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 (often shortened as Sgt. Pepper) is the eighth studio album by the English rock band The Beatles, released on 1 June 1967 on the Parlophone label and produced by George Martin. The album is widely regarded as one of the greatest of all time, and has since been recognised as one of the most important albums in the history of popular music, including songs such as "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "A Day in the Life". Recorded over a 129-day period beginning in December 1966, Sgt. Pepper saw the band developing the production techniques of their previous album, Revolver. Martin's innovative and lavish production included the orchestra usage and hired musicians ordered by the band. Genres such as music hall, jazz, rock and roll, western classical, and traditional Indian music are covered. The album cover art, by English pop artist Peter Blake, depicts the band posing in front of a collage of their favourite celebrities, and has been widely acclaimed and imitated.

Sgt. Pepper was a worