Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

This article is about the 1967 album. For other uses, see Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (disambiguation).

Untitled

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (commonly known as Sgt. Pepper) is the eighth studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. Released in June 1967 the album, which included songs such as "With a Little Help from My Friends", "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "A Day in the Life", has sold more than 30 million copies, making it one of the world's best selling albums. Its release brought the idea of a concept album to the general public.

Continuing the artistic maturation seen on the Beatles' previous album Revolver (1966), Sgt. Pepper represented a departure from the conventional pop rock idiom of the time and incorporated balladry, psychedelic, music hall and symphonic influences. During the Sgt. Pepper recording sessions, the Beatles improved upon the production quality of their recordings while exploring experimental techniques. The producer George Martin's innovative approach included the use of an orchestra. Widely acclaimed and imitated, the album cover, designed by English pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth, was inspired by a sketch by Paul McCartney that depicted the band posing in front of a collage of some of their favourite historic figures and celebrities.

Sgt. Pepper was a critical and commercial success, spending 27 weeks at the top of the UK Album Chart and 15 weeks at number one on the US Billboard 200. A seminal work in the emerging psychedelic rock style, the album was critically acclaimed upon release and won four Grammy Awards in 1968. Sgt. Pepper is considered by many to be the most influential and famous rock album ever recorded. In 1994 Colin Larkin ranked it second in his All Time Top 1000 Albums list and in 2005 Rolling Stone placed it at number one in their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The album was added to the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress in 2003, calling it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Background

By late 1965 the Beatles had grown weary of touring. Two days after finishing the album Revolver in June 1966, the group set off to tour Germany. There, Paul McCartney visited two clubs in Hamburg, the Indra and the Star-Club, where the group had started their professional live career. The tour progressed to Japan, but the polite and restrained audience shocked the group, as the absence of fans screaming allowed them to hear how poor their live performances had become. By the time they went to the Philippines, where they were insulted and manhandled for not visiting Imelda Marcos, the group were extremely cross with Brian Epstein for insisting on such demoralising tour plans. The 1966 US tour was the group's last, following which they decided to retire from live performance.

John Lennon commented: "We're fed up with making soft music for soft people, and we're fed up with playing for them too" He claimed that they could "send out four waxworks ... and that would satisfy the crowds. Beatles concerts are nothing to do with music anymore. They're just bloody tribal rites." McCartney later explained, "We were fed up with being the Beatles. We really hated that four little mop-top approach. We were not boys, we were men ... and thought of ourselves as artists rather than just performers". Although the last tour coincided with the release of Revolver, they did not perform any tracks from it in concert. McCartney later commented: "We did try performing some songs off [Revolver], but there were so many complicated overdubs we can't do them justice. Now we can record anything we want, and it won't matter. And what we want is to raise the bar a notch, to make our best album ever."

George Harrison informed Epstein that he was leaving the band, but was persuaded to stay on the assurance that there would be no more tours. Upon their return to England, rumours began to circulate that the band had decided to break-up. They subsequently took a holiday for almost two months and became involved in their own individual interests. Harrison travelled to India for six weeks to develop his sitar playing at the instruction of Ravi Shankar. McCartney and producer George Martin collaborated on the soundtrack for the film The Family Way. Lennon acted in the film How I Won the War, and he attended art showings, such as one at the Indica Gallery where he met his future wife Yoko Ono. Ringo Starr used the break to spend more time with his wife and first child. In November, during a return flight to London from Kenya, where he had been on holiday with tour manager Mal Evans, McCartney had the creative idea that would first become a song, and would eventually inspire the Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band concept.

Concept

In early February 1967, McCartney had the idea of recording an album that would represent a performance by a fictitious band. This alter ego group would give the Beatles the freedom to experiment musically. McCartney explained: "I thought, let's not be ourselves. Let's develop alter egos ... it won't be us making all that sound, it won't be the Beatles, it'll be this other band, so we'll be able to lose our identities in this". The idea came to McCartney during an airline flight from the US to England with Beatles' roadie Mal Evans, who invented the band's name in the style of contemporary San Francisco-based groups such as Big Brother and the Holding Company and Quicksilver Messenger Service. Martin wrote of the fictitious band concept: "'Sergeant Pepper' itself didn't appear until halfway through making the album. It was Paul's song, just an ordinary rock number ... but when we had finished it, Paul said, 'Why don't we make the album as though the Pepper band really existed, as though Sergeant Pepper was making the record? We'll dub in effects and things.' I loved the idea, and from that moment on it was as though Pepper had a life of its own". According to the author Kenneth Womack, starting with the album's title track, "the Beatles manufacture an artificial textural space in which to stage their art." The musicologist Walter Everett explains that the alter egos "allowed the Beatles to remove themselves from the public by an extra layer—they were now giving a performance of a performance".

The album starts with the title song, which introduces Sgt. Pepper's band itself; this song segues into a sung introduction for bandleader "Billy Shears" (Starr), who performs "With a Little Help from My Friends". A reprise version of the title song appears on side two of the album just prior to the climactic "A Day in the Life", creating a framing device. However, according to Lennon and Starr, the band effectively abandoned the concept other than the first two songs and the reprise. Lennon was especially adamant that the songs he wrote for the album had nothing to do with the Sgt. Pepper concept, noting that—in his opinion—none of the other songs did either, saying "Every other song could have been on any other album". In spite of Lennon's statements to the contrary, the album has been widely heralded as an early and groundbreaking example of the concept album. During the 1970s, glam rock acts co-opted the idea of using alter ego personas.

