Sgt. Pepper Sets the Stage: The Album as a Work of Art

Sgt. Pepper Sets the Stage:
The Album as a Work of Art

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/115779-sgt.-pepper-sets-the-stage-the-album-as-a-work-of-art

[23 November 2009]
By Thomas Blackwell

Part 1: Prelude to Pepper

The most popular group in the history of popular music made many
masterpieces. George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Ringo
Starr created artistic works of untold musical, technological and
cultural significance during their eight short years together as The
Beatles. Help!, Rubber Soul, Revolver, numerous others. But one album
in particular caused more commotion than any one of their other
long-players. It was an album that introduced relatively new ideas to
the group's immense audience in the form of an overall "concept,"
intended to give the songs a unified, cohesive feel. This album was
Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, thirty-nine minutes and
thirteen songs performed and packaged in the most outlandish and
unthinkable way at the time. When the album was released on 1 June,
1967, in the midst of the "Summer of Love," the world stood up and
took notice, for better or worse (MacDonald, 1994).

Sgt. Pepper ushered in a turning point for the public perception of
pop music. While other groups had released albums in 1966 utilizing a
single, loose concept to frame the songs on the album, The Beatles
brought this concept to the forefront of Western popular culture
(MacDonald, 1994). By creating a concept for their album that allowed
them to transcend their "moptop" image, the Beatles hoped to have
their new studio creation tour for them (Martin & Pearson, 1994). The
Sgt. Pepper concept would change the way the "pop album" was viewed
by critics and listeners alike. The album would go on to influence
countless artists, and was virtually responsible for the birth of the
progressive rock genre, inspiring future groups of musicians to craft
albums around different themes, stories or other guidelines (Moore, 1997).

Sgt. Pepper was something never before seen in music in 1967. The
artwork and packaging alone was enough to make the record buyer
consider taking a 'trip' with the Beatles, but the music on the vinyl
record was something else entirely. For the first time on a Beatles
record, every song seemed connected in some way, however small. It
didn't feel right to listen to just one song at a time; it felt right
to listen to the whole album, front to back, every song.

Prelude to "Pepper"
By 1966, the group was not faring so well. The intense pace of their
schedule and the rigors of Beatlemania had taken their toll on the
band. Following a tour of the United States concluding on 29 August
with a show at San Francisco's Candlestick Park, the group privately
decided to stop performing live (Spitz, 2005). The group was already
headed in the psychedelic direction of Pepper on 1966's Revolver.
Recorded throughout 1966, the album featured the group's first uses
of different studio techniques that would play an integral role in
the recording of Sgt. Pepper (Martin et al., 1994).

The group, particularly Lennon and McCartney, also began
experimenting with the sounds of avant-garde music, especially tape
loops, reversed tapes and altered sounds achieved by altering the
playback speed of the tapes. Inspired by avant-garde composers such
as John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, The Beatles included heavy
use of tape loops on Revolver (Spitz, 2005).

Utilizing new techniques and effects, the group began searching for
ways to alter the sounds of conventional musical instruments. Studio
engineer Geoff Emerick would play a vital role in the group's
discovery and application of new sounds. (Kehew et al., 2006). The
sonic innovations and genre crossovers achieved by the group and the
studio staff during the recording of Revolver set the tone for the
rampant experimentalism that would take place during sessions for Sgt. Pepper.

Old Sounds, New Sounds

In terms of sonic diversity and experimentation with different forms
and styles of music, The Beatles were already well versed. The group
had experimented with eastern music, soul music and even classical
(Greg Kot, personal interview by the author, 23 February 2009).

The Beatles had also been listening to a variety of different music
throughout 1966 that would come to influence their psychedelic
direction. McCartney would later recall in a 2004 interview: "But we
were just doing our own thing. It wasn't that we set out to make
groundbreaking albums. The reason those records were so musically
diverse was that we all had very diverse tastes" (McCartney, p.247, 2004).

