There had been much talk in the press in late 1966, about the fall of the mighty Beatles. They weren't touring, they weren't churning out as many 45 rpm singles as they used to, Paul McCartney had written a soundtrack for a movie called "The Family Way" so he must have left the band, John Lennon was starring in his own movie, "How I Won The War," so he must have left the band, they were not giving interviews, there was still residual backlash from John's "Jesus" comments and so on. What had happened is that the Beatles decided after their disatrous Phillipine tour fiasco to quit touring for good in 1966. They became a studio band and in the process transcended beyond a mere rock band into the mythical realm of musical force . How did it happen you ask? It happened with the release of this mind-bending LP.

Paul McCartney had noticed that Elvis Presley had sent his purple Cadillac on tour and thought it was the cleverest idea he had ever heard of; why bother hitting the road when you could send your car. Crazy but inventive. Since the Beatles had definitively quit touring, Paul thought it would still be a good idea to get something out there to the fans besides just releasing singles now and then so he came up with the idea of an alter-ego band. Ideas were thrown around and eventually the thoughts morphed into a pretend band called Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band that would hit the road instead of the Beatles. Paul always claimed it was very liberating to pretend to be someone else. Despite McCartney's disingenous claims that Sgt. Pepper was/is "HIS" album, it was very much a group effort with a great deal of support and imagination supplied by their friends such as Robert Fraser and photographer Michael Cooper.

Upon its release, Sgt. Pepper literally overwhelmed fans and critics alike. It was truly a moment of "singularity" in western Pop culture when Sgt. Pepper came out. It shot to #1 overnight and critics swooned. Activist Abby Hoffman famously claimed that when Sgt. Pepper came out, "It was like Beethoven coming to the supermarket." In 1970, when people were polled as to what the defining moments of the 1960's were, most respondants said, 1) The death of both Kennedys and Martn Luther King, 2) The first man on the moon, and 3) The first time they heart Sgt. Pepper.  The impact of this album simply cannot be exaggerated.  And to think that these four young men had been such naive, callow simple rockers in June, 1963. In just four years, nearly to the day, the Beatles had taken over studio recording and pushed it to heights never dreamed of, restructured Rock & Roll completely, became the biggest Pop cultural icons in existence and conquered the world in the process. Not bad for four musical illiterates who couldn't even read music.

Charting:  Sgt. Pepper remained at #1 in the UK charts for an astounding 23 WEEKS! It returned to #1 two more times for a total spell at #1 of 27 weeks. It "fell" to #2 on Nov. 4 and remained at #2 until Jan. 13, 1968 where it slipped to #3 only to return to #2 on Feb. 3.  Incredibly, Sgt. Pepper charted again at #20 for the week of October 12, 1968.  In the US Billboard charts, the popularity of this album was similar: the album hit #1 on July 1, 1967 and stayed there for 15 weeks where it fell to #2 for the week of October 14. Sgt. Pepper charted intermittently until mid August, 1970. Simply astounding. When the album was re-released on CD in 1987, it charted in the top 10 for weeks on the US and the UK.  It spent 30 weeks at #1 in the Australian charts! 

In 2003, Rolling Stone Magazine once again selected Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as the greatest album in history.

Sounds: The Beatles created a number of new sounds and new techniques for the recording of this album. Together with the overall song quality, stellar production and engineering of the album as well as the eye catching graphics on the album cover, everything conspired to give Sgt. Pepper a special appeal, both sonically and visually. For example, McCartney himself contributed to the sound difference when he discovered direct injection (DI) into the sound board with his Rickenbacker bass. it gave the bass guitar a whole new and different sounding presence on this album. Fuzzboxes were used far more extensively on the guitars for this LP. Vocals were routed through Leslie organ speakers as were guitars, continuing the experimental excursions the band started on "Revolver" with the Leslie. Add to this, George Martin and Geoff Emerick, their producer and 1st engineer respectively, thought to hook up two four track machines to create a faux 8 track recording device. The Beatles themselves introduced the keyboard tape-sampler instrument known as the Mellotron into songs. There was increased use of phasing and ADT (artificial double tracking) of vocals on Pepper in addition to more highly refined echo and tape delay. The Beatles also requested "vari-speeding" on their vocals and instruments which meant that tapes of them were either sped up or slowed down as desired to create even more odd sounding effects.

The Beatles also insisted on late night to the dawn recording sessions so they wouldn't be bothered by fans and media as much. There were elaborate musical arrangements for this album unlike any other, before or since such as the winds for "When I'm Sixty Four," the east meets west synthesis on George's "Within You, Without You," were he brought in a small orchestra of Indian musicians to play on this track that was augmented by a George Martin score of strings. There was the tape dubbing on Lennon's "Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite" in which John wanted a circus effect with calliopes playing. Producer George Martin couldn't get a real calliope so he found a number of tapes in the vaults at Abbey Road's sound effects department. He chopped up dozens of tapes of calliopes, tossed them up in the air, picked them up at complete random off the floor, spliced them together as they were found and that is the background circus sounds were hear to this day on the finished album.

Keyboards: There was extra heavy use of keyboard variants on this album as well: Grand piano on "A Day in the Life," a lowrey organ on "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," a harpsichord on "Fixing a Hole," a harmonium played on "Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite."  Throughout the LP one can also hear electric piano, upright piano, Hammond organ, a glockenspeil and of course the Mellotron.

Drugs also played a great part in the creative spark that pushed this album. Lennon in particular was high on LSD a great deal of the time, Harrison less so. That along with marijuana added to the dream like atmosphere that permeated much of the album.

