The songs flow into one another, a shifting kaleidoscope of themes and moods and musical styles, guided by the Beatles’ gut musical instincts – which were, as usual, totally right-on. Notice how the wistful “She’s Leaving Home” gains a darker context when it’s followed by the sinister frenzy of “Mr. Kite,” ending Side 1 on an ominous note. We get up, cross the room, turn the record over; we sit back down, light up, and wait to trip out on the gauzy optimism of “Within You Without You.” It's all part of the master plan.
I still find it almost impossible to listen to these tracks out of order, even though nowadays I listen to it on CD and could skip around freely. The minute I hear the fade-out at the end of “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,” I’m primed for those snarky chords that lead off “Getting Better”; that jump from the woozy sitars of “Within You Without You” to the loopy music-hall strains of “When I’m Sixty-Four” is deeply satisfying to my soul.
Every song contains at least one coded drug reference; just about every song slips in at least one jab at authority, as well as some line or another advocating love and peace and harmony. These aren’t the themes of these songs; these are simply givens in the Beatles mindset — which became ipso facto the mindset of an entire generation. Sergeant Pepper carved in vinyl what had already been floating in the hipster ether; buying this album made us all part of the club.
What these songs don’t contain is autobiographical musings on the loneliness of stardom, or the pressures of life on the road, or the avaricious spending habits of ex-wives. No pontificating from the celebrity pulpit, either. (Lennon would get there soon enough.) Nope. These songs are about people who get up to go to jobs and catch buses and wait at turnstiles and drink tea and read newspapers; folks who mend roofs and dig weeds and knit sweaters, who come home for tea and meet the wife. (Except, er, for “Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite” – that one bears no resemblance to anyone’s reality, not unless you are a Victorian circus geek.) Weird as the package looked, it was an album that invited us to participate. In fact, the weird package forced us to participate – to study the cover art, to read the lyrics, to crack the code. To sing along when the singer sang his song.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Jon Sobel
Beautiful tribute!
2 - Nancy
Awesome article on Sgt Peppers. One of my favorite beatles albums. I think they changed the world!
3 - JC Mosquito
Last time I had anything to say about the Beatles on bc I took a lot of flak precisely because they are the best, or at least the first among equals in the great pantheon of rock bands. I understand why you hold Sgt. Pepper close & dear, but I'm from a (slightly) different era. I won't quibble about its great artwork or enduring influence, or stellar production techniques, but musically, it's not their best album; in fact, it's not even a great album on its own merits.
Lucy in the Sky and Day In the Life are beyond brilliant, but the rest is fairly mundane - at best, some average tunes propped up by good production & playing, at worse, self indulgent and unfocused second rate tunage.
Some of it could've been reworked - the Anthology series has the backing track of Good Morning before the horns were added. She's Leaving Home is a beautiful song with a great string arrangement, but it comes across as just another Sgt. Pepper gimmick.
Like I said - maybe if I was there at the time I would've got it - it wasn't really my generation. I remember 1967, tho' - I got More of the Monkees for a birthday present. As important or influential as Sgt. P? Not a chance. A better record than Sgt. P? Hmmm..... well, it does have Steppin Stone, I'm a Believer, She, Mary Mary, Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow)....
4 - Holly Hughes
Heh heh. The Monkees are underrated, I'll grant you that. "More of the Monkees" -- had they even started playing their own instruments by then?
Taking potshots at the Beatles is always risky, sure. But sometimes it's just as risky to reassert how great they were. Too often we take them for granted, and everybody has their own secret real favorite band, and the Beatles get put on some untouchable pedestal and forgotten about. It makes better copy to tear them down.
The phrase "just another Sgt. Pepper gimmick" baffles me. I think it's fair to say that "She's Leaving Home" was thoroughly heartfelt, and charted fresh emotional territory for the rock song; it's the first song I know that portrayed both sides of the generation gap and really laid bare how unbreachable it seemed. (Roger Daltry stuttering "My Generation" sounds petulant next to this.) What about it strikes you as gimmicky?
5 - Barbara
She's Leaving Home is a Paul song and not John, although he did add a few lines.
6 - Holly Hughes
Good catch, Barbara, thanks. Maybe that's why it comes across as so sincere...though John's nasal rendition of the parents' voices obviously imprinted more strongly for me!
I see now that my CD liner notes annotate who wrote each song. Back in the old days (now I'm really sounding like my parents) they were all simply credited "Lennon-McCartney" and you had to guess.
7 - John
I never get tired of listening to it and especially now that I got a hold of the DTS version....awesome.
8 - Joe
This post made me feel really old...I'm 52 and remember the release of Sgt. Pepper as clearly as it happened yesterday. My best friend and I were major Beatles freaks and had to be the first ones on the block...