The music of the underground scene, groups such as Pink Floyd, The
Mothers of Invention, and AMM, and modern classical and experimental
composers, such as Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage, no doubt had
a subtle influence on The Beatles' recording sessions during this
period (Heylin, 2007). Harrison's introduction to Indian music and
religion in 1965 had inspired him to purchase his own sitar and take
lessons (Womack, 2007), and he was also growing personally, with a
different outlook on life influenced by Indian culture and music (Spitz, 2005).

Lennon and McCartney both claimed the Beach Boys' seminal 1966 album
Pet Sounds as a great influence going into the studio to make Sgt.
Pepper. According to MacDonald, McCartney himself confessed, "the
Beatles would need to surpass anything they had done to equal it"
(p.172, 1994). The Beach Boys weren't the only artists from across
the Atlantic the Fab Four were paying attention to; according to
author and journalist Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune, The Beatles
"were always listening" and were especially influenced by several of
their American peers. They were also investigating other important
albums released by American groups in 1966, including 5D by The
Byrds, the debut album by Los Angeles psychedelic band Love and Bob
Dylan's masterpiece Blonde on Blonde (Greg Kot, personal interview by
the author, 23 February 2009).

Part 2: Return to the Studio

It was time apart that rejuvenated The Beatles creatively. For once,
having the freedom to pursue individual goals took precedence over
doing things for the good of the group. Ringo spent time with his
family. Paul wrote a film score, working with George Martin. John
ventured to Spain to film his role in Richard Lester's World War II
film How I Won the War. George journeyed to India with his wife to
study Eastern religion and learn sitar (Womack, 2007).

When the four Beatles entered EMI's Studio Two at Abbey Road on
24November, 1966 to begin recording their new album, they came armed
with ideas, a slew of influences, and a raging desire to experiment.
The first song recorded was a Lennon composition entitled "Strawberry
Fields Forever." Lennon was dissatisfied with the initial version
laid to tape, so the group returned to the song in early December,
recording a new backing track. Because there were two different takes
Lennon wanted to use to create the final take, both of different
speed and key, studio engineer Geoff Emerick decided to simply
"splice," or connect, the tapes together, correcting their speed to
bring them to nearly the same pitch (MacDonald, 1994). Overall, "over
forty-five hours" in the studio had gone into work on "Strawberry
Fields" (Spitz, p.655, 2005).

With its many studio effects and "swimming" sound, the song sounded
unlike anything the Beatles had recorded at that point in their
career (MacDonald, p.174, 1994). Geoff Emerick's final edit of the
song (with the two 'final' versions edited together at about 1:00)
has two distinct sounds. The first minute of the song is noticeably
higher in pitch, while the song grows increasingly disorienting
following the edit, when the pitch becomes noticeably lower
transforming Lennon's voice into a druggy, warped version of its
usual self. The instrumentation of the second part consists of
densely layered percussion, a jarring departure from Ringo's sparse
backing on the first minute of the song (MacDonald, 1994).

"Strawberry Fields" did in fact serve as what Martin proclaimed to be
the "agenda of the whole album" (Heylin, p.117, 2007). Soon after its
completion, the group was hard at work on McCartney's first
contribution to the project, coincidentally, another song about
childhood landmarks from Liverpool, "Penny Lane" (Spitz, 2005).

"Penny Lane" was McCartney's response to "Strawberry Fields Forever,"
evoking the same childhood imagery and imagination. "Penny Lane" was
a more upbeat and traditional sounding tune, yet was revolutionary in
much the same way as "Strawberry Fields." McCartney's taste in
classical music played a role in the creation of the song, where
after viewing a performance of Bach's "Second Brandenburg Concerto"
on television, McCartney decided to write a similar melodic line for
piccolo trumpet, a smaller, higher pitched trumpet, for his own song
(MacDonald, 1994). According to Geoff Emerick and Howard Massey,
Martin scored a beautiful "arrangement for flutes, trumpets, piccolo,
and flugelhorn…oboes, cor anglais (English horn), and bowed double
bass" (p.144, 2006) giving it a jovial and upbeat feel, while bell
chimes sound out in response to McCartney's line about a fireman
"keeping his fire engine clean" ("Penny Lane"). The pianos were
tracked at different speeds by Lennon and McCartney, a trick which
altered their overtones, thus producing a unique thick, multi-layered
piano sound for the song (MacDonald, 1994).

