The Act You’ve Known For All These Years
Russ Smith writes a tribute to Sgt. Pepper, the landmark Beatles album that came out 40 years ago. He reminds us that the album, for good or ill, changed music forever. He's right.
"Sgt. Pepper," the group's first album that wasn't supported by a world-wide tour, captured, to use a word that didn't become a cliché for years afterward, the "zeitgeist" then, impeccably in sync with the "Summer of Love," "flower power," psychedelia and the youthful lifestyle of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. That the Beatles, weary of avoiding hordes of fans and tabloid reporters, abandoned live concerts was in itself a radical shift of gears, but spending more than four months in a recording studio on a single project, and a "concept" album at that, was unheard of. Revisionists today, when critiquing the Beatles' discography, aren't quite as rapturous about "Sgt. Pepper" as millions of fans were in 1967, but the immediate impact of the album can't be overstated.
When "Sgt. Pepper" appeared, it was as if a massive block party had appeared outside your window. I was nearly 12 years old at the time and when one of my four older brothers came home with the highly anticipated new Beatles record, we listened to it over and over, marveling at the sheer audacity of songwriters John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Doug, overwhelmed by enthusiasm and hyperbole, declared, matter-of-factly, "The band has changed its name forever and rock 'n' roll will never be the same."
And it wasn't just the music. The album cover itself was breathtaking, a puzzling and colorful collage by Peter Blake that showed the band, in gaudy mock-military costumes, presiding over the burial of the "old" Beatles, with scattered mug shots of high and low cultural icons hovering in the background. You'd go cross-eyed trying to figure out just how many notables were depicted — a mass of pop art that included Marilyn Monroe, Karl Marx, Aldous Huxley, Marlene Dietrich, Sonny Liston, Laurel and Hardy, Oscar Wilde, Marlon Brando, Leo Gorcey, Bob Dylan, Lenny Bruce and Mae West.
Almost forgotten these days by a lot of people (or even never known by younger people) is just how technically innovative the album was. It was a massive experiment in many ways, with new techniques that have become standard these days. And it was recorded in what is now considered to be a positively stone-age studio. To underscore how transitional the album really was, it was originally recorded, mixed and released in mono. Abbey Road Studios engineers remixed it into a stereo version. (The two versions have a number of differences, as well). I actually have both the mono and stereo versions on vinyl.
By Uncle Pinky, Saturday, 19 May , 2007 @ 1:43 pm
Yah.
I don’t hold much of a brief for the Beatles themselves and have been known to argue that they were not as seminal an influence as most would have one think but Sgt. Pepper was groundbreaking in many ways.
Still prefer Iggy.
By feeblemind, Saturday, 19 May , 2007 @ 5:22 pm
40 yrs ago I was 11 1/2. I wasn’t into pop music except for maybe the Royal Guardsmen and their Snoopy/Red Baron songs. The Beatles never appealed to me for a number of reasons, and still don’t to this day.