Recording and production

McCartney has repeatedly stated that the single biggest influence on Sgt. Pepper's was the Beach Boys album Pet Sounds. The album had a profound effect on McCartney and the other Beatles, specifically the unorthodox instrumentation and complicated vocal harmonies. Sound engineer Geoff Emerick has noted how the record was often played in the studio so he and the other sound engineers could hear the sounds the Beatles wanted to achieve. It also led McCartney to develop a new melodically-focused style of bass guitar playing that would become prevalent on many of his recordings afterward. George Martin has also stated that "without Pet Sounds, Sgt. Pepper wouldn't have happened... Pepper was an attempt to equal Pet Sounds."

Sessions for Sgt Pepper began in late November 1966 with a series of recordings that were to form an album thematically linked to the Beatles' childhoods. The initial results produced "Strawberry Fields Forever", "When I'm Sixty-Four" and "Penny Lane". "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" were released as a double A-sided single in February 1967 after EMI and Epstein pressured Martin for a single. Once the single was released the childhood concept was abandoned in favour of Sgt. Pepper, and in keeping with the group's usual practice, the single tracks were not included on the LP (a decision Martin states he now regrets). They were also included as part of the American LP version of Magical Mystery Tour (which was issued as a six-track double EP in Britain). The Harrison composition "Only a Northern Song" was also recorded during the Sgt. Pepper sessions but did not see a release until the soundtrack album for the animated film Yellow Submarine, released in January 1969.

As EMI's premier act and the world's most successful rock group, the Beatles had almost unlimited access to Abbey Road Studios. By 1967, all of the Sgt. Pepper tracks could be recorded at Abbey Road using mono, stereo and four-track recorders. Although eight-track tape recorders were already available in the US, the first eight-tracks were not operational in commercial studios in London until late 1967, shortly after the album was released. Like its predecessors, the recording made extensive use of the technique known as "bouncing down" (also known at that time as a "reduction mix"), in which a number of tracks were recorded across the four tracks of one recorder, which were then mixed and dubbed down onto one or several tracks of the master four-track machine. This enabled the Abbey Road engineers to give the group a virtual multi-track studio.

Relatively new modular effects units were used, like the wah-wah pedal and fuzzbox, and running voices and instruments through a Leslie speaker. Several then-new production effects feature extensively on the recordings. One of the most important was automatic double tracking (ADT), a system that used tape recorders to create a simultaneous doubling of a sound. Although it had long been recognised that using multitrack tape to record "doubled" lead vocals produced a greatly enhanced sound, it had always been necessary to record such vocal tracks twice; a task which was both tedious and exacting. ADT was invented especially for the band by EMI engineer Ken Townsend in 1966, mainly at the behest of Lennon, who hated tracking sessions and regularly expressed a desire for a technical solution to the problem. ADT quickly became a near-universal recording practice in popular music. Martin, having fun at Lennon's expense, described the new technique to an inquisitive Lennon as a "double-bifurcated sploshing flange". The anecdote explains one variation of how the term "flanging" came to be associated with this recording effect. Also important was varispeeding, the technique of recording various tracks on a multi-track tape at slightly different tape speeds, which was used extensively on their vocals in this period. The speeding up of vocals became a widespread technique in pop production. The band also used the effect on portions of their backing tracks (as on "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds") to give them a "thicker" and more diffuse sound.

Sgt. Pepper was the first pop album to be mastered without rills, the momentary gap that is typically placed between tracks as a point of demarcation.

For the 17 March recording of "She's Leaving Home", McCartney hired Mike Leander to arrange the string section as Martin was occupied producing one of his other artists, Cilla Black.

Ringo Starr, who after the completion of his basic drum parts saw his participation limited to minor percussion overdubs, later lamented: "The biggest memory I have of Sgt. Pepper ... is I learned to play chess". For the album's title track, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (song)", the recording of Starr's drum kit was enhanced by the use of dampening and close-miking, which at the time were new recording techniques that MacDonald credits with creating a "three-dimensional" sound that—along with other Beatles innovations—engineers in the US would soon adopt as standard practice.

Release

The album also received popular acclaim. It was a global hit, with huge sales in Europe, North and South America, Africa, Japan, Australia, and even on the black market in the Soviet Union, where their albums were very popular and widely available. In the UK it debuted at number eight and the next week reached number one where it stayed for 23 consecutive weeks. It was knocked off the top by The Sound of Music on the week ending 18 November 1967. Eventually it spent more weeks at the top, including the competitive Christmas week. When the CD edition was released on 1 June 1987, it reached number 3. In June 1992, the CD was re-promoted to commemorate its 25th Anniversary, and charted at number six. In 2007, commemorating 40 years of its release, Sgt. Pepper again re-entered the charts at number 47 in the UK. In all, the album spent a total of 201 weeks on the UK charts, and is the third biggest-selling album in the UK chart history behind ABBA's Gold: Greatest Hits and Queen's Greatest Hits. Sgt. Pepper won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, the first rock album to do so, and Best Contemporary Album in 1968. Sgt. Pepper is one of the world's best selling albums, with RIAA certified sales of 11 million copies in the US as of January 1997. The album won Best British Album at the first Brit Awards in 1977. By the time that Sgt Pepper was released the Beatles had already completed most of Magical Mystery Tour.

Frank Zappa, whose 1966 album Freak Out! was cited as an influence on the album, accused the group of co-opting the flower power aesthetic for monetary gain, saying in a Rolling Stone article that he felt "they were only in it for the money."