Although "Strawberry Fields" would be released as a single by the
Beatles' label, Parlophone, in February 1967 (MacDonald, 1994), four
months prior to the release of Sgt. Pepper, George Martin claimed the
song "set the agenda for the whole album" (Heylin, p.117, 2007).
Martin later regretted telling Beatles manager Brian Epstein about
the songs: "These songs would, I told him, make a fantastic
double-A-sided disc ­ better even than our other double-A-sided
triumphs, 'Day Tripper'/'We Can Work it Out', and 'Eleanor
Rigby'/Yellow Submarine.' It was the biggest mistake of my
professional life" (Martin et al., p.26, 1994). While these two
tracks technically mark the beginning of the group's new studio-based
career, they were not included on the album due to EMI policy at the
time (Spitz, 2005). Instead of performing take after take of the same
finished song in an attempt to get the right version for the album,
the Beatles would now use the studio time at their disposal to
construct songs layer by layer, and literally build them up with each
subsequent overdub.

"Penny Lane" was followed by the recording of McCartney's charming
ode to vaudeville music, "When I'm Sixty-Four" (Martin et al., 1994).
McCartney's lyrics for the song tie into the first proposed concept
of an album of "Northern Songs," featuring songs that were
"progressive" yet used the sounds of the past (in this case, a chorus
of clarinets) to touch upon the group's upbringing in Liverpool
(Heylin, p.116, 2007). According to Spitz, Emerick and Martin even
sped up the tape while recording Paul's vocal, in order to obtain his
desired effect of sounding "younger…a teenager again" (p.668, 2005).

The "concept" was a principal device in keeping the album separate
from the rest of the group's discography. According to Clinton
Heylin, the group, McCartney in particular, preferred to have a
concept or theme for the sole purpose of making Sgt. Pepper "stand
out from what came before" (p.116, 2007). McCartney said in a 1967 interview:

"We realized for the first time that someday someone would actually
be holding a thing they'd call 'The Beatles' new LP' and that
normally it would just be a collection of songs with a nice picture
on the cover, nothing more. So the idea was to do a complete thing
that you could make what you liked of; just a little magic
presentation." [1967] (Heylin, p.116, 2007)

McCartney initially devised an embryonic idea for a concept album
while traveling around France in September 1966. In order to 'escape'
his famous image so he could enjoy his trip, McCartney donned a
disguise to remain incognito (Spitz, p.643, 2005). According to
Spitz, the disguise led McCartney to an idea: "if he could disguise
himself on vacation and travel about unnoticed, then why not all the
Beatles?" (p.643, 2005) McCartney would later explain the concept:
"'I thought, Let's not be ourselves. Let's develop alter-egos so
we're not having to project an image which we know'" (quoted in
Spitz, p.643, 2005). Later, during a flight from Africa to London,
Evans and McCartney were discussing band names, according to Spitz,
"mimicking the variety of groups that were just coming into vogue:
The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, Big Brother and the Holding Company,
Lothar and the Hand People" (p. 643, 2005). Evans then picked up
miniature salt and pepper packages and gave McCartney the idea that
would spur the entire concept for the record: "'Salt and Pepper'" (p.
643, 2005). McCartney, in an effort to create one of his own "West
Coast" band names, "threw the words together: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely
Hearts Club Band (Aspinall et al., p. 241, 2000).

Different songs recorded during the sessions would serve as launching
points for new conceptual ideas for the album. "With a Little Help
From My Friends" was one such song, along with the title track,
which introduced another concept to the project. The two songs open
the album by giving the listener the feeling of being at a live
concert by a musical group. George Martin claimed the Beatles and the
production team "'had to start with the song that gave the illusion
of a concept'" (quoted in Heylin, p.175, 2007). Ironically, to create
this atmosphere of a live concert Martin used a portion of audience
applause taken from a recording of the Beatles' own recording of a
1965 show at the Hollywood Bowl (Heylin, 2007).

