It’s hard to imagine a world without ‘Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band‘. The physicist C.P. Snow once said if Einstein hadn’t locked himself away, indulged in a spot of chin-stroking and eventually conceived the General Theory of Relativity, which revolutionised the way we think about science, we’d still be waiting for that idea to occur to someone else now. In the same vein, you have to wonder that if The Beatles hadn’t locked themselves away in Abbey Road during those few fruitful months over 40 years ago, following their self-imposed exile from live duties in 1966, whether we might equally still be waiting for a band to revolutionise the face of popular music today.
It may be a stretch to say Sgt. Pepper’s invented the modern idea of an ‘album’. Even though The Beatles themselves and contemporaries such as The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys had begun life as recording artists merely by merging a selection of covers and the occasional original track to cobble together their early releases, by 1967 the concept as we know now, comprising largely of a band’s own material and providing an accurate snap-shot of where those artists happened to be musically at that particular period of their career, had already begun to take shape.
The Beatles themselves had set their own ball rolling on the soundtrack to ‘Hard Day’s Night‘, taken it further on ‘Rubber Soul‘. and first portrayed their true greatness on ‘Revolver‘. The Rolling Stones, who’s own true greatness would be cemented in the wake of the Fab Four’s messy implosion in 1970, had moved on from being forced to come up with ‘As Tears Go By’ in a kitchen by their manager Andrew Oldham, to releasing ‘Aftermath’, their first record of entirely original material, in 1966. Once the polarising Pepper’s imitation ‘Their Satanic Majesties Request’ had been gotten out of the way in December ‘67, their first classic, ‘Beggar’s Banquet’, would follow a year later.
As for The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson was also becoming more and more acquainted with the great indoors, and they had already issued their magnum opus, ‘Pet Sounds’, in May 1966, a record which occupied a prominent spot in Paul McCartney’s thoughts throughout the Pepper sessions, and there had been equally enduring, recognisably modern-day long players such as Simon & Garfunkel’s ’Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme’, more than a handful from Bob Dylan’s greedy coffers, and ‘Yardbirds‘ (or ’Roger the Engineer‘, if you prefer), while ’Velvet Underground & Nico’ would pre-date Pepper’s by just a couple of months and prove to be a serious rival for that year’s best release.
Instead, what Sgt. Peppers did was to take the precedent being set at the time and expand it further than anyone had until then thought attainable. They looked beyond merely showcasing their own compositions, and pushed every inch of Abbey Road’s capabilities to its limits. They explored what significant impact artwork and promotion could have on the success of an LP, and ultimately made the quality, or lack of it, the all important cornerstone of what should define the chapters of any rock n roll band‘s story.
The shift to being a ‘studio band’ had been coming for a while; there wasn’t one reason for packing in the incessant touring which had come to define The Beatles ever since they first made the eye-opening, nun-watering journey to Hamburg in 1960. Beatlemania, captured at its height with that famous shot of the Fab Four at Shea Stadium, creating history whilst striding gleefully into the future, had disintegrated into a nightmarish slog thanks to a number of issues, predominantly logistical problems, cultural clashes, boredom and most destructively of all for any group, a dropping of musical standards. According to Ringo, he’d taken to staring at his bandmates’ backsides in an attempt to keep in time while on stage – as good a time as any to think about packing it in.
After a short break involving acting stints and trips to India, it was towards the end of 1966 when the Sgt. Pepper’s blueprint first began to be drawn up, thanks to the transformation of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ over the course of a long weekend in Abbey Road from a more traditional, acoustic-led ode to past memories, to a far more wide-ranging pop song incorporating brass, strings, double tracks, a new arrangement and many other fledging techniques which turned a memorable melody into something far greater – a pattern which would define the next few months for The Beatles.
When Paul McCartney came to the party with his own childhood-inspired masterpiece, in this case ‘Penny Lane’, The Beatles had brought together one of the greatest singles of all time. Though not featuring on the album, a common practise of the era, the double A-side single was released in February 1967 at the height of the Pepper sessions, and was famously kept off the top spot by that most curiously named of crooners, Engelbert Humperdinck.
An original vision for their new sessions, led by McCartney, spurred on by the recent grapples with touring, was to create a concept album underpinned by a fictional band, with fictional members and, in relieving the four bandmates of their own duties, taking the record out on tour instead. As it turned out, the idea was never fully realised, but fragments did remain and become important aspects of the record, from the introduction and farewells of ‘Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ and its reprise, to the lavish costumes which served as the focal point of the iconic sleeve design. Ringo Starr, by now filling his time by getting in some crucial chess practise, did see his alter-ego living on, as Billy Shears following the opener seamlessly on ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’.
The effect of drugs on the album is undoubted – that Sgt. Pepper’s is very much a child of the world it was released to is largely down to the fact. As the extravagant fashion and growing emphasis on art mirrors the mood of nearby Carnaby Street, so too the psychedelic themes and sounds which run throughout the record clearly echo the use of LSD and acid by many of those leading the cultural revolution at the time.
However, the one song which most point to as the boldest example of this practise, ‘Lucy In The Sky Diamonds’, was robustly denied by Lennon and his fellow Beatles as having any conscious reference to drugs at all. It’s easy to believe the use of the initials L.S.D is just too obvious to be a coincidence, but the story always maintained by Lennon was the motivation came from nothing more than a picture drawn by his son Julian. “What’s that?” John is said to have asked when presented with the drawing. “It’s Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,” was Julian’s response. Is the account true? Who knows, but given Lennon’s otherwise forthright nature on the subject of drug use, it would have been out of character to have distanced himself on this occasion.