Music and lyrics

According to the musicologist Allan F. Moore, Sgt. Pepper is a rock and pop album that aided the development of progressive rock through its focus on self-conscious lyrics, studio experimentation, and its efforts to expand the barriers of conventional three-minute tracks. He describes the LP as "a precursor of progressive rock's infatuation with unified concepts." In the opinion of the author Kevin Holm-Hudson, the release "was pivotal in establishing the progressive aesthetic." The music journalist Thomas Blackwell, writing for PopMatters and citing Moore's 1997 book The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, credits the album as being "virtually responsible for the birth of the progressive rock genre". Its primary value—in Moore's opinion—"is that it manages to capture, more vividly than almost anything contemporaneous, its own time and place." The musicologist Carys Wyn Jones credits Sgt. Pepper as one of the first art rock albums and the author Olivier Julien describes it as a "masterpiece of British psychedelia".

Sgt. Pepper makes use of several keyboard instruments. McCartney plays a grand piano on "A Day in the Life" and a Lowrey organ on "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"., while Martin played a Hohner Pianet on "Getting Better", a harpsichord on "Fixing a Hole", and a harmonium on "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" An electric piano, upright piano, Hammond organ and glockenspiel can also be heard on the record. Harrison used a tamboura on several tracks, including "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "Getting Better".

Concerns that lyrics in Sgt. Pepper referred to recreational drug use led to several songs from the album being banned by the BBC. The album's closing track, "A Day in the Life", includes the phrase "I'd love to turn you on". The BBC banned the song from airplay on the basis of this line, claiming it could "encourage a permissive attitude toward drug-taking". Both Lennon and McCartney denied any drug-related interpretation of the song at the time, although McCartney's later comments in The Beatles Anthology documentary regarding the writing of the lyric make it clear that the drug reference was indeed deliberate.

Side one

Sgt. Pepper opens with an introduction to the title track, which features the combined sounds of a pit orchestra warming-up and an audience waiting for a concert. The author Kenneth Womack describes the lyrics as "a revolutionary moment in the creative life of the Beatles" that bridges the gap—sometimes referred to as the Fourth wall—between the audience and the artist. He argues that, paradoxically, the lyrics "exemplify the mindless rhetoric of rock concert banter" while "mocking[ing] the very notion of a pop album's capacity for engendering authentic interconnection between artist and audience". According to Womack, the mixed message ironically serves to distance the group from their fans while simultaneously "gesturing toward" them as alter egos, an authorial quality that he considers to be "the song's most salient feature." He credits the recording's juxtaposition of a brass ensemble with distorted electric guitars as an early example of rock fusion. The musicologist Ian MacDonald agrees, describing the track as an overture rather than a song, and a "shrewd fusion of Edwardian variety orchestra" and contemporary hard rock. During the introduction and verses, the song utilises a Lydian mode chord progression that is built on parallel sevenths, which the musicologist Walter Everett describes as "the song's strength", bringing "the rock out of rock and roll". The five-bar bridge is filled by what MacDonald considers to be an "anachronistic" horn quartet that Martin arranged from a McCartney vocal melody. The track turns to the pentatonic scale for the chorus, where its blues rock progression is augmented by the use of electric guitar power chords played in consecutive fifths.

McCartney acts as the master of ceremonies near the end of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", introducing Starr as an alter ego named Billy Shears. The song then segues into "With a Little Help from My Friends" amidst a moment of crowd cheer that Martin had recorded during a Beatles concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Womack describes Starr's baritone lead vocals as "charmingly sincere" and he credits them with imparting an element of "earnestness in sharp contrast with the ironic distance of the title track." Lennon and McCartney's call and response backing vocals question Starr regarding the "essence of true love and unerring friendship". In MacDonald's opinion, the track is "at once communal and personal ... [its] touchingly rendered by Starr [and] meant as a gesture of inclusivity; everyone could join in." Womack agrees, identifying "necessity of community" as the song's "central ethical tenet", a theme that he ascribes to the album as a whole. Everett notes the track's use of a major key double-plagal cadence that would become commonplace in pop music following the release of Sgt. Pepper. He characterises the arrangement as clever, particularly its reversal of the question and answer relationship in the final verse, in which the backing singers ask leading questions and Starr provides unequivocal answers. The song ends on a vocal high note that McCartney encouraged Starr to achieve despite his lack of confidence as a singer.

The meaning of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" became a subject of speculation, as many believed that the song's title was code for the hallucinogenic drug LSD. The BBC used this as justification for banning the track from British radio. Nevertheless, Lennon insisted that the title was derived from a pastel drawing by his four-year-old son Julian. A hallucinatory chapter from Lewis Carroll's 1871 novel, Through the Looking-Glass, inspired the song's atmosphere. Womack describes it as a colourful adventure and the Beatles' "most vivid instance of musical timbre." The lyric begins with what he characterises as "an invitation in the form of an imperative" through the line: "Picture yourself in a boat on a river", and continues with imaginative imagery, including "tangerine trees", "rocking horse people" and "newspaper taxis". In MacDonald's opinion, "the lyric explicitly recreates the psychedelic experience". According to Lennon: "It was Alice in the boat. She is buying an egg and it turns into Humpty Dumpty. The woman serving in the shop turns into a sheep and the next minute they are ... in a rowing boat and I was visualizing that. There was also the image of the female who would someday come to save me—a 'girl with kaleidoscope eyes' who would come out of the sky. It turned out to be Yoko, though I hadn't met [her] yet, so maybe it should be 'Yoko in the Sky with Diamonds'."

File:Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite - 2012 reproduction.jpg

A reproduction of the poster for Pablo Fanque's Circus Royal from 1843 that inspired Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!

MacDonald considers "Getting Better" to contain "the most ebullient performance" on Sgt. Pepper. In Womack's opinion, the track features a "driving rock sound" that distinguishes it from the album's overtly psychedelic material with lyrics that enliven the listener "to usurp the past by living well and flourishing in the present." He cites it as a strong example of Lennon and McCartney's collaborative songwriting, particularly Lennon's addition of the lyric: "couldn't get much worse", which serves as a "sarcastic rejoinder" to McCartney's chorus: "It's getting better all the time". McCartney describes Lennon's lyric as "against the spirit of the song, which was all super-optimistic—then there's that lovely little sardonic line", which he characterises as "typical John." Lennon's contribution to the lyric includes a confessional regarding his having been violent with female companions: "I used to be cruel to my woman". He explained: "I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I hit". In Womack's opinion, the song encourages the listener to follow the speaker's example and "alter their own angst-ridden ways": "Man I was mean but I'm changing my scene and I'm doing the best that I can." MacDonald describes the beginning of the track as "blithely unorthodox", with two staccato guitars—one panned left and one right—playing the dominant against the subdominant of an F major ninth chord, with the tonic C resolving as the verse begins. The dominant, which acts as a drone, is reinforced through the use of octaves played on a bass guitar and plucked on piano strings. Everett notes McCartney's "adventurous" bass line, which accents non-roots on the recording's downbeat.

In Womack's opinion, the lyrics to "Fixing a Hole" focus on "the speaker's search for identity among the crowd", in particular the "quests for consciousness and connection" that differentiate individuals from society as a whole. MacDonald characterizes it as a "distracted and introverted track", during which McCartney forgoes his "usual smooth design" in favour of "something more preoccupied". MacDonald cites Harrison's electric guitar solo as serving the track well, capturing its mood by conveying detachment. McCartney drew inspiration for the song in part from his work restoring a Scottish farmhouse. Womack notes his adaptation of the lyric: "a hole in the roof where the rain leaks in" from Elvis Presley's "We're Gonna Move". McCartney states that the song deals with his desire to let his mind wander freely and to express his creativity without the burden of self-conscious insecurities.

In Everett's opinion, the lyrics to "She's Leaving Home" deal with the problem of alienation "between disagreeing peoples", particularly those distanced from each other by the generation gap. McCartney's "descriptive narration", which details the plight of a "lonely girl" who escapes the control of her "selfish yet well-meaning parents", was inspired by a piece about teenage runaways published by the Daily Mail. Womack describes the song as "a quaint study of a young woman's need to discover a sense of identity and become a conscious participant in the world." Moore notes that the track is the first on the album to eschew the use of guitars and drums, featuring a string nonet with a harp and drawing comparison with "Yesterday" and "Eleanor Rigby", which utilise a string quartet and octet respectively. While Richard Goldstein's 1967 review in the The New York Times characterises the song as uninspired, MacDonald identifies the track as one of the two best on Sgt. Pepper. In Moore's opinion, the writers judge the work from "opposing criteria", with Goldstein opining during the dawn of the counterculture of the 1960s, whereas MacDonald—writing in 1995—is "intensely aware of [the movement's] failings."

Lennon adapted the lyric for "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" from an 1843 poster for Pablo Fanque's circus, which he had bought at an antique shop in Kent on the day of filming the promotional film for "Strawberry Fields Forever". Womack praises the track's successful blending of a print source and music: "The interpretive power of the mixed-media application accrues its meaning through the musical production with which the group imbues the Ur-text of the poster." According to MacDonald, Lennon requested a "fairground production wherein one could smell the sawdust"; Martin and his engineers created the resulting atmospheric sound collage by collecting recordings of harmoniums, harmonicas and calliopes, which were then cut into strips of various lengths, thrown into a box, mixed up and edited together in random order, creating a loop that was mixed in during final production. In MacDonald's opinion, the song represents "a spontaneous expression of its author's playful hedonism".

Side two

"Within You Without You" was recorded on 15 March with Harrison on vocals, sitar and tambura; the other instruments (tabla, dilruba, swarmandel, and an additional tambura) were played by four London-based Indian musicians. None of the other Beatles participated in the recording.

Recordings of "A Day in the Life" began on 19 January 1967 with Lennon counting-in the first take by mumbling, "sugar plum fairy, sugar plum fairy". The thunderous piano chord that concludes the track, and the album, was produced by assembling three grand pianos in the studio and playing an E chord on each simultaneously. Together on cue, Lennon, Starr, McCartney and assistant Mal Evans hammered the keys on the assembled pianos and held down the chord. The sound from the pianos was then mixed up with compression and increasing gain on the volume to draw out the sound to maximum sustain.

