Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts
Club Band is the eighth studio album by the English
rock group
The
Beatles, released in June 1967. Recorded over a 129-day period
beginning in December 1966,
Sgt. Pepper sees the
band exploring further the experimentation of their previous album,
Revolver (1966). Making
use of orchestras, hired musicians and innovative production
techniques, the album incorporates elements of genres such as
music hall,
jazz,
rock and roll,
western classical and
traditional Indian music; its lyrics deal
particularly with themes of childhood and everyday life.
Sgt. Pepper is a loose
concept album that sees The Beatles performing
as the fictitious band of the album's title. The cover art,
depicting the band posing in front of a
collage of famous individuals, has itself been
widely acclaimed and imitated.
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was a
commercial success, spending a total of 27 weeks at the top of the
UK Album Chart and 15 weeks at number
one on the American
Billboard
200. A defining album in the emerging
psychedelic rock style,
Sgt.
Pepper was critically acclaimed upon release and won four
Grammy awards in 1968. Often recognised by
prominent critics and publications as one of the most influential
albums in the history of popular music,
Sgt.
Pepper frequently ranks at or near the top of published
lists of the greatest albums of all time. In 2003, the album was
placed at number 1 in the Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500
greatest albums of all time.
Background
When
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was
being recorded, "
Beatlemania" was
waning. The Beatles had grown tired of touring and had stopped
touring in August 1966. After one particular concert, while being
driven away in the back of a small van, the four of them—including
Paul McCartney, who was perhaps the
most in favour of continuing to tour—decided that it was enough.
From that point on, the Beatles became an entirely studio-based
band. For the first time in their careers, the band had more than
ample time with which to prepare their next record.
As EMI's premier act and Britain's most successful pop
group they had almost unlimited access to Abbey Road
Studios
. All four band members had already developed
a preference for long, late night sessions, although they were
still extremely efficient and highly disciplined in their studio
habits.
George Harrison, the lead guitarist
of the Beatles, went on a trip to India to learn to play the
sitar, an Indian instrument, with
Ravi Shankar, a renowned sitarist. Harrison
brought back with him Indian culture and music.
Recording for the album began in late 1966 and early 1967 with two
songs that were ultimately dropped from
Sgt. Pepper,
"Strawberry Fields
Forever" and "Penny
Lane
". When Beatles manager
Brian Epstein decided that a new single was
needed, the two songs were issued as a double-A-sided single in
February 1967. In keeping with the group's usual practice, the
single tracks were not included on the LP (a decision
George Martin states he now regrets). They
were released only as a single in the UK at the time, but were
included as part of the American LP version of
Magical Mystery Tour (which was
issued as a six-track
EP in Britain).
The Harrison composition "
Only a
Northern Song" was also recorded during the
Pepper
sessions but did not see release until January 1969 when the
soundtrack album for the animated feature
Yellow Submarine was
issued.
Concept
With
Sgt. Pepper, the Beatles wanted to create a
record that could, in effect, tour for them — an idea they had
already explored with the promotional film-clips made over the
previous years, intended to promote them in the United States when
they were not touring there.
McCartney decided that he should create fictitious characters for
each band member and record an album that would be a performance by
that fictitious band. This "alter-ego group" gave the Beatles the
freedom to experiment with songs.
The Beatles' fame motivated them to grow moustaches and beards and
even longer hair, and was an inspiration for the disguise of their
flamboyant Sgt. Pepper costumes. McCartney was well known for going
out in public in disguise and all four had used aliases for travel
bookings and hotel reservations.
The album starts with the title song, which introduces Sgt.
Pepper's band itself; this song
segues into a
sung introduction for bandleader "
Billy
Shears" (Starr), who performs "
With a Little Help from My
Friends". A
reprise version of the title
song was also recorded, and appears on side two of the original
album (just prior to the climactic "
A
Day in the Life"), creating a "book-ending" effect.
However, the Beatles effectively abandoned the concept after
recording the first two songs and the reprise. Lennon was
unequivocal in stating that the songs he wrote for the album had
nothing to do with the
Sgt. Pepper concept. Since
the other songs on the album are actually unrelated, one might be
tempted to conclude that the album does not express an overarching
theme. However, the cohesive structure and careful sequencing of
and transitioning between songs on the album, as well as the use of
the Sgt. Pepper framing device, have led the album to be widely
acknowledged as an early and ground-breaking example of the
concept album.