There is an interesting aspect of this record that most younger people have never experienced. My first copy of the LP was a monophonic copy, because the cheap phonograph I owned could handle the sound of mono records better. I always had a feeling that the sound of the mono release was different in some way to the stereo release. Not because all the sound came from one speaker, but in the overall sound presentation.
Years later, I discovered that their producer, George Martin, actually did mix their LPs differently for mono and stereo. If you have to opportunity to hear Pepper in mono, do it. The experience is quite remarkable.
One standout difference is in Lucy in the Sky. Te mono mix has an almost fuller sound, almost Spector-ish, and it swirls over the listener in a far more "psychedelic" way than the stereo mix. In fact, I was so enamored of that sound, it actually took me a long time to get used to hearing Lucy in stereo.
I don't believe there's a commercial mono release on CD, but I know there were bootleg versions floating around for a while.
9 - Lee Richards
The Beatles, (with the help of this immensely creative album), influenced/revolutionized vocal and instrumental music performance, the music business, recording techniques, film, fashion, religion, politics, how kids looked at the world, and popular culture in general.
We'll never see the like again.
10 - zingzing
"But this was the first rock music album that was really conceived as one piece, to be listened to as a whole."
not true! at all. freak out.
11 - Holly Hughes
Waiting for you to enlighten us as to who did it earlier, zing. Whenever you're ready.
Joe, I dug out my turntable just to enjoy that mono mix again. I'm not obsessed by those audiophile distinctions like some folks are, but for this little window of time, it was significant. Most of us kids at the time did have crappy little record players, and 45s were mostly in mono (most UK albums of the time kept singles distinct from LPs, and didn't even put those tracks on albums). Not everything that was retroactively stereo-ized worked better in stereo...
12 - Marcelo Baeza Sequeira
If you take a look at my blog you can notice that I'm listening the Beatles since the day I was born, 33 years ago.
Almost all the elements that people use to mention to celebrate Peppers you can find on Revolver (the cover, the new sounds, the new lyrics), this is the LP that separeted the history in before and after ...
Of course, Peppers is great, but my inspiration is Revolver.
13 - JC Mosquito
Holly - please note that I said She's Leaving Home is a beautiful, well arranged song. It's similar to Eleanor Rigby in its tone & arrangement. My problem is that it's very beauty becomes part of the "so, what offbeat thing will we do with this one?" mentality of Sgt. Pepper. On any other album it would have been a refreshing break, like E. Rigby, like Yesterday, liek Good Night, but here the arrangement doesn't seem to serve to purplse opf the song: instead, it serves the purpose of the concept album.
14 - zingzing
"Waiting for you to enlighten us as to who did it earlier, zing. Whenever you're ready. "
FREAK OUT. i already said that. it's an album by the mothers of invention. came out in 1966.
as a concept album, sgt pepper barely holds together. all it does is reprise the title track and mention billy shears as the singer of the next track. other than that, it has no thematic unity. it is a false construct. yes, it is all good. some tracks flow into each other. that's been done before. take any rogers and hammerstein musical. the first velvet underground album was recorded and ready for release (and held up in court over a photograph) before sgt pepper was released and is more groundbreaking in lyrical and musical content. pet sounds is more solid. the kinks put out stronger albums around the same time with more thematic unity.
sgt pepper was actually the first beatles album in a few years that WASN'T a massive leap forward. the recording techniques just involved a saturation of revolver-era ideas. the songwriting had slipped.
not knocking the album--it's a great album--but the importance of the album has been greatly inflated since it was released. it's not as if the beatles were the only group heading in this direction. they just happened to be the beatles, and therefore did it as well as anyone could hope to.
15 - Holly Hughes
Sorry, I still don't get what you're driving at here. It's a sorrowful song about a failed relationship; the strings add to the wistful air, while the counterpointed vocals drive home the fact that she and her parents are on two different planets. This seems totally appropriate to me and not offbeat at all. Does it sound like forced nostalgia to you?
16 - Holly Hughes
The above was in response to the "She's Leaving Home" question, BTW.
Thanks for your analysis, zing. I guess there's a fine line here between a record that hangs together because the songwriter/artist is in a certain phase of his life, and one that is structured deliberately as a progression of ideas. Miles Davis's Kind of Blue could be called a concept album too, if that's where you're going with the term. Ray Davies writes Something Else as an entire album of suburban vignettes because he's preoccupied with living in suburbia at the time, and of course it's a great album, but is it a concept album per se?
Which Rodgers and Hammerstein cast album falls into the rock music category? Last time I saw The King and I, it was NOT about Elvis. Anyway, that's an excerpt of a coherent work of art, not an end in itself. By that standard, Selected Arias from The Marriage of Figaro could be a concept album too.
