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During a recent TV special, it wa said that, during the time the Beatles were in the studio making "Sgt. Pepper...", there was a lot of doubt about what they would come out with and many fans were giving up on them. As someone who was around at the time, I certainly don't remember much of that. Of course, the Beatles always had a few doubters and detractors, but most of us were looking forward to their next record. Stories of how much time and effort were going into it only fueled our anticipation. It was like the release of the fourth Harry Potter book when "Sgt. Pepper..." finally came out. Some stores opened early and huge numbers were sold the first day of it's release. I bought a copy that day like many others. Nor was I disappointed. Since then, I have spent many hours listening to "Sgt. Pepper..." and I expect I'll spend many more.

To appreciate the significance of "Sgt. Pepper..." you have to understand the pivotal place of the Beatles in the culture of the time. Quite simply, they changed everything. Before the Beatles, the primary medium of pop/rock music was the 45 rpm single. The Beatles released a flood of good quality songs, many original, so that "albums" became more than just a couple of hit singles packaged with a bunch of throwaway tracks. All of the tracks were good and people began to buy albums because it was the best way to get all the music. "Sgt. Pepper..." took this a step further by making the album a more unified whole. It elevated pop/rock music to the level of art, implying an expressiveness and timelessness beyond anything rock had previously aspired to. But the impact of the Beatles went far beyond music. It entered into fashion, modes of behavior, and popular attitudes in a variety of areas. We were even fed a constant stream of news reports about what the Beatles were doing from day to day or week to week. London became, for a time, THE cultural center of the world.

"Sgt. Pepper..." itself has a timeless quality. Songs such as With A Little Help From My Friends, Getting Better, Within You Without You, When I'm Sixty-four and others have themes that people can relate to just as well today as when they were first released. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds and A Day In The Life, while perhaps mored dated lyrically, are among the most interesting pieces in other respects.

For those of us who were around and listening when "Sgt. Pepper..." came out, it is more than just a record or CD. It marks the peak of a time of incredible energy and change. The decline and dissolution of the Beatles is something many of us still feel in a very personal way. Even today, we mourn the end of the Beatles and the death of John Lennon. Those events represent the passing and final end of something we treasured.

"Sgt. Pepper..." is a great record by a great band. Even more, it is a central landmark of its period and of its genre. If you think you like rock music, but you don't have a copy of "Sgt. Pepper...", sorry but you've missed it. Get a copy. You can't really appreciate the Beatles without it. Definitely a favorite of mine, and I expect it will be a favorite of yours, too.


Hyperboles Galore!   August 26, 2002
 202 out of 265 found this review helpful

When thinking of music I really dig, I always wind back with Beatles tunes as part of my list. So do you. That's why you are reading my review. Maybe we can bicker about the finer points of Beatlology, but we both dig the Fab Four's music as a whole.

You probably like the Beatles, but don't know which album to get. That's what you hope the reviews will do for you. You've compared prices elsewhere, and see this is the place to buy it. Which CD?

There's "The Beatles 1" CD, the one with the #1 hits. A good value for a lot of songs. No bad, but, for the Beatles and a few other bands, getting the original album is a better choice. The songs are best heard in context, in an odd way, like a Pink Floyd album. Besides, on "Sgt. Pepper," the songs are all incredible. A bit funky, but intensely enjoyable. A compilation won't meet the need.

I can't debate which album is the best one to buy. Too messy of a conversation. That's like arguing whether John or Paul wrote better songs. It gets you nowhere, and what you need is a Beatles album.

Why "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"? There are 13 good reasons. The first is the title song, and the last is "Day in the Life." The 11 songs in between are equally classic. You know them already.

I could emote of the wonders of each song. Today, "Lovely Rita" is my favorite on "Sgt. Pepper" but tomorrow "When I'm 64" might be the one. Depends on the moment. But each song is completely different than the previous, meriting much value for this album.

And I haven't the room to get into it, but the pop-art of the album (take a close look at it) is fascinating. Big controversy back in its day about the cast of characters who are featured. Can you name them all?

I fully recommend "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

Anthony Trendl
editor, HungarianBookstore.com


The greatest album since the big bang   September 1, 2006
 66 out of 75 found this review helpful

I feel like a monumental jackass reviewing this album: should I review the Q'uran and Coka Cola Classic next? Is there any more fundamentally unassailable album in the history of music? Is anything more impervious to criticism?

I just feel like recording the joy [I am not exagerating] I'm feeling right now as my 11-year-old daughter is discovering this album. She is spurning Christina Aguilera and I don't know what other one-dimensional rot for the complex, multi-layered, polyphonic wonders of the peak album of the most musical foursome of all time. This feels like a great victory for me. Parenthood hath its rewards.

Just had to type that out.