Before beginning work on
Sgt. Pepper, the Beatles
began work on a series of songs that were to form an album
thematically linked to childhood and everyday life.
The first fruits of
this exercise, "Penny
Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever", were
released as a double-A single after EMI and Epstein pressured
George Martin for a released single. Once the singles were
released the concept was abandoned in favour of
Pepper.
However, traces of this initial idea survive in the lyrics to
several songs on the album ("A Day in the Life", "
Lovely Rita", "
Good Morning, Good Morning",
"
She's Leaving Home", "
Getting Better", and "
When I'm Sixty-Four"), and, it could be
argued, provide more of a unifying theme for the album than that of
the Pepper concept itself.
Recording
Since the introduction of
magnetic
recording tape in 1949,
multitrack recording had been
developed. By 1967 all of the
Sgt. Pepper tracks
could be recorded at Abbey Road using mono, stereo and four-track
recorders. Although eight-track tape recorders were already
available in the US, the first eight-tracks were not operational in
commercial studios in London until late 1967, shortly after
Sgt. Pepper was released.
Like its predecessors, the recording made extensive use of the
technique known as bouncing down (also called
reduction
mixes), in which a number of tracks were recorded across the
four tracks of one recorder, which were then mixed and
dubbed down onto one track of the master
four-track machine. This enabled the Abbey Road engineers to give
the Beatles a virtual multi-track studio.
Magnetic tape had also led to
innovative use of instruments and production effects, notably the
tape-based keyboard sampler,
the
Mellotron, effects like
flanging and
phasing, as well as a greatly improved
system for creating
echo and
reverberation.
The Beatles also used new modular effects units like the
wah-wah pedal and
fuzzbox, which they augmented with their own
experimental ideas, such as running voices and instruments through
a
Leslie speaker. Another important
sonic innovation was the
direct input (DI)
technique, in which guitars could be recorded by plugging them
directly into an amplifying circuit in the recording console. While
the still often-used technique of recording through an amplifier
with a microphone sounds more natural, this setup provided a
radically different presence in
bass
guitar sound versus the old method. But the most frequently
used method was to record the bass last, after all the other
recording was done, by placing the amplifier in the centre of the
studio and placing the microphone two or three feet from the
source.
Several then-new production effects feature extensively on the
recordings. One of the most important was
automatic double tracking (ADT), a
system that used
tape recorders to
create an instant and simultaneous doubling of a sound. Although it
had long been recognised that using multitrack tape to record
"doubled" lead vocals produced a greatly enhanced sound (especially
with weaker singers), it had always been necessary to record such
vocal tracks twice, a task which was both tedious and
exacting.
ADT was invented specially for the Beatles by EMI engineer
Ken Townsend in 1966, mainly at the behest of
Lennon, who hated tracking sessions and regularly expressed a
desire for a technical solution to the problem. ADT quickly became
a near-universal recording practice in popular music. Producer
George Martin, having a bit of fun at John Lennon's expense,
described the new technique to an inquisitive Lennon as a
"double-bifurcated sploshing flange". The anecdote explains one
variation of how the term "flanging" came to be for this recording
effect.
Also important was
varispeeding, the
technique of recording various tracks on a multi-track tape at
slightly different tape speeds. The Beatles use this effect
extensively on their vocals in this period. The speeding up of
vocals became a widespread technique in pop production. The Beatles
also used the effect on portions of their backing tracks (as on
"
Lucy in the Sky with
Diamonds") to give them a "thicker" and more diffuse
sound.
In another innovation, British pressings of the album (in its
original LP form that was later released on CD) end in an unusual
way, beginning with a 15-kilohertz
high-frequency tone (put on the album at
Lennon's suggestion and said to be "especially intended to annoy
your dog"), followed by an endless loop of laughter and gibberish
made by the runout groove looping back into itself. The loop (but
not the tone) made its U.S. debut on the 1980
Rarities
compilation, titled "Sgt. Pepper Inner Groove". However, it is only
featured as a 2-second fragment at the end of side 2 rather than an
actual loop in the run out groove. The CD version of
Sgt.
Pepper's Inner Groove is actually a bit shorter than that
one found on the original UK vinyl pressing.