British pressings of the album (in its original LP form that was later released on CD), end with a 15-kilohertz high-frequency tone (put on the album at Lennon's suggestion and said to be "especially intended to annoy your dog"), followed by an endless loop of laughter and gibberish made by the run-out groove looping back into itself, which would play endlessly (on a record player not equipped with an automatic needle return). The loop (but not the tone) made its US debut on the 1980 Rarities compilation, titled "Sgt. Pepper Inner Groove". However, it is only featured as a two-second fragment at the end of side two rather than an actual loop in the run-out groove. The CD version of "Sgt. Pepper Inner Groove" is actually a bit shorter than that one found on the original UK vinyl pressing. The sound in the loop caused some controversy when it was interpreted as a secret message. McCartney later told his biographer Barry Miles that in the summer of 1967 a group of kids came up to him complaining about a lewd message hidden in it when played backwards. He told them, "You're wrong, it's actually just 'It really couldn't be any other'". He took them to his house to play the record backwards to them, and it turned out that the passage sounded to him very much like "We'll fuck you like Superman". McCartney recounted to Miles that "we had certainly had not intended to do that but probably when you turn anything backwards it sounds like something ... if you look hard enough you can make something out of anything". When the album was repressed for LP release in 2012, it took several attempts to successfully reproduce the run-out groove effect. Later CD releases of the album were not true to the original "endless loop" effect, as the loop on these versions faded out after a few seconds.

Cover artwork

Further information: List of images on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

The gatefold

The Grammy Award-winning album packaging was art-directed by Robert Fraser, designed by Peter Blake and Jann Haworth, his wife and artistic partner, and photographed by Michael Cooper. It featured a colourful collage of life-sized cardboard models of famous people on the front of the album cover and the lyrics printed in full on the back cover, the first time this had been done on a rock LP. In the guise of the Sgt. Pepper band, the Beatles, all mustachioed, were dressed in custom-made satin day-glo-coloured military-style outfits (Lennon in lime, Harrison in tangerine, McCartney in cyan, and Starr in magenta). The suits were conceived by the Beatles and manufactured by the theatrical costumer M. Berman Ltd. in London, with some parts designed by Manuel Cuevas. Among the insignia on their uniforms are: MBE medals on McCartney's and Harrison's jackets, the Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom on Lennon's right sleeve and an Ontario Provincial Police flash on McCartney's sleeve.

The centre of the cover depicts the Beatles standing behind a drum skin, on which are painted the words of the album's title. The skin was painted by fairground artist Joe Ephgrave. In front of the drum skin is a series of flowers that spell out "The Beatles". A collage depicts around 60 famous people, including writers, musicians, film stars, and (at Harrison's request) a number of Indian gurus. The final grouping included: Mahavatar Babaji, Issy Bonn, Marlon Brando, Lenny Bruce, Larry Bell, Lewis Carroll, Aleister Crowley, Marlene Dietrich, Diana Dors, Bob Dylan, W.C. Fields, Sigmund Freud, Oliver Hardy, Aldous Huxley, Carl Gustav Jung, Stan Laurel, T. E. Lawrence, Karl Marx, Marilyn Monroe, Sir Robert Peel, Edgar Allan Poe, Karlheinz Stockhausen, H. G. Wells, Mae West, Oscar Wilde, Shirley Temple, Paramahansa Yogananda and Yukteswar Giri. Also included was the image of the original Beatles' bassist, the late Stuart Sutcliffe. Pete Best said in a later NPR interview that Lennon borrowed family medals from his (Best's) mother Mona for the shoot, on condition that he did not lose them. Adolf Hitler and Jesus Christ were requested by Lennon, but ultimately they were left out. A photo also exists of a rejected cardboard printout with a cloth draped over its head; its identity is unknown. The final cost for the cover art was nearly £3,000 (equivalent to £68,778 today) an extravagant sum for a time when album covers would typically cost around £50.

Reception

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
The A.V. Club	B+
Robert Christgau	A
The Daily Telegraph
Encyclopedia of Popular Music
MusicHound
Paste	89/100
Pitchfork Media	10/10
The Rolling Stone Album Guide
Sputnikmusic	5/5

Sgt. Pepper was released on 1 June 1967 in the United Kingdom and on 2 June in the United States. Various reviews appearing in the mainstream press and trade publications throughout June 1967, immediately after the album's release, were generally positive. In The Times, prominent critic Kenneth Tynan described Sgt. Pepper as "a decisive moment in the history of Western civilisation". Richard Poirier wrote "listening to the Sgt. Pepper album one thinks not simply of the history of popular music but the history of this century."

Richard Goldstein wrote a negative contemporary review in The New York Times that described the album as "spoiled" and "reek[ing]" of "special effects, dazzling but ultimately fraudulent". After receiving heavy criticism from fellow critics and fan letters sent to the newspaper, Goldstein published a response in which he said the album was not on-par with the best of the Beatles' previous work, and despite being "better than 80 per cent of the music around today" he felt that underneath the production when "the compositions are stripped to their musical and lyrical essentials" the album is shown to be "an elaboration without improvement" on the group's music. In 1997 the musicologist Allan Moore wrote that Goldstein's position was an exception among a group of primarily positive contemporary reviewers that he characterized as the most for any single album at the time. He also notes that some negative letters had been sent to Melody Maker that he speculates were written by jazz enthusiasts.

The journalist Robert Christgau asserted in 1981 that although few critics agreed with Goldstein at the time of Sgt Pepper's release, many have come to appreciate his sentiments. Christgau, writing in a 1967 column for Esquire magazine, described the album as "a consolidation, more intricate than Revolver but not more substantial. Part of Goldstein's mistake, I think, has been to allow all the filters and reverbs and orchestral effects and overdubs to deafen him to the stuff underneath, which was pretty nice, and to fall victim to overanticipation." Christgau later wrote: "although Sgt. Pepper is thought of as the most influential of all rock masterpieces, it is really only the most famous. In retrospect it seems peculiarly apollonian—precise, controlled, even stiff—and it is clearly peripheral to the rock mainstream".