The title track then segues into "With a Little Help From My
Friends," carrying on the live performance concept by introducing
Ringo as the bandleader of Sgt. Pepper's band, Billy Shears. This
idea was proposed by cover photographer Peter Blake (Heylin, 2007).
Starr himself admitted after the album was released that "'the
original concept of 'Pepper' was that it was gonna be like a stage
show…We did it for the first couple of tracks and then it faded into
an album'" (quoted in Heylin, p.171, 2007). A reprise of the title
track occurs at the end of the album preceding "A Day in the Life,"
with the Lonely Hearts Club Band reappearing to bid the audience
farewell (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967).

Ringo's vocal style is particularly well suited to the upbeat
instrumentation of jangly guitars and piano. The song is a commentary
on love and friendship, with the other three Beatles offering
encouraging backing vocals that seem to support Ringo/Billy Shears as
he takes the lead (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967).

"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" follows, plunging Sgt. Pepper's band
into a vivid dream world, complete with psychedelic imagery of
"plasticine porters with looking glass ties" and girls "with
kaleidoscope eyes" (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967). The
song is impressive sonically, with heavily treated instruments
complimenting Lennon's Technicolor imagery in his lyrics, which he
admitted were heavily influenced by Lewis Carroll's "Alice in
Wonderland" (Heylin, 2007). McCartney performed the song's
distinctive keyboard introduction not on a harpsichord, as the sound
would suggest, but on an electric organ heavily altered by electronic
effects in an attempt to achieve the chiming bell tones of a Celeste
(Hertsgaard, 1995).

"Getting Better" finds the group returning to the supportive themes
of friendship visited in "With a Little Help From My Friends," with
Lennon's background vocals seemingly encouraging or even provoking
McCartney (Hertsgaard, 1995). The song is an anthem for the sixties,
a time of new ideas and new beginnings; McCartney likely referring to
the end of the Beatles' touring days (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts
Club Band, 1967).

The group also would play with texture by adding tape loops to songs.
Small clips of sound were used to change the feeling of songs or
bring them to a close. Harrison's raga "Within You Without You"
utilized a brief clip of laughter culled from a tape out of the EMI
studio archives entitled "Volume 6: Applause and Laughter," inserted
at his insistence to lighten the serious mood of the piece (Lewisohn,
2003). "Volume 35: Animals and Bees" and "Volume 57: Foxhunt" were
also used to add dogs, roosters and various farm animals to "Good
Morning Good Morning" (Lewisohn, 2003).

One of the most critical uses of tape effects during the sessions
would take place during the recording of Lennon's "Being For the
Benefit of Mr. Kite!" According to Spitz, Lennon desired a
"fairground sound" to go with lyrics he had written based on a 19th
century circus poster he had purchased from an antique shop, and
called upon Martin to assist in the creation of such an atmosphere
for the recording (pp.668-669, 2005). Martin and engineer Geoff
Emerick then set about using tapes to simulate the sounds of an
old-fashioned steam organ, due to prohibitive costs of renting and
programming one for the session (Spitz, 2005). Emerick once again
played the innovator; after retrieving tapes of marches played on
steam organs, he cut them into small pieces, tossed them in the air,
and reassembled them in a random order, overdubbing them onto the
existing rhythm track to achieve the desired effect (Lewisohn, 2003).

The Beatles used their newfound artistic license to write in a more
abstract manner, wrapping personal thoughts and feelings in lyrical
sheets of realistic imagery. Lennon's commentary on suburban life,
"Good Morning, Good Morning," was inspired by a television commercial
for Kellogg's Corn Flakes, and he decided to analyze his supposedly
comfortable life in his Weybridge mansion in an "ironic" and
"sarcastic" way he never had thought about before, according to
Martin and Pearson (pp. 71-73, 1994). "She's Leaving Home" had an
exclusively classical sound, utilizing a string section as the sole
instrumentation, but for the lyrics, McCartney turned to the local
newspaper for inspiration, using an actual story that had run in the
Daily Mail on February 27, 1967 (Heylin, 2007). The story was about a
family whose daughter "had run away," and Lennon and McCartney
arranged the vocals to represent both sides of the incident (p.162,
2007). Lennon's "A Day in the Life" would also reference a story from
the local newspaper, this time about a wealthy heir to the Guinness
fortune who had died in a car crash (Spitz, 2005).

Perhaps the ultimate musical statement of the Beatles' career was
made in Lennon and McCartney's powerful song that was chosen to close
the album, "A Day in the Life." Emerick later recalled the group came
into the studio with only small parts of the song written and ready
to record; the group wanted to "get it down on tape and then finish
it later" (Emerick et al., p.146, 2006). The song took shape as the
group worked out the arrangement in the studio, with little accidents
or unintentional additions often remaining in the song after one
Beatle would express a liking for the mistake. (Emerick et al., p.149, 2006).

The most stunning feature of the song was the orchestra recorded for
the middle section. The idea for the orchestra came from Lennon, who,
according to Emerick, desired "some kind of sound that would start
out really tiny and then gradually expand to become huge and
all-engulfing" (p.152, 2006). After a discussion, it was decided to
hire the orchestra and have them improvise by playing from the lowest
notes to the highest notes in their respective instruments' ranges,
which would create a swirling, cacophonous buildup of sound (Emerick
et al., 2006). Because of the attitudes present in working orchestra
musicians at the time, a very prestigious job in the music industry,
the Beatles decided to turn the session into a party, encouraging a
loose atmosphere in an attempt to persuade the orchestra (musicians
who do not typically improvise) to play at random to achieve the
chaotic sound envisioned for the middle section and the ending
(Emerick et al. 2006).

Five different improvisations were ultimately edited into the final
track, giving the illusion of over 200 orchestral instruments playing
at once (Spitz, 2005). Following the orchestral spiral, copied and
inserted at the end of the song, the Beatles, assistant Evans and
George Martin then recorded a massive "E" chord, played
simultaneously by all participants on three grand pianos and allowed
to sustain for slightly over one minute, which would serve as the
final note in their new studio creation (Spitz, 2005).

As a final eccentric detail for their new opus, the Beatles decided
to end the album with additional sonic madness collected on the run
out groove, the final groove of a vinyl record where it would
normally stop playing and the needle would retract, or the listener
would have to take the needle off to stop the record. A 15-kilocycle
whistle, which is a frequency so high-pitched only dogs can hear it,
was inserted just before the nonsense (p.253, 2003). On subsequent
stereo and compact disc versions of the album, the runout groove
noise and the 15 kilocycle tone are only heard briefly before fading
out, bringing the album to a bizarre but utterly unique finale
(Emerick et al., 2006).

After months of recording, the band finally completed work on the
album in April 1967. Martin and the group then had another important
task to be done before the album's release: sequencing the songs.
Martin was tasked with giving the songs an appropriate running order.
He did know he had to pair the opening title track before "With a
Little Help From My Friends," as the former mentioned the "Billy
Shears" character, bandleader for the Lonely Hearts Club Band, who
sings "With a Little Help From My Friends" (Martin et al., 1994).
Martin had also determined from the outset that the piano chord
ending "A Day in the Life" would have to close the album, because the
chord "was so final that it was obvious nothing else could follow it."

This prompted Martin to place the reprise of the title track second
to last, coming before "A Day in the Life" (p.148, 1994). Smaller
details also determined Martin's placement of the songs. The laughing
at the end of "Within You Without You" prompted Martin to follow it
with McCartney's "jokey" "When I'm Sixty-Four" (Martin et al., 1994).
A tape loop of a chicken squawking at the end of "Good Morning, Good
Morning" coincidentally had a pitch similar to a noise made by George
Harrison tuning his guitar at the very beginning of the title track
reprise, giving Martin the idea to blend the two together (Martin et
al., 1994). He would later admit the album seemed to fall together
much by itself, "When it came to compiling the album, I tried to edit
it together in a very tight format, and in a funny kind of way when I
was editing it it almost grew by itself; it took on a life of its
own" (p.150, 1994).

According to Kehew and Ryan's comprehensive account of the Beatles'
recording practices, "Recording the Beatles," an estimated 700 hours
of work went into the recording of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club
Band, with the band spending 45 days between January and April of
1967 in the studio (Kehew et al., 2006). The album was produced at a
total cost of about £25,000, an unbelievable amount for the recording
of the average pop album in 1967, according to producer George Martin
(p.168, 1994).