The sound in the loop is also the subject of much controversy,
being widely interpreted as some kind of secret message. McCartney
later told his biographer
Barry Miles
that in the summer of 1967 a group of kids came up to him
complaining about a lewd message hidden in it when played
backwards. He told them, "You're wrong, it's actually just
It
really couldn't be any other." He took them to his house to
play the record backwards to them, and it turned out that the
passage sounded very much like
"We'll fuck you like Superman". McCartney recounted to Miles that
his immediate reaction had been, "Oh my God!" It has also been
interpreted as
"Will Paul come back as Superman?", another
clue for the
Paul is dead urban
legend.
However, it seems that in reality it is nothing more than a few
random samples and tape edits played backwards. The loop is
re-created on the CD version which plays for a few seconds, then
fades out. Although most of the content of the runout groove is
impossible to decipher, it is possible to distinguish a sped-up
voice (possibly McCartney's) actually reciting the phrase "never
could be any other way". Played backwards, the last element of the
original LP loop that is
Sgt. Pepper's Inner
Groove appears to be George Harrison saying "Epstein"
(obviously missing from the CD version).
Some tension and discord took place during the recording sessions.
One instance involved "
She's Leaving
Home", when an impatient McCartney, frustrated by Martin's
unavailability, hired freelance arranger
Mike Leander to arrange the string
section — the first of only two occasions during the group's
entire career that he worked with another arranger (the other was
in connection with some backing orchestration used in the
Magical Mystery
Tour film (12 October 1967 session; see Lewisohn), which
were also arranged by Leander). Harrison also became alienated by
McCartney's growing dominance in the studio, particularly when
McCartney re-recorded the guitar solos for the album's title
track.
The
Beatles were present during the mixing of the album in mono and the LP was
originally released as such alongside a stereo mix prepared by Abbey
Road engineers led by
Geoff Emerick; the Beatles themselves
did not attend the mixing of the stereo version.(The mono
version is now out of print on vinyl, but was re-released on CD as
part of the
Beatles in
Mono box set on 9 September 2009 worldwide) The two mixes
are fundamentally different. For example, the stereo mix of "She's
Leaving Home" was mixed at a slower speed than the original
recording and therefore plays at a slower tempo and at a lower
pitch than the original recording. Conversely, the mono version of
"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is slightly slower than the stereo
version and features much heavier flanging and reverb effects.
McCartney's yelling voice in the
coda
section of "Sgt. Pepper (Reprise)" (just before the
segue into "
A Day in the
Life") can plainly be heard in the mono version, but is nearly
inaudible in the stereo version. The mono version of the song also
features drums that open with much more presence and force, as they
are turned well up in the mix. Also in the stereo mix, the famous
segue at the end of "
Good Morning Good Morning" (the
chicken-clucking sound which becomes a guitar noise) is timed
differently and a crowd noise tape comes in later during the intro
to "Sgt. Pepper (Reprise)".
Other variations between the two mixes include louder laughter at
the end of the mono mix of "Within You Without You," a gush of
laughter during the intro of the reprise version of the title track
and a colder, echo-less ending on the mono version of "Being for
the Benefit of Mr. Kite!".
Music
Sgt. Pepper features elaborate
arrangements — for example, the
clarinet ensemble on "
When I'm Sixty-Four" — and
extensive use of studio effects including echo, reverberation and
reverse tape effects. Many of
these effects were devised in collaboration with producer
George Martin and his team of engineers.
By the time the Beatles recorded the album their musical interests
had grown from their simple
R&B,
pop,
and
rock and roll beginnings to
incorporate a variety of new influences. They had become familiar
with a wide range of instruments such as the
Hammond organ and
electric piano; their instrumentation now
covered a wider range including
strings,
brass,
woodwind,
percussion, and even some exotic
instruments such as the
sitar. McCartney,
although unable to read music, had scored a recent British film
The Family Way (see
The Family Way soundtrack) with
the assistance of producer/arranger
George
Martin, which earned him a prestigious
Ivor Novello award. McCartney came to be
greatly influenced by the
avant garde
composer
Karlheinz
Stockhausen, whom he wanted to include on the cover.
Another example of the album's unusual production is
John Lennon's song "
Being for the Benefit of Mr.