The songs were great too: "A Day In The Life" is often singled out as perhaps the Beatles greatest achievment. It is also another example of how one Beatle could bring in a basic tune and with the help of the others and George Martin, the rough tune turns into an enduring classic. Such was the case here. Lennon had the basic tune in his head and upon hearing the rough vocal takes of the song on the Anthology 3 album, one can see his vocals went virtually unchanged when the song was finished. John wanted a middle 8 part and Paul happily supplied the "Woke up, fell out of bed . . . ." part. It was a partial song snipped McCartney had in his head that he hadn't known what to do with. Then there was the incredible orchestral buildup that occurs twice in the song. Lennon wanted something that turned into "the end of the world." Martin supplied it. As a kid growing up with this album, your humble correspondant always felt that this orchestral buildup was the most difficult orchestral score on earth. How funny then to find out that Martin brought in 40 musicians from the London Philharmonic and showed them all charts he had drawn up: there was one note in the first measure followed by a squiggly ascending line for 23 more bars ending on a higher note. That's it. Each muscian was tasked with slowly ascending up this chromatic scale, they were to take their time and NOT follow anyone near them; just be sure to hit the high note at the end of 24 bars.  To these trained musicians, it was sheer madness but they being paid so well they got into the spirit. For this session, they were required to wear black tie and then made to wear funny hats and masks during the actual session. To trumpeter David Mason, all this was normal since he had been the trumpeter who played the piccilo trumpet solo on "Penny Lane" a few months before.  Many of the other tracks on this LP have become timeless classics such as the "Sgt. Pepper Overture," "With A Little Help From My Friends," "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds," "When I'm Sixty Four" to name a few.  All in all, a fantastic seller and one of the biggest selling albums of all time.

Album Cover: Paul was  a good friend of prominet art dealer Robert Fraser. It was Fraser, who upon seeing the initial art work for Sgt. Pepper, insisted to Paul that the swirling kaleidescope color scheme was very faddish and would be deemed foolish and out of date before the year was over. Paul agreed. Fraser went on to suggest his friend Peter Blake as the designer who could draft a far better, more timely album cover. Paul and the Beatles agreed and after many ideas were thrown around, the cover as we know it today was arrived at with many of the Beatles' heros on the front admiring Sgt. Pepper's band. It was Blake's idea to have the lyrics printed on the back cover, a first in rock history. The other Beatles talked Paul out of Salvation Army tunics and into more appropriate band uniforms. More on that a little later.

Grammys: Sgt. Pepper won 4 Grammys:
1) Best Album of the Year
2) Best Contemporary Album
3) Best Album Cover
4) Best Engineered Album

Fun facts and Trivia regarding Rock's Greatest album:
1) An early title for the LP was Dr. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band until they found out there was a drink by that name in the US.
2) Mal Evans, their late roadie and road manager, is credited with coming up with the name Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and had a hand with some of the lyrics. He received a share of the royalties.
3) The Bizarre rumour that spread in October, 1969 that Paul was dead had many "clues" on this album. One of the most popular "clues" was the patch on Paul McCartney's left sleeve on his blue tunic. The letters looked like "OPD" which the rumors felt stood for Officially Pronounced Dead. It has since been debunked as OPD-Ontario Police Department. Even that is not right; the letters are OPP: Ontario Provincial Police.
4) The Sgt. Pepper tunics were made to order by Maurice Berman's Theatrical costumers.
5) "Getting Better" was inspired by Jimmy Nicol, the drummer who stood in briefly for Ringo during the Beatles' first World Tour when Ringo himself was felled by toncillitis in 1964.
6) The first woman EVER to play on a Beatles track played on this album: Sheila Bromberg played the harp on "She's Leaving Home."
7) Michael Cooper was the photographer for the entire photo shoot for this album. He too was a friend of Robert Fraser who suggested to the Beatles to use Cooper for the difficult photo shoots.
8) George and Paul were each wearing their official MBE medals. Ringo and John didn't.
9) Contrary to popular belief, Sgt. Pepper was not the first Beatles album to not be accompanied by a single from the album. "Rubber Soul" also did not have a single taken from that album.
10) The Beatles spent over 700 hours in the studio to finish what amounted to just over 40 minutes of track time.

Epilogue: Sgt. Pepper was perhaps the last time the Beatles actually functioned as a cohesive group rather than seperate band members. Egos hadn't gotten out of control at this point. The fact that their manager Brian Epstein was still around had much to do with keeping each of the Beatles and their issues and hissy fits away from each other. It was also the last time the Beatles dressed alike in the day glow outfits, had similar hair and mustaches and so forth. After this album, their physical appearances began to diverge tremendously.

Funny how time flys; author Hunter Davies was present for these sessions and based some of his landmark book on what he observed during their writing and recording. In 1967, the Beatles were literally on top of the world with no end in sight. They got along and seemed to love each other. Consider this:
a) Brian Epstein would live to see the success of Pepper but would be dead by August 27, 1967 of an accidental drug overdose.
b) The Beatles, within one year, would be bickering with each other incessantly. By 1970, the group would be finished.
c) Photographer Michael Cooper would be dead by 1971 of drug related issues.
d) Mal Evans would be dead by 1976 having been shot by Los Angeles Police.
e) John Lennon would be gone too by 1980.

Nevertheless, Sgt. Pepper remains this correspondant's favorite Beatles LP to this day. Like all great works, it remains timeless; that is to say, so accomlished, so ahead of its time, so well done that it lingers beyond the reach of time. Truly a monumental moment and effort by the greatest band in history, or should I say musical force?

A Spendid Time was Guaranteed for All.

By John Haberstroh  (Bassist for Beatle Tracks)