Part 3: Out of the Studio, Into the Record Shop

Hype, speculation and marketing played prominent roles in the success
of Sgt. Pepper in the summer of 1967. The Beatles had been in the
studio for close to seven months, and it had been nine months since
their final performance in San Francisco's Candlestick Park in August
1966 (Hertsgaard, 1995). The world was curious; their interest was
piqued: What had they been up to? More importantly, was it any good?

The rampant studio experimentation of the past seven months had
birthed a musical document as peculiar as its unorthodox artwork. The
Beatles had managed to tap into the creative well the advances made
on Revolver had only hinted at; the effects used somewhat sparsely on
Revolver now encrusted entire songs.

Sgt. Pepper was a creature of anticipation on the part of the
Beatles' audience. According to author and journalist Greg Kot of the
Chicago Tribune, the passage of time would serve as a major factor in
the album's success and almost universal critical acclaim, but
contemporarily "the key was the hype that preceded it" (Greg Kot,
personal interview by the author, 23 February 2009). No one had never
spent so much time in the studio before Sgt. Pepper recording
sessions and, according to Kot, the viewpoint instilled into the
collective mind of the record-buying public was simple: "they spent 9
months in the studio, so it must be good" (Greg Kot, personal
interview by the author, 23 February 2009).

The album's sound and presentation introduced the wider public to the
psychedelic sounds and moods of 1967's counterculture. According to
Hertsgaard, the album's release was "a huge cultural event," one that
mirrored the changes rapidly taking place in popular culture (p.213,
1995). The cover, its design, and the outfits the group wore, and the
addition of lyrics printed on the back of the record sleeve all
confirm this notion.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band received almost universally
positive reviews upon its release, with many reviewers acknowledging
the group's unique new musical direction. William Mann in The Times
(London) was so moved by the musical leap in sound that he described
"With a Little Help From My Friends" as being "…the only track that
would have been conceivable in pop songs five years ago" (p.96,
1967). Mann also described the songs as setting an example for other
musicians: "Any of these songs is more genuinely creative than
anything currently to be heard on pop radio stations, but in
relationship to what other groups have been doing lately Sgt. Pepper
is chiefly significant as constructive criticism, a sort of pop music
master class examining trends and correcting or tidying up
inconsistencies and undisciplined work, here and there suggesting a
line worth following" (p.96, 1967).

Christopher Porterfield for Time called the Beatles "messengers from
beyond rock n roll," hailing them for "leading an evolution in which
the best of current post-rock sounds are becoming something that pop
music has never been before: an art form" (p.103, 1967). Journalist
Derek Jewell of The Sunday Times wrote equally praising words about
the album, calling it "a tremendous advance even in the increasingly
adventurous progress of the Beatles," and pointing out that different
emotions played significant roles in the album's lyrics and music,
calling the tone of the album "humorous, sympathetic, skeptical and
often self-mocking. Musically, it is always stimulating" (Martin et
al., p.153, 1994). Jewell's review, perhaps most importantly, asked a
fundamental question about the content, "The Beatles are now
producing performances, not music for frugging to. Will the kids
follow?" (Martin et al., p.153, 1994).

"The kids" did indeed follow the fab four into the unknown. The album
sold 250,000 copies in its first week on sale in the United Kingdom,
eventually selling 500,000 copies in the UK by the end of June and
going on to stay at the top of the charts for 27 weeks. Sgt. Pepper
also sold 2,500,000 copies in the United States by the end of August
1967, having been at number one on the charts since its release
(Martin et al., 1994).

One review, however, was extremely negative, so much that it caused
an uproar in both the music and journalistic worlds. Richard
Goldstein's review of the record for the New York Times scathingly
attacked what Goldstein referred to as "the obsession with
production," and he derided the album for "a surprising shoddiness in
composition…" (p.98, 1967). Goldstein also described certain musical
flourishes on the album, such as the orchestral buildup in "A Day in
the Life," as resembling "a drug-induced 'rush'" (p.100, 1967).
Goldstein's review did mention "A Day in the Life" in an otherwise
positive light, calling it "a deadly earnest excursion in emotive
music," later referring to it as "one of the most important
Lennon-McCartney compositions," and "a historic Pop event" (p.99, 1967).