As it is, the truth behind the original meaning of the track is irrelevant; that ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’, and ultimately its LP, was taken by many as being an ode to the substance presently fuelling a new counter-culture helped Sgt. Pepper’s to move beyond merely being a collection of brilliant songs expertly crafted in the studio, to being that rarest of things – the soundtrack for a generation.
When the time came to work on ‘Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite’, George Martin was simply told by John Lennon that he ‘wanted to smell the sawdust‘; increasingly, Martin was becoming an integral member of The Beatles’ inner circle. Charged from day one with the unenviable task of turning the imaginations and thoughts swimming around Lennon and Paul McCartney’s heads into musical reality, their producer proved to be the perfect conduit – continuously and calmly rising to each of the new challenges being asked of him.
He used his classically trained background and encyclopaedic knowledge to meet the ever increasing demands of his young charges, and was able to sprinkle the right amount of gold-dust over the sketchiest of ideas in order to elevate a new track up to that much sought after plain of ‘classic’. Many people of the era, either directly or indirectly, laid claim to being ‘The Fifth Beatle’, but only one man can claim to have earned the tag, and to have played such an important role in The Beatles’ evolution – and that man is George Martin.
Though a slightly reluctant participant in the Sgt. Peppers story, George Harrison nevertheless signalled his continued growth as a songwriter to match Lennon and McCartney with his sole contribution to the record. As the member of The Beatles most immersed in the Indian music which was such a crucial part of the band at the time, Harrison had first lent his new love of the sitar to ‘Rubber Soul’s ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’ in 1965, and with his own ‘Love You To’ from ‘Revolver’, the influence had come to be his prime source of creative inspiration.
A visit to India before the Pepper’s sessions began led to Harrison returning as more than just the proud owner of a new moustache, and had stimulated the fruition of ‘Within You Without You’, initially as a much longer, 30 minute-plus composition. As well as the array of Asian instruments, there are many other, less obvious Indian-fused methods brought to the table by Harrison, such as his unusual guitar work during ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’, and the comfortable marriage of both Eastern and more traditional Western sounds and procedures into one accessible whole is another undoubted triumph for the record.
Despite their approach to songwriting being more ‘Lennon or McCartney’ than ‘Lennon & McCartney’ by 1967, there were still sparks of the old genius collaboration present and correct on Sgt. Pepper’s, none more so than on the album’s grandiose closer ‘A Day In The Life’. Fittingly, as the track which brings the curtain down on Pepper’s, ‘A Day In The Life’ provides a perfect window to the album that has preceded it; an amalgamation of farmed lyrics from everyday sources, dreamy psychedelia and technical brilliance.
The virtuoso orchestral wall of noise that ties McCartney’s quirky, “woke up, fell out of bed” number to Lennon’s embryonic contribution was borne purely out of a need to do just that – to combine the two different ideas into one coherent song and, by returning to the same piece for the outro, it proved to be the perfect opportunity to end the album with a bang.
The Beatles’ desire to throw everything at their new LP wasn’t just contained to the studio, and when it came to designing the sleeve, the early idea of a fictional group was reignited, and Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was to be a group laden with stars (and evil dictators, if Lennon had gotten his own way). The outlandish uniforms, now entirely synonymous with the album, provide the centrepiece, surrounded by floral decorations and a galaxy of heroes, contemporaries and political figures – everyone from Bob Dylan to Sir Robert Peel – are all present and correct.
With another gesture of imagination, a medium which for so long had largely seen a location photo of the band or artist as pushing the boat out had instead been transformed into a viable work of art, complete with cut-outs and badges for the owner. Now, the cover and packaging was as much a part of the album process as the music itself. Their habit of finding the right man to turn their abstract mumblings into something more articulate happily continued, and this time with the not inconsiderable help of Peter Blake rather than George Martin, The Beatles had just added a new dimension to the world of record making.
It’s hard to imagine now, in the 21st century, with all the multi-million pound, high-tech compositions which have come to be accepted as normal, just what a giant leap forward in terms of production, recording techniques and promotion Sgt. Pepper’s represented. It set the standard which the likes of ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’, ‘Led Zeppelin IV’ and ’The Rise and Fall Of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars’ more immediately followed, and remains the barometer by which any aspiring great recording should judge itself. When Arcade Fire laid down their recent LP ‘The Suburbs’, already one of the great modern day examples of an ‘album’ in its truest definition, they were following in a long line of descendants that can be traced back to ‘Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’.
It is an album which vividly reflects the mind-set of its time. As The Beatles found themselves at the centre of the growing ‘Flower Power’ movement, suddenly their generation felt they could change the world, and it was this ethos which they carried with them during those months in Abbey Road; that rules could be broken, change was needed, and nothing was impossible. As it transpired, those dreams of upheaval would prove unfounded – by the time Sgt. Pepper’s finally began to disappear from the charts a duller, greyer Seventies was approaching, and the colour and optimism of the Summer of Love was becoming increasingly distant, as were the various Beatles to each other.
By contrast, nothing about that era’s finest hour has dimmed, and the album’s influence on every corner of modern day music remains, just like those famous uniforms, as bright as ever.
(Dave Smith)