Sgt. Pepper's Remedy Cures the Ills of Post-Modernity   December 1, 1999
 63 out of 95 found this review helpful

Under the influence of "liberating" mind-expanding drugs such as marijuana and LSD, the Beatles pioneered forms of encoding in their music beginning with the albums Rubber Soul (1965) and Revolver(1966), which subverted the happy realm of love ballads and R&B covers in which they had been confined in the night clubs of Liverpool and Hamburg and later in the stadiums of America. The Beatles' efforts to transcend and subvert the confines of the industry and audience that had catapulted them to demigod-hood and then spurned them when they acknowledged their status ("we're more popular than Jesus"), and from which they retreated by refusing to tour soon after Rubber Soul came out, culminated in the towering pop classic Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). In many circles, Sgt. Pepper's remains the most exalted pop album in history, and rightly so. It is a classic depiction of numerous facets and facades of fragmentary post-modern life, particularly life in England (Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane were originally slated for the album but didn't make the cut), and offers various modes of escape from its confines. Its front cover depicting a collage of human icons of twentieth-century Western mass culture indicates the album's intent of describing the pervasive influence of the British-American mass media on individual human life (an issue that the Beatles struggled with after their enormous success). The repackaging of the group as the medicinal jug band "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band" with its leader "Billy Shears" underscores the playful and escapist mood of the album on one level whilst also emphasizing the album's curative powers for the "lonely hearts" out there in the imaginary audience. In their guise as "Sgt. Pepper's Band," the Beatles offer many homegrown remedies for the illnesses of post-modernity: through drugs (("I get high")("With a Little Help from My Friends"), psychedelic-induced poetic imagination ("Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" (LSD)), meditation and daydreaming ("Fixing a Hole"), running away from home and family ("She's Leaving Home"), false optimism ("It's Getting Better"), the circus ("For the Benefit of Mr. Kite"), retirement planning and vaudeville ("When I'm Sixty Four"), transcendental Asian mysticism ("Within You Without You"), and casual sex ("Lovely Rita Meter Maid"). Indeed, the entire album may be read as an acid trip, a journey into the subconscious dreamscape or fantasy world, followed by a jolting return to reality. After taking us through a magical drug-laden dreamland of musical and lyrical modes of escape from life's dull, depressing realities, the album ends with a cruel awakening or "come-down" to the conditions of post-modern existence ("Good Morning"), offering no clear answers ("I've got nothing to say but it's OK"). Following the Sgt. Pepper's "Reprise," which exits us from the "show," the album caps off with "A Day in the Life," which describes the alienation of the modern worker ant in mass urban society. While John Lennon's three verses use real newspaper stories to capture the psychological distancing and numbing of the alienated British subject from the endless barrage of episodic events projected by the nationalistic mass media of the British press and film industries ("the English army had just won the war"), Paul McCartney sums up the urban experience in one breathy verse, sung to a thumping beat: "Woke up, fell out of bed Dragged a comb across my head Found my way downstairs and drank a cup And looking up, I noticed I was late (pant pant pant pant) Found my coat, and grabbed my hat Made the bus in seconds flat Found my way upstairs and had a smoke And somebody spoke and I went into a dream..." In this verse, the worker makes his way dazedly through the horizontal and vertical matrices of the modern urban workday, aided by the socially acceptable pep drug of caffeine in coffee or tea (another symbol of British imperialism), which elevates his heartbeat and increases his breathing rate. Once he has made his way to his temporary destination on the bus, he can then relax and fall back into a dream state with the aid of "a smoke," but not for long. Lennon's final echoing call "I'd love to turn you on," recalls the message of former Harvard psychology professor Timothy Leary, whose pioneering experimentation with the drug LSD in the 1960s led him to urge his contemporaries to "tune in, turn on, and drop out" of mass society.

AF


A Magical World Never Bettered: V 2.0   January 14, 2000
 58 out of 58 found this review helpful

This whole album is a masterpiece. Nothing has been done before or since that can equal this one. Of course its been said a zillion times, but its really true. I bought it in Christmas back a few years ago (1997), and as I listened to it, it got better and better. For me, The Beatles (at first) took some time getting used too. Then they got stronger and stronger. On this record, they do almost the impossible. They create an entire magical fantasy. Its delishisouly (spelling?) sweet. The First Concept Album was indeed the finest. Everything works well with the concept. The album sleeve works better with the music than any I have seen. They help endear us to this wonderful world The Beatles are taking us too. At first I thought it was a bunch of hype, and the reason I bought it was because I was rapidly sinking (regressing, some of the younger people I know say) into the older music. I wanted Sgt Pepper cause everyone talked about it and had never heard it. This record will never be equalled, I fear. I wish it would, because I would love to do some more exploring. They took us on a Magical Mystery Tour on this one. Ironic, they did exactly that on this record, and though it was a concept album I don't think it was their intention, and then they made a concept movie with this in mind, and they didn't do that well (for The Beatles). If you want a record like no other, go out and buy this right now. Another great record that came out the same year is The Doors (debut). If it weren't for this, that would easily be the best for that year. But Sgt Pepper has surpassed all others. The Beatles never were able to do it again. They did get it in isolated moments, but never for the whole record like on this. No one else has ever come close. This deserves all the acclaim it gets.

As far as personal favorites go, however, I still enjoy the White Album the most. Rubber Soul and Revolver are good also (Rubber Soul is better than Revolver, tho' Revolver is more of a break thru). YOu could see the dircetion they were going with a few of the songs off Help! Some of that material is on level with Rubber Soul. Abbey Road, which I didn't care much for now, I really enjoy now. Sgt Pepper, however, is the cultural milestone to end all cultural milestones.