culture now. The fact is, it isn’t the totemic record that it used to be, to music as a whole and even within the Beatles’ own catalogue. When Rolling Stone updated their 500 Greatest Albums list in 2020, the album had been replaced at number one by Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On. It slipped down to number 24, some way behind both Abbey Road and Revolver. So why the change in fortune?

Perhaps the biggest reason is the year Sgt Pepper was released in. With its LSD tinges, bright costumes and twee Britishness, this is an album that could have only been released in 1967 and refuses to transcend the era in the way that Revolver or Abbey Road do. The latter defined the sound of 1969, but if one were to tell you it was released in 79 or 89, it wouldn’t be a massive leap.

It’s also a record that’s remembered as a “psychedelic” classic—but is it really? Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and Being For the Benefit of Mr Kite! wear their drug influences on their sleeves, but most of the album lacks the darkness at the edges of the truly great psychedelic records—modern psych acts such as King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard or Ty Segall are much more likely to pinch from the paisley otherworldliness of Pink Floyd or the overwhelming keyboards of The Doors than the Fab Four.

But maybe the fact that the Beatles didn’t dive as deep into true psychedelia should be to their credit. Beyond “General 1967”, much like Revolver before it, Sgt Pepper is a difficult album to pigeonhole. In the mix this time is the hard rock riffing of Hendrix on Getting Better and the title track (giving way to an actual brass band on the chorus!), big-hearted singalongs on With a Little Help From My Friends, through to the sound of a Big Top falling to earth on …Mr Kite and the avant-garde influence on A Day in the Life, surely still one of the scariest orchestral swells in musical history. Speaking of orchestras, there’s also the lush chamber-pop of Brian Wilson on She’s Leaving Home, one of several songs on the record to pull directly from the headlines of the day.

That’s without mentioning George Harrison’s wonderous Within You Without You, his strongest attempt to date at bringing Indian classical music to a Western audience, in a rock form that they would feel more comfortable with. It was the sole track lambasted for years by an audience not able to grapple with it, but today it sounds magnificent.

It may also be that Sgt Pepper’s standing in the grand album league table is a sign of changes in who has access to writing about music at all. Back when it was all old white guys writing in the music mags, the type of people who pop up in the Classic Album documentaries, rankings very much fell into stereotypical old white guy interests around how the music is made, for which Sgt Pepper is phenomenally influential. However, with albums by the likes of Marvin Gaye, Kendrick Lamar and Lauryn Hill appearing towards with the top of these sorts of polls in the 21^st century, it does suggest that people from wider backgrounds are getting more of a voice on such matters and are voting for the records that allowed other communities the space to exist and influence music moving forward. And that can only be a good thing—Sgt Pepper had a good run and has more than earned its place in the firmament, it’s time for others to have their time in the sun.

Score: 9/10

Tracklisting:

SIDE A

1.      Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

2.      With a Little Help From My Friends

3.      Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

4.      Getting Better

5.      Fixing a Hole

6.      She’s Leaving Home

7.      Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite!

SIDE B

8.      Within You Without You

9.      When I’m Sixty-Four

10.  Lovely Rita

11.  Good Morning Good Morning

12.  St Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)

13.  A Day in the Life