Kite!", which closes side 1 of the album. The lyrics were
adapted almost word for word from an old circus poster which Lennon
had bought at an antique shop in Kent the day the Beatles had been
filming the promotional clip for
Strawberry Fields Forever
there. The flowing
sound collage that
gives the song its distinctive character was created by Martin and
his engineers, who collected recordings of
calliopes and fairground organs, which were
then cut into strips of various lengths, thrown into a box, mixed
up and edited together in random order, creating a long loop which
was mixed in during final production.
The opening track of side two, "
Within You Without You", is unusually
long for a 'pop' recording of the day, and features only
George Harrison, on vocals,
sitar and
acoustic
guitar, with all other instruments being played by a group of
London-based Indian musicians. These deviations from the
traditional
rock and roll band formula
were facilitated by the Beatles' decision not to tour, by their
ability to hire top-rate session musicians, and by Harrison's
burgeoning interest in India and
Indian
music, which led him to take lessons from sitar master
Ravi Shankar. Harrison's fascination with
Indian music is further evidenced by the use of a
tambura on several tracks, including "Lucy in the
Sky with Diamonds" as well as "Getting Better".
This album also makes heavy use of
keyboard instruments.
Grand piano is used on tracks such as "A Day in
the Life", along with
Lowrey organ on
"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". A
harpsichord can be heard on "Fixing a Hole", and
a
harmonium was played by George Martin on
"Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite". Electric piano, upright piano,
Hammond organ, glockenspiel and Mellotron are all heard on the
record.
The thunderous piano chord that dramatically concludes "A Day in
the Life", and the album, was produced by assembling three grand
pianos in the studio and playing an E chord on each simultaneously.
Together on cue Lennon, Starr, George Martin and assistant Mal
Evans hammered the keys on the assembled pianos and held the chord.
The sound from the pianos was then mixed up with compression and
increasing gain on the volume to draw out the sound to maximum
sustain.
Possible drug references
Concerns that lyrics in
Sgt. Pepper referred to
recreational drug use led to
several songs from the album being banned by the
BBC and criticised in other quarters.
The album's closing track, "A Day in the Life", includes the phrase
"I'd love to turn you on". The
BBC banned the
song from airplay on the basis of this line, claiming it could
"encourage a permissive attitude toward drug-taking". Both Lennon
and McCartney denied any drug-related interpretation of the
song.
The song "
Lucy in the Sky
with Diamonds" also became the subject of speculation regarding
its meaning, as many believed that the words of the chorus were
code for
LSD. The BBC
used this as their basis for banning the song from British radio.
Again, John Lennon consistently denied this interpretation of the
song, maintaining that the song describes a surreal dream scape
inspired by a picture drawn by his son
Julian. However, during a newspaper interview
in 2004, McCartney was quoted as saying:
Album cover
The
Grammy Award-winning album
packaging was
art-directed by
Robert Fraser, designed by
Peter Blake and his wife Jann Haworth,
and photographed by
Michael Cooper. It featured a
colourful collage of life-sized cardboard models of famous people
on the front of the album cover and lyrics printed on the back
cover, the first time this had been done on an English pop LP. The
Beatles themselves, in the guise of the Sgt. Pepper band, were
dressed in custom-made military-style outfits made of satin dyed in
day-glo colours. The suits were designed by
Manuel Cuevas. Among the insignia on
their uniforms are:
Art director
Robert Fraser was a
prominent London art dealer who ran his own gallery and sponsored
exhibitions at the
Indica Gallery,
through which he had become a close friend of McCartney, and it was
at his strong urging that the group abandoned their original cover
design, a
psychedelic painting by
The Fool. The Fool's design for
the inner sleeve
was, however, used for the first few
pressings.
Fraser was one of the leading champions of modern art in Britain in
the 1960s and after. He argued strongly that the Fool artwork was
not well-executed and that the design would soon be dated. He
convinced McCartney to abandon it, and offered to art-direct the
cover; it was Fraser's suggestion to use an established fine artist
and he introduced the band to a client, noted British "pop" artist
Peter Blake, who, in collaboration with his wife, created the
famous cover collage, known as "People We Like".
According to Blake, the original concept was to create a scene that
showed the Sgt. Pepper band performing in a park; this gradually
evolved into its final form, which shows the Beatles, as the Sgt.
Pepper band, surrounded by a large group of their heroes, rendered
as lifesized cut-out figures.