I will grant you Freak Out...but when Sgt Pepper's came out, absolutely nobody I knew had heard Freak Out. I certainly hadn't. It simply did not factor in the general reaction at the time, 40 years ago. I can dredge it up now and say, "oh wow man," but I'd be faking it as a credible historical reaction.
17 - Tennynche
Nice commentary Holly.
Came over from Digg. I am an unashamed Beatles fan, born several years after SPLHCB. And while I enjoy the album as much as the next Beatles fan, I think I have to agree with the folks who are downplaying its musical accomplishments.
What it should be recognized for, as a subset of The Beatles themselves, is its uncanny ability to bring the crest of the musical moment to the masses.
The Beatles were not the best musicians, or the best songwriters (although close), but they with George Martin knew exactly what, when, why and how to bring the newest pop music ideas to the greater population. English pop...check. Indian musical stylings... check. Electronic distortions and pyschedelia...check. Heavy metal...check. Theme albums...check. And the list goes on. They were rarely the first or even the best at any given thing, but they knew what it took to make it popular.
18 - zingzing
"Which Rodgers and Hammerstein cast album falls into the rock music category? Last time I saw The King and I, it was NOT about Elvis."
true. i forgot the "rock music" qualification for a moment. dig the residents reference though.
"I guess there's a fine line here between a record that hangs together because the songwriter/artist is in a certain phase of his life, and one that is structured deliberately as a progression of ideas."
and sgt pepper wasn't a true concept album either. there is no story, there is no concept. and it wasn't really structured at all. it's a totally false construct. they wanted to make it look like it had some flow, but even the barebones construction they put together is obviously flimsy. even the who sells out holds together better, mostly because they keep up the pretense throughout the album instead of just hinting at it at the beginning and the end.
"I will grant you Freak Out...but when Sgt Pepper's came out, absolutely nobody I knew had heard Freak Out."
my dad had it. and he was no musical adventurer. and he lived in nowhere, minnesota. so someone must have heard it. maybe someone named paul mccartney? yeah, that's who... (the system won't let me put in a reference for you, but it's well documented.)
19 - JC Mosquito
Hmm... how else can I explain it? Suppose you find a nice shade of color for painting your living room. I'm no decorator, let's make up a colour - Sahara Brown f'r instance (hey, maybe there is such a colour!). You get a nice paint job, but then you go about making every single thing in your room some kind of brown. It might be too much - in fact it your original Sahara Brown might just become unnoticeable amongst the other earthtones.
But a good decorator would tell you how much brown, what shades, and what other complementary colors bring out the nice paint for which you just spent big dollars.
Does that help, or am I do job of parallelling?
20 - JC Mosquito
I mean a bad job of parallelling.
21 - zingzing
jc-- i get what you are saying. but i don't agree. she's leaving home is a domestic melodrama. and the music follows that up. it perfectly suits the song. which does nothing to suit the concept album, as there is no concept. what has this got to do with what comes next... mr. kite, is it?
22 - JC Mosquito
Zing - I don't see She's Leaving Home as melodramatic - I mean it comes off as melodramatic with all that symphonic stuff, but I think at heart it's a sad song whose subject matter gets played out in many variations across the world in real life. Kids grow up, and move away. And life goes on, but not necessarily life as we once knew it.
I'd like to hear it solo vox et pianoforte.
Regardless, you are right - Mr. Kite - whatever. I think the cut up tape loops for the organ solo is the most interesting thing about that song.
As I've said before - take all the Beatles 1967 recordings, and you'd have a great album - Strawberry Fields, Lucy, Day in the Life, Walrus (Lennon was on a tear that year) - add the best Paul songs, a George or two, and you could have 10 - 12 absolute killer songs and undisputably the greatest album ever made.
Then again, maybe it's better this way - if the best band ever made the best album ever, there wouldn't be much point writing or recording any more music, would there be?
23 - ardee
Great essay. I agree about the historical significance of Pepper and I love it but for my money Revolver is the Fab's all around best album (it had a clever "revolutionary" album cover too). Just as a historical note the "snippet of garbled backwards gibberish (which I can guarantee is a freaky thing to listen to late at night, in the dark)" was the so called inner groove. The idea was when the album side was over the tone arm would circle in a records inner groove until it was lifted off. The Beatles figured why not record something to put there. If the listener had too much tea it could play for hours. Lennon claimed that there was even dog whistles to give the dogs something to listen too.
24 - zingzing
the dog whistle is right before the inner groove. you can hear it on the compact disc quite easily.
25 - ardee
Just a quick follow up about my thougts on Pepper vis a vis Revolver. While I concede Pepper being an artistic breakthough I just think that Revolver has aged better through the years. The songs are so timeless they still sound fresh. A lot of those songs could be hits in 2007. In fact "Tomorrow never knows" sounds like it could be recorded the day after tomorrow.