The review was so controversial, Goldstein's publisher issued a
rebuttal, and other journalists attacked his position, including
influential critic Robert Christgau, who wrote an article challenging
the position for Esquire in December 1967, proclaiming, "I attribute
his review to a failure of nerve," also pointing out that Goldstein's
review had received "…the largest response to a music review in its
[The New York Times'] history" (pp. 116-17, 1967).

Influence:
The grand scale of The Beatles' achievement with Sgt. Pepper also
reflected in the way it impacted their peers in the world of pop
music. In the wake of Pepper, other groups made adventurous records,
armed with the latest studio effects and heavy doses of "chemical
inspiration," hoping to trump The Beatles (Heylin, 2007).

The Rolling Stones spent much of 1967 in between court appearances
and ingesting gargantuan quantities of LSD while recording Their
Satanic Majesties' Request, a psychedelic response to Sgt. Pepper
(Heylin, 2007). Upon its release in December 1967, Satanic Majesties
was immediately written off in John Landau's review in Rolling Stone
magazine: "Their Satanic Majesties' Request, despite moments of
unquestionable brilliance, put the status of the Rolling Stones in
jeopardy" (Landau, 1968, 10 February). The album had a cover
photograph depicting all five members draped in psychedelic garb,
looking like wizards out of some twisted fairy tale; the image was
eerily similar to the Sgt. Pepper cover. The songs seemed to have
some vague concept involving a concert or stage performance, and the
album featured a song serving as an introduction, "Sing this
Altogether," with a reprise at the end of side one entitled "Sing
this Altogether (See What Happens)" and even a grand finale, "On with
the Show" closing out the album (Their Satanic Majesties' Request, 1967).

The conceptual side of Sgt. Pepper also moved many bands that would
come to popularity in the years after the Beatles' demise as a group.
Many groups adapted the idea of a "concept album" and crafted all
varieties of stories around an entire album or double album's worth
of music. The Moody Blues were perhaps the first group post-Sgt.
Pepper to do so, with their Days of Future Passed album, also
released later in 1967. This album featured the Moodies playing with
the London Festival Orchestra as a backing group, with lyrics and an
overall concept centering on the times of day (Moore, 1997). The Who
would release the incredibly successful Tommy double album in 1969,
which was billed as a "rock opera" by Who leader Pete Townshend and
focused on the life and times of a pinball-playing "deaf, dumb and
blind" boy (Moore, 1997; Tommy, 1969). Concept albums drove the
progressive rock movement of the 1970s with strong influence from
classical and jazz music.

Bands like Yes, Genesis, Rush and Jethro Tull released albums with
strong central concepts, often involving characters and a storyline
told through the lyrics (Moore, 1997). The unique organization of the
songs on Sgt. Pepper would go on to strongly influence these concept
albums. After the release of Sgt. Pepper it became common for albums
to be structured according to how the songs fit together sonically,
with an album requiring certain landmarks that would make the album
more accessible and listenable as a complete recording. Sequential
details such as the presence of a loud or stimulating energetic
opening song and a compelling, epic closer became a sort of unspoken
industry standard when sequencing albums (Moore, 1997).

Many critics today agree that the Beatles, along with Brian Wilson of
the Beach Boys and famed producer Phil Spector, would refine the
technique of using "the studio as an instrument" during the recording
of Sgt. Pepper, drawing attention to the craftsmanship going into the
recording of the songs more than the actual quality of the
songwriting itself (Greg Kot, personal interview by the author, 23
February 2009). This detailed approach to music making is still very
much in vogue today and has been since 1967 through the expansive
works of bands such as the Flaming Lips, Nine Inch Nails, My Bloody
Valentine, and Spiritualized, as well as the production techniques of
Brian Eno (Greg Kot, personal interview by the author, 23 February
2009). The album was universally recognized as being sonically
groundbreaking, eventually winning a Grammy award for Best-Engineered
Record of 1967 (Martin et al., 1994).