Also included were wax-work figures of the
Beatles as they appeared in the early '60s, borrowed from Madame Tussauds
.
In keeping with the park concept, the foreground of the scene is a
floral display incorporating the word "Beatles" spelt out in
flowers.Also present are several affectations from the Beatles'
homes including small statues belonging to Lennon and Harrison, a
small portable TV set and a trophy. A young delivery boy who
provided the flowers for the photo session was allowed to
contribute a guitar made of yellow
hyacinth. Although it has long been
rumoured that some of the plants in the arrangement were cannabis
plants, this is untrue.
At the edge of the scene is a
Shirley
Temple doll wearing a sweater in homage to the Rolling Stones
(who would return the tribute by having the Beatles hidden in the
cover of their own
Their Satanic Majesties
Request LP later that year).
The collage depicted more than 70 famous people, including writers,
musicians, film stars and (at Harrison's request) a number of
Indian
gurus. The final grouping included
Marlene Dietrich,
Carl Gustav Jung,
W.C. Fields,
Diana Dors,
Bob Dylan,
Marilyn Monroe,
Aldous Huxley,
Karlheinz Stockhausen,
Sigmund Freud,
Aleister Crowley,
Edgar Allan Poe,
Karl
Marx,
Oscar Wilde,
William S. Burroughs,
Marlon Brando,
Stan
Laurel and
Oliver Hardy, and
controversial comedian
Lenny Bruce. Also
included was the image of the original Beatles bass player, the
late
Stuart Sutcliffe.
Pete Best said in a later
NPR interview that Lennon borrowed
family medals from his mother
Mona for the
shoot, on condition that he did not lose them.
Adolf Hitler,
Mahatma Gandhi, and
Jesus Christ were requested by Lennon, but ultimately
they were left out, even though a cutout of Hitler was in fact
made.
The gatefold
A photo also exists of a rejected cardboard printout with a cloth
draped over its head; its identity is unknown. Even now, co-creator
Jann Haworth regrets that so few women were included. The entire
list of people on the cover can be found at
List of images on the cover of Sgt.
Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
The collage created legal worries for
EMI's
legal department, which had to contact the people who were still
living to obtain their permission.
Mae West
initially refused — famously asking "What would I be doing in
a lonely hearts club?" — but she relented after the Beatles
sent her a personal letter. Actor
Leo
Gorcey requested payment for inclusion on the cover, so his
image was removed. An image of
Mohandas
Gandhi was also removed at the request of EMI (it was
airbrushed out), who had a branch in India and were fearful that it
might cause offence there. Lennon had asked to include images of
Jesus Christ and Adolf Hitler, though
neither was included through fear of causing offence. Nonetheless a
cutout was made of Hitler and can be clearly seen leaning against
the wall in pictures of the photographic session. Most of the
suggestions for names to be included came from McCartney, Lennon
and Harrison, with additional suggestions from Blake and Fraser
(Starr demurred and let the others choose). Beatles manager
Brian Epstein had serious misgivings,
stemming from the scandalous U.S.
Butcher Cover controversy the
previous year, going so far as to give a note reading "Brown paper
bags for Sgt. Pepper" to Nat Weiss as his last wish.
The collage was assembled by Blake and his wife during the last two
weeks of March 1967 at the London studio of photographer Michael
Cooper, who took the cover shots on 30 March 1967 in a three-hour
evening session. The package was a "
gatefold" album cover, that is, the album could be
opened like a book to reveal a large picture of the Fab Four in
costume against a yellow background. The reason for the gate fold
was that the Beatles originally planned to fill two LPs for the
release. The designs had already been approved and sent to be
printed when they realized they would only have enough material for
one LP.
Originally, the group had wanted the album to include a package
with badges, pencils and other small Sgt. Pepper goodies but this
proved far too costly to realise. Instead, the album came with a
page of cardboard cut-outs carrying the description:
The inner sleeve
- SGT. PEPPER
CUT-OUTS
- Moustache
- Picture Card
- Stripes
- Badges
- Stand Up
The special inner sleeve, included in the early pressings of the
LP, featured a psychedelic pattern designed by
The Fool.
The final bill for the cover was
£2,868 5s 3d (equivalent to £
today), a staggering sum for the time. It has been estimated that
this was 100 times the average cost for an album cover in those
days.