In 1998 the author Colin Larkin ranked Sgt Pepper second in his All Time Top 1000 Albums list, calling it a "masterpiece" and stating: "This one album revolutionized, altered and reinvented the boundaries of 20th century popular music, style and graphic art." In the Encyclopedia of Popular Music Larkin wrote "[it] turned out to be no mere pop album but a cultural icon embracing the constituent elements of the 60s' youth culture: pop art, garish fashion, drugs, instant mysticism and freedom from parental control." In a 1987 review for Q, Charles Shaar Murray commented that the album "remains a central pillar of the mythology and iconography of the late '60s." Rolling Stone's Anthony DeCurtis argued that it "revolutionized rock & roll" and that its "immensely pleasurable trip has earned Sgt. Pepper its place as the best record of the past twenty years." DeCurtis found it to be "not only the Beatles' most artistically ambitious album but their funniest" and cited its "fun-loving experimentalism" as the album's "best legacy for our time." In 2005 Rolling Stone placed it at number one in their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, describing it as "the pinnacle of the Beatles' eight years as recording artists" and "the most important rock and roll album ever made".

Influence

The album is often said to be a huge influence in the development of counterculture-era progressive rock music, and rock music generally. It has been included in numerous lists about progressive rock albums and influences. Nick Mason, the drummer of the pioneering progressive rock group Pink Floyd, said that Ringo's drumming on the album significantly influenced him. The album was also featured on Classic Rock magazine's list "50 albums that built Prog Rock".

The album is credited as heralding the beginning of the Album Era in popular music. Rolling Stone Assistant Editor Andy Greene posits that, "That album was the beginning of the album era. It was the big bang of albums. This was the first concept album. All the songs go together to tell a story, and it's inspired every musician."

According to McCartney, "When [Martin] was doing his TV programme on Pepper ...he asked me, 'Do you know what caused Pepper?' I said, 'In one word, George, drugs. Pot.' And George said, 'No, no. But you weren't on it all the time.' 'Yes, we were.' Sgt. Pepper was a drug album."

Legacy

Sgt. Pepper has been named on many lists of the best rock albums. In 1997 it was named the number one greatest album of all time in a "Music of the Millennium" poll conducted by HMV, Channel 4, The Guardian and Classic FM. In 1998 Q magazine readers placed it at number seven, while in 2003 the TV network VH1 placed it at number 10. In 2005, the album was ranked number 1 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The publisher called it "the most important rock & roll album ever made ... by the greatest rock & roll group of all time." In 2006, the album was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 best albums of all time. In 2002, Q magazine placed it at number 13 in its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever. The album was named as one of Classic Rock magazine's "50 Albums That Built Prog Rock". In 2003, it was one of 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry. In July 2008 the "iconic bass drum skin" used on the front cover sold at auction for €670,000 (US$879,000). In November 2009, the entire album was made available to download for The Beatles: Rock Band on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii. The game disc already had the album's title track, "With a Little Help from My Friends", "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", "Getting Better" and "Good Morning Good Morning"; the download provides the remaining tracks from the album. On 30 March 2013, a rare, signed (by all four Beatles) copy of the album was sold at Dallas-based Heritage Auctions to an unnamed buyer from the Midwestern United States for $290,500.

Nominated for seven Grammys in 1968, it won four, including Best Album Cover, Graphic Arts, Best Engineered Recording, Non-Classical, Contemporary Album and Album of the Year, the first rock album to receive this honour. Additionally, it was nominated for Group Vocal Performance, Contemporary Vocal Group and Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s).

Planned television film

On 10 February 1967, during the orchestral recording sessions for "A Day in the Life", six cameramen filmed the chaotic events with the purpose of using the footage for a planned but unfinished Sgt. Pepper television special. The TV special was to have been written by Ian Dallas and directed by Keith Green. The shooting schedule included all the songs from the album set to music video style scenes: for example, "Within You Without You" scenes would have been set throughout offices, factories and elevators. There were even production numbers planned involving "meter maids" and "rockers". Although production was cancelled, the "A Day in the Life" footage was edited down with stock footage into a finished clip. This clip was not released to the public until the Lennon documentary Imagine: John Lennon was released in 1988. A more complete version was later aired in The Beatles Anthology documentary. In 1992, an hour-long feature produced by London Weekend Television called The Making of Sgt. Pepper was aired, and featured George Martin, the three surviving Beatles and Neil Aspinall discussing the album and the songs, with George Martin running through the tapes, similar in fashion to VH1's Classic Albums documentaries.

Tributes

On June 4, 1967, Jim Hendrix opened a show at the Saville Theatre in London with his rendition of Sgt. Pepper's title track, which was released just three days previous. Beatles manager Brian Epstein owned the Saville at the time, and both George Harrison and Paul McCartney attended the performance. McCartney described the moment: "The curtains flew back and he came walking forward playing 'Sgt. Pepper'. It's a pretty major compliment in anyone's book. I put that down as one of the great honors of my career."