The conceptual side of Sgt. Pepper has also enjoyed an influential
status among critics and musicians. The creation of alter egos and
toying with personae not only gave the Beatles much-needed freedom to
experiment musically, but has also driven other bands to uncharted
territory. The concept of stepping outside everyday life and becoming
someone else entirely had great influence on the Glam Rock of Kiss
and David Bowie. In 2000, The Smashing Pumpkins released a sprawling
concept album dealing with the life and times of a rock band in much
the same way as Sgt. Pepper and "his band." According to Kot, this
album's ambitious concept was "a definite tip of the hat to Sgt.
Pepper" (Greg Kot, personal interview by the author, 23 February 2009).

Sgt. Pepper brought attention to the entire album as a work of art,
instead of simply focusing on each individual release of singles for
radio play. The album's massive success and lack of radio-ready
singles would help persuade other artists and businessmen in the
music industry to place more focus on albums. George Martin, one of
the men who played an instrumental role in the direction of the
musical masterminds behind Sgt. Pepper, believed the album's diverse
influences came together to create "the first example of a new sort
of music, a classical/rock crossover music…" (p.137, 1994). Martin
also admitted that he viewed the album as "contemporary art" at the
time of its release, mainly due to the variety of influence "from
jazz, folk music, rock n roll, rhythm and blues…" (p.137, 1994). The
sheer number of different, and often disparate, musical influences
made the album stand out from everything that preceded it in pop
music. Western classical coexisted with Indian classical, rock n roll
with traditional music hall songs, jazz with avant-garde, all within
the boundaries of single songs. The album's diversity would herald a
new, all-inclusive aesthetic for pop albums that would follow.

Afterward:
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was a cultural entity unlike
anything seen before it. As an album, it had several effects that
were wide-ranging and in some cases which have persisted in the years
since its release. The use of innovative recording techniques and
technology set precedents for the music industry still being followed
in recording studios today. The level of detail and dedication to the
craftsmanship of the album has influenced countless producers,
engineers and musicians in all genres of music. The "hype" marketing
strategy has been used ever since by record labels to generate
publicity and album sales, not only for established and successful
artists, but also new musicians who haven't yet emerged in the industry.

Yet modern critics remain divided between love and hate for Sgt.
Pepper. Chicago Sun-Times music critic Jim DeRogatis and Chicago
Tribune music critic Greg Kot both revealed in interviews conducted
for this project that they personally dislike the album. According to
DeRogatis, "Revolver broke more ground," and the studio-heavy
psychedelic direction the group began to pursue on that album was
driven to overkill by the Beatles by the time they entered the studio
to begin work on Sgt. Pepper just a few months after its release (Jim
DeRogatis, personal interview by the author, 5 March 2009). DeRogatis
maintains the album has sustained its level of popularity due to
"baby boomer nostalgia that posits Pepper as a key cultural
cornerstone," and that the album today "has much more to do with hype
than with music" (Jim DeRogatis, personal interview by the author, 5
March 2009). According to both Kot and DeRogatis, the common thread
among the album's detractors is that the album's popularity and
"groundbreaking" label is simply due to the fact that the album was
recorded by the Beatles (Kot and DeRogatis personal interviews by the author).

While many still remain divided on its impact, the Beatles themselves
would be able to move on into further uncharted territory in their
remaining three years as a group. While the psychedelic party
continued on the album's follow-up, the uneven Magical Mystery Tour
double EP, released in December 1967, the group ultimately abandoned
many of the studio embellishments that characterized Sgt. Pepper for
a mostly stripped down, back-to-basics approach on 1968's The Beatles.

The album was at the time and remains today a unique artistic
document. It is representative of the time during which it was
created, yet also foreshadowed a musical future filled with endless
possibilities, limited only by the technology in a recording studio
and the creativity and ingenuity of the human mind. Sgt. Pepper, in
its entirely unique way, wholly altered the perception of the pop
album and the idea of how far a musical work of art could reach.
--

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