Release and reception
Upon release,
Sgt. Pepper received both popular
and critical acclaim. Various reviews appearing in the mainstream
press and trade publications throughout June 1967, immediately
after the album's release, were generally positive. In
The Times prominent critic
Kenneth Tynan described
Sgt.
Pepper as "a decisive moment in the
history of Western
civilization". Others including
Richard Poirier, and Geoffrey Stokes were
similarly expansive in their praise, Stokes noting, "listening to
the
Sgt. Pepper album one thinks not simply of
the history of popular music but the history of this
century."
One notable critic who did not like the album was Richard
Goldstein, a critic for
The New
York Times, who wrote, "Like an over-attended child,
"Sergeant Pepper" is spoiled. It reeks of horns and harps,
harmonica quartets, assorted animal noises, and a 41-piece
orchestra", and added that it was an "album of special effects,
dazzling but ultimately fraudulent" . On the other hand, Goldstein
called "A Day in the Life" "a deadly earnest excursion in emotive
music with a chilling lyric", and that "it stands as one of the
most important Lennon-McCartney compositions, and it is a historic
Pop event."
Frank Zappa accused the Beatles of
co-opting the
flower power aesthetic
for monetary gain, saying in a
Rolling
Stone article that he felt "they were only in it for the
money". That criticism later became the title of the Mothers of
Invention album (
We're Only in It for the
Money), which mocked
Sgt. Pepper with a
similar album cover. Ironically, Paul McCartney has said
Sgt. Pepper was influenced by Zappa's 1966 debut
album
Freak Out!", considered by
some as the first rock
concept
album.
Within days of its release,
Jimi
Hendrix was performing the title track in concert, first for an
audience that included Harrison and McCartney, who were greatly
impressed by his unique version of their song and his ability to
learn it so quickly. Also, Australian band
The Twilights — who had obtained a copy
of the LP from London by air — wowed audiences in Australia
with note-perfect live renditions of the entire album, weeks before
it was even released there . (Release of the album in Australia was
delayed by the Six Day War between Israel and Egypt. The ship
carrying the gatefold covers, printed in Britain by Garrod &
Lofthouse, had to take a longer route when the war temporarily
closed the Suez Canal.)
The chart performance of the album was even stronger than critical
reception. In the UK it debuted at #8 before the album was even
released (on 1 June 1967) and the next week peaked at #1 where it
stayed for 23 consecutive weeks. Then it was knocked off the top
for
The Sound of Music
on the week ending 18 November 18, 1967. Eventually it spent more
weeks at the top, including the competitive Christmas week. When
the CD edition was released on 1 June 1987, it made #3. In June
1992, the CD was re-promoted to commemorate its 25th Anniversary,
and charted at #6. In 2007, commemorating 40 years of its release,
Sgt. Pepper again re-entered the charts at #47 in
the UK. In all, the album spent a total of 201 weeks on the UK
charts. The album won the
Grammy Award
for
Album of the
Year, the first rock album to do so, and
Best Contemporary
Album in 1968. U.S. sales for the album totalled 11 million
units, with 30 million worldwide.
The album won Best British Album at the first
Brit Awards in 1977.
Planned TV movie
On 10 February 1967, during the orchestral recording sessions for
"A Day in the Life", six cameramen filmed the chaotic events with
the purpose of using the footage for a planned but unfinished
Sgt. Pepper television special. The TV special
was to have been written by Ian Dallas and directed by Keith Green.
The shooting schedule included all the songs from the album set to
music video style scenes: for example; "Within You Without You"
scenes would have been set throughout offices, factories and
elevators. There were even production numbers planned involving
"meter maids" and "
rockers".
Although production was cancelled, the "A Day in the Life" footage
was edited down with stock footage into a finished clip. This clip
was not released to the public until the John Lennon documentary
Imagine: John Lennon was released in 1988. A more
complete version was later aired on
The Beatles Anthology
series.
Legacy
It has been on many lists of the best rock albums, including
Rolling Stone, Bill Shapiro,
Alternative
Melbourne, Rod Underhill and VH1. In 1987
Rolling Stone named
Sgt.
