Sergeant Pepper turns 40

Filed by: Darren Turpin on June 1, 2007 at 13:46
Filed under: Miscellania

From Joe Gordon's always-excellent and informative Forbidden Planet blog, a timely reminder that today is the 40th anniversary of an album that is widely regarded as being one of the most influential, the most revolutionary, simply the greatest, of all time:

Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

I've become very fond of this particular collection of tunes in quite a short space of time. Although I've been familiar with a number of the album's more famous tracks ('With a Little Help From my Friends', 'Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds', 'When I'm Sixty-Four') for years, I hadn't actually heard it in its entirety until, believe it or not, March of this year...

The thing is, I've been listening to various collections of the Beatles' singles for a while, but for some reason I hadn't really taken the time to get to know their music better. But then, back in February, I picked up that month's issue of Mojo, with a cover CD of cover versions of the album, and - more importantly - a lengthy article on the making of the original.

It wasn't until I read this piece that I fully appreciated the depth of Sergeant Pepper's importance or the very real pinnacle of creative accomplishment that it represents. I'd always assumed it was a fairly typical piece of work for the time; but not so.

The Beatles, aided and abetted by legendary producer George Martin, managed to create - with nothing more than the Abbey Road Studio's ageing four-track recording equipment and a couple of slaved-together tape machines - the sort of sonic landscapes and effect-laden musical interludes that most bands today routinely take for granted. But this was back in 1967, and - especially according to the views of some of the other musicians who were around at the time - it was a truly revolutionary piece of work.

So obviously, I had to buy a copy. Take my chances on eBay, maybe? Or just splurge the full amount on Amazon (I'd never seen so much as a single Beatles CD in a reduced-price offer for years). But then, serendipitously, Jo and I were passing through Manchester Airport on the way to Northern Ireland, and it just so happened that the CD shop in the terminal had a three-for-two offer... which included Sergeant Pepper, as well as Revolver and about four or five others, by varying artists (well, it would've been rude not to, and Jo was buying them for my birthday...)

Fast-forward through the next couple of months, during which time I must have listened to the album about fourteen, fifteen times. Made quite an impression on me, I can tell you, particularly some of the tracks I hadn't heard before, like the achingly cathartic 'She's Leaving Home' and especially the concluding 'A Day in the Life'.

And I can tell you that if ever an album was made to be played loud and most definitely through headphones then this is it. Even if you think you're familiar with the Sergeant, if you haven't listened to it through a good pair of headphones before now, then you've probably only heard about half of what's going on...

So, there you go. My music recommendation for the year so far (hardly original, but most assuredly heart-felt): Grab a copy of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, settle back in your comfiest armchair with the best pair of ear-cans you can get your hands on, switch off your mobile phone, press play on your hi-fi equipment of choice... and away you will go...

Comments

3 Responses to 'Sergeant Pepper turns 40'

Joe on June 3rd, 2007 12:33 pm

I think you hit the nail on the head when you say we forget how revolutionary the design, concept and execution of this album actually was - how using 60s technology they created a new audioscape. Something that would be simple to do today with modern digital tech - assuming you had the idea first of course, but you don't need to because the Beatles inspired it already. Ditto the artwork - simple to do on a home PC or Mac today, all done by hand then. Its as cool an image now though, in my opinion, as ever and gives me the same feeling as, say, Dave McKean's artwork for Signal to Noise where he thought, right, I have this computer, comics still look the same as they did for 50 years, let's do something new...

I suppose when something becomes so influential we become used to it and what grows from it and so can easily forget how groundbreaking it was at the time. Think also on Queen recording Bohemian Rhapsody with early 70s equipment. Yeah, we're all used to it now, it may even be a joke to some, but that layering and building up of different elements and sounds is in that spirit.

And the whole anniversary thing makes me think on Saint Bill of Hicks and his rant about drugs and music, how if you are against drugs you should burn all the best albums because the people who made them were all really high. Can you imagine this without the drug experimentation and then the mystic explorations that came after them. Not that the drugs made the music, of course, but would their brains have gone in these directions without those earlier experiences? And sometimes the music sounds a bit better when stoned (ahem, so I'm told, not encouraging substance abuse...)
Ariel on June 4th, 2007 7:20 pm

Nicely put, Joe. Nicely put.

I liked John Scalzi's summation as well. Rather neat.

Speaking of the artwork, did you know that Hitler is included in the pic..?
Charlotte on August 9th, 2008 12:13 am

I have an old vinyl copy. I thought I was chuffed before, but after reading this I am really chuffed ^_^