Sgt. Pepper has inspired a number of tribute albums, such as NME's Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father in 1988. In 2008, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the album's release, rock pioneer and long-time associate of Starr, Todd Rundgren headlined a live performance tour of Sgt. Pepper featuring an all star cast. In the show were former Wings member Denny Laine, former American Idol Bo Bice, Foreigner vocalist Lou Gramm, and Grammy Award winner Christopher Cross. The American rock band Cheap Trick performed the entire Sgt. Pepper album live in New York and released the live recording in both CD and DVD formats in September 2009, with all proceeds benefiting prostate cancer research. This recording was engineered by Geoff Emerick, the original engineer for the Sgt. Pepper album. In April 2009, the reggae group Easy Star All-Stars released a dub reggae tribute cover of Sgt. Pepper, Easy Star's Lonely Hearts Dub Band. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, a feature film based on the album and other Beatles songs, was released in 1978.

Track listing

Sgt. Pepper was the first Beatles album to be released with identical track listings in the UK and the US.

All tracks are written by Lennon–McCartney except "Within You Without You", by George Harrison

Side one

No.	Title	Lead vocals	Length
1.	"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"	McCartney	2:02
2.	"With a Little Help from My Friends"	Starr	2:44
3.	"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"	Lennon	3:28
4.	"Getting Better"	McCartney	2:48
5.	"Fixing a Hole"	McCartney	2:36
6.	"She's Leaving Home"	McCartney with Lennon	3:35
7.	"Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!"	Lennon	2:37

Side two

No.	Title	Lead vocals	Length
1.	"Within You Without You"	Harrison	5:04
2.	"When I'm Sixty-Four"	McCartney	2:37
3.	"Lovely Rita"	McCartney	2:42
4.	"Good Morning Good Morning"	Lennon	2:41
5.	"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)"	Lennon, McCartney and Harrison	1:19
6.	"A Day in the Life"	Lennon and McCartney	5:39

Track list information according to Mark Lewisohn and Ian MacDonald.

Personnel

According to Mark Lewisohn:

The Beatles

• John Lennon – lead, harmony and background vocals; lead, rhythm and acoustic guitars; piano and Hammond organ; harmonica, tape loops, sound effects and comb and tissue paper; handclaps, tambourine and maracas
• Paul McCartney – lead, harmony and background vocals; lead and bass guitars; piano, Lowrey and Hammond organs; handclaps; vocalisations, tape loops, sound effects and comb and tissue paper
• George Harrison – lead, rhythm and acoustic guitars; sitar; lead, harmony and background vocals; tamboura; harmonica and kazoo; handclaps and maracas
• Ringo Starr – drums, congas, tambourine, maracas, handclaps and tubular bells; lead vocals; harmonica; final piano E chord

Additional musicians and production

• Neil Aspinall – tamboura and harmonica
• Geoff Emerick – recording and mixing engineer; tape loops and sound effects
• Mal Evans – counting, bass harmonica, alarm clock and final piano E chord
• Matthew Deyell – tambourine
• Chris Shepard  – cajón (on "With a Little Help from My Friends")
• George Martin – producer and mixer; tape loops and sound effects; harpsichord (on "Fixing a Hole"), harmonium, Lowrey organ and glockenspiel (on "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!"), Hammond organ (on "With a Little Help from My Friends"), and piano (on "Getting Better" and the solo in "Lovely Rita"); final harmonium chord.
• Session musicians – four French horns (on "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"), (Neil Sanders, James W. Buck, John Burden, Tony Randall), arranged and conducted by Martin and McCartney; string section and harp (on "She's Leaving Home"), arranged by Mike Leander and conducted by Martin; harmonium, tabla, sitar, dilruba, eight violins and four cellos (on "Within You, Without You"), arranged and conducted by Harrison and Martin; clarinet trio (on "When I'm Sixty Four"), as arranged and conducted by Martin and McCartney; saxophone sextet (on "Good Morning, Good Morning"), arranged and conducted by Martin and Lennon; and forty-piece orchestra (strings, brass, woodwinds and percussion) (on "A Day in the Life"), arranged by Martin, Lennon and McCartney and conducted by Martin and McCartney,

Charts

In the US the album appeared on the Billboard 200 chart for 175 non-consecutive weeks through 1987. It remained at number one in the US for 15 weeks, longer than any other Beatles album in the US.

Peak positions

Original release

Chart	Position
Australian Kent Music Report Chart	1
Norwegian Albums Chart	1
Swedish Kvällstoppen Chart	1
UK Albums Chart	1
US Billboard 200	1
West German Media Control Albums Chart	1

1987 reissue

Chart	Position
Dutch Mega Albums Chart	2
Japanese Albums Chart	3
UK Albums Chart	3

2009 reissue

Chart	Position
Australian Albums Chart	16
Belgian Albums Chart (Flanders)	21
Belgian Albums Chart (Wallonia)	22
Brazilian Albums Chart	20
Danish Albums Chart	20
Finnish Albums Chart	9
Italian Albums Chart	9
Japanese Albums Chart	20
Mexican Albums Chart	13
New Zealand Albums Chart	12
Norwegian Albums Chart	31
Portuguese Albums Chart	4
Spanish Albums Chart	22
Swedish Albums Chart	8
UK Albums Chart	5
US Billboard 200	114

Year-end charts

Chart (1967)	Position
Australian Albums Chart	1
Italian Albums Chart	1
UK Albums Chart	1
US Billboard 200	10
Chart (1968)	Position
Australian Albums Chart	3
US Billboard 200	6

Decade-end charts

Chart (1960s)	Position
UK Albums Chart	1

Certifications

Region	Certification	Certified units/sales
Argentina (CAPIF)	2× Platinum	120,000^
Argentina (CAPIF) 1987 CD issue	3× Platinum	180,000^
Australia (ARIA)	4× Platinum	280,000^
Brazil (Pro-Música Brasil)	Gold	100,000*
Canada (Music Canada)	8× Platinum	800,000^
France (SNEP)	Gold	88,100
Germany (BVMI)	Platinum	500,000^
Japan (Oricon Charts)	—	208,000
New Zealand (RMNZ)	6× Platinum	90,000^
United Kingdom (BPI)	16× Platinum	5,045,000
United States (RIAA)	11× Platinum	11,000,000^
* Sales figures based on certification alone. ^ Shipments figures based on certification alone.

^† BPI certification awarded only for sales since 1994.

Sources

• Blaney, John (2007). Lennon and McCartney: Together Alone (1st ed.). Jawbone Press. ISBN 978-1-906002-02-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Cross, Craig (2005). The Beatles: Day-by-day, Song-by-song, Record-by-record. ISBN 0-595-34663-4.
• Emerick, Geoff; Massey, Howard (2006). Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles. Gotham. ISBN 978-1-59240-269-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Everett, Walter (1999). The Beatles as Musicians: Revolver Through the Anthology. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-512941-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Gould, Jonathan (2007). Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain and America (First Paperback ed.). Three Rivers Press. ISBN 978-0-307-35338-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Graff, Gary; Durcholz, Daniel (1999). MusicHound Rock: The Essential Album Guide. Visible Ink Press. ISBN 1-57859-061-2.
• Harry, Bill (2000a). The Beatles Encyclopedia: Revised and Updated. Virgin. ISBN 978-0-7535-0481-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Harry, Bill (2000b). The John Lennon Encyclopedia. Virgin. ISBN 978-0-7535-0404-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Holm-Hudson, Kevin (2008). Genesis and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Ashgate. ISBN 978-0754661399. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Inglis, Ian (2008). "Cover story: magic, myth, and music". In Julien, Olivier (ed.). Sgt. Pepper and the Beatles: It Was Forty Years Ago Today. Ashgate. ISBN 978-0-7546-6708-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Jones, Carys Wyn (2008). The Rock Canon. Ashgate. ISBN 978-0754662440. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Julien, Oliver (2008a). "Preface". In Julien, Olivier (ed.). Sgt. Pepper and the Beatles: It Was Forty Years Ago Today. Ashgate. ISBN 978-0-7546-6708-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Julien, Oliver (2008b). "'Their production will be second to none': an introduction to Sgt. Pepper". In Julien, Olivier (ed.). Sgt. Pepper and the Beatles: It Was Forty Years Ago Today. Ashgate. ISBN 978-0-7546-6708-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Larkin, Colin (1998). Virgin All-time Top 1000 Albums. Virgin. ISBN 978-0-7535-0258-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Levy, Joe, ed. (2005). Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (First Paperback ed.). Wenner Books. ISBN 978-1-932958-61-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Lewisohn, Mark (1988). The Beatles Recording Sessions. Harmony Books. ISBN 978-0-517-57066-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Lewisohn, Mark (1992). The Complete Beatles Chronicle:The Definitive Day-By-Day Guide To The Beatles' Entire Career (2010 ed.). Chicago Review Press. ISBN 978-1-56976-534-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Lewisohn, Mark (2009). Sessionography in Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band [CD booklet]. Apple/EMI Records. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• MacDonald, Ian (2005). Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties (3rd ed.). Chicago Review Press. ISBN 978-1-55652-733-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Martin, George (1994). All You Need Is Ears. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-11482-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Martin, George; Pearson, William (1994). Summer of love: The making of Sgt. Pepper. ISBN 978-0-333-60398-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Miles, Barry (1997). Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now (1st Hardcover ed.). Henry Holt & Company. ISBN 978-0-8050-5248-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Moore, Alan (2008). "The act you've known for all these years: a re-encounter with Sgt. Pepper". In Julien, Olivier (ed.). Sgt. Pepper and the Beatles: It Was Forty Years Ago Today. Ashgate. ISBN 978-0-7546-6708-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Moore, Allan (1997). The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-57484-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Moore, Alan (2002). Rock: The Primary Text: Developing a Musicology of Rock (2nd ed.). Ashgate. ISBN 978-0754602989. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Penman, Ross (2009). The Beatles in New Zealand ... a discography. ISBN 978-0-473-15155-3.
• Roberts, David (editor) (2005). British Hit Singles & Albums (18 ed.). Guinness World Records Limited. ISBN 978-1-904994-00-8. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Sounes, Howard (2010). Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney. Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-306-81783-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Sheff, David (1981). Golson, G. Barry (ed.). All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono (2000 ed.). St Martin's Griffin. ISBN 978-0-312-25464-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• The Beatles (2000). The Beatles Anthology. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-0-304-35605-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Womack, Kenneth (2007). Long and Winding Roads: The Evolving Artistry of the Beatles. Continuum. ISBN 978-0-8264-1746-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Further reading

• Miles, Barry (1998). The Beatles: A Diary. JG Press. ISBN 978-1-57215-010-2.
• Miles, Barry (2001). The Beatles Diary Volume 1: The Beatles Years. Omnibus. ISBN 978-0-7119-8308-3.
• Rees, Jasper (2008). A Devil To Play. Harper Collins. ISBN 978-0-06-162661-6.
• Spitz, Bob (2005). The Beatles: The Biography. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 978-0-316-80352-6.

External links

• Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Adobe Flash) at Radio3Net (streamed copy where licensed)
• Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band at Discogs (list of releases)
• It Was 40 Years Ago Today..., an April 2007 Parade magazine article
• 40th Anniversary retrospective from The Age