Pepper the greatest album of the last twenty years
(1967-1987). In 1997
Sgt. Pepper was named the
number 1 greatest album of all time in a 'Music of the Millennium'
poll conducted by
HMV,
Channel 4,
The
Guardian and
Classic FM. In
1998
Q magazine readers placed
it at number 7, while in 2003 the
TV
network VH1 placed it at number 10; In 2003,
the album was ranked number 1 on
Rolling Stone magazine's list of
the 500 greatest albums of
all time. In 2006, the album was chosen by
Time Magazine as one of the 100 best albums
of all time. In 2002,
Q
magazine placed it at number 13 in its list of the 100 Greatest
British Albums Ever.
In 2003, it was one of 50 recordings chosen
by the Library of
Congress
to be added to the National Recording
Registry.
It also has inspired the 1978 feature film,
Sgt.
Pepper's Lonely
Hearts Club Band, as well as a number of
tribute albums. The American rock band
Cheap Trick performed the entire Sgt.
Pepper album live in New York and released the live recording in
both CD and DVD formats in September 2009, with all proceeds
benefiting prostate cancer research. This recording was engineered
by Geoff Emerick, the original engineer for the Sgt. Pepper album.
In November 2009, the entire album was made available to download
for
The Beatles: Rock
Band on the
Xbox 360,
PlayStation 3, and
Nintendo Wii. The game disc already had the
album's title track, "With a Little Help from My Friends", "Lucy in
The Sky with Diamonds", "Getting Better", and "Good Morning Good
Morning" - the download provides the remaining tracks from the
album.
Charts
The album entered the
UK Albums
Chart on 3 June 1967 and has remained there for a total of 201
weeks as of 1 July 2007. In the USA the album stayed in the
Billboard 200 chart for 175
weeks.
Awards
Grammy Awards
Nominated for seven
Grammy Awards in
1968, it would win four, including
Album of the Year, the
first rock/pop album to receive the honor.
Grammy Award nominations
Track listing
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was the
first Beatles album to be released with identical track listings in
the United Kingdom and the United States. The American release did
not originally contain the side two runout groove and inner groove
sound effects that were restored for the worldwide CD issue,
released 1 June 1987.
Personnel
According to Mark Lewisohn and Alan W. Pollack
- The Beatles
- John Lennon – lead, harmony and
background vocals; lead, rhythm and acoustic guitars; Hammond organ and piano;
bass guitar; handclaps, harmonica,
tape loops, sound effects and kazoo; tambourine and
maracas
- Paul McCartney – lead,
harmony and background vocals; lead electric and acoustic guitars; bass guitar;
piano and Hammond organ; handclaps, vocalizations, tape loops,
sound effects and kazoo
- George Harrison – lead, rhythm,
acoustic and bass guitars; sitar; lead, harmony and background vocals;
tamboura; harmonica and kazoo; handclaps; maracas
- Ringo Starr – drums, congas, tambourine,
maracas, handclaps and tubular bells;
lead vocals; harmonica and kazoo; final piano E chord
- Additional musicians and production
- Neil Aspinall – tamboura and harmonica
- Geoff Emerick – recording and mixing engineer; tape loops and sound
effects
- Mal Evans – counting, alarm clock and final piano E chord
- Matthew Deyell – tambourine
- George Martin – producer and mixer; tape loop and sound
effects; harpsichord (on "Fixing a
Hole"), harmonium, Lowry organ and glockenspiel (on "Being for the
Benefit of Mr. Kite!"), Hammond organ
(on "With a Little Help from My Friends"), and piano (on "Getting
Better" and the solo in "Lovely Rita"); final harmonium chord.
- Session musicians – four French
horns on "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", (Neill Sanders, James W. Buck, John Burden,
Tony Randall), arranged and conducted by Martin and McCartney;
string section and harp on "She's Leaving Home", arranged by Mike
Leander and conducted by Martin;
harmonium, tabla, sitar, dilruba, eight violins and
four cellos on "Within You, Without You",
arranged and conducted by Harrison and Martin; clarinet trio on "When I'm Sixty Four", as arranged
and conducted by Martin and McCartney; saxophone sextet on "Good Morning, Good Morning",
arranged and conducted by Martin and Lennon; and forty-piece
orchestra (strings, brass, woodwinds
and percussion) on "A Day in
the Life", arranged by Martin, Lennon and McCartney and conducted
by Martin and McCartney
See also
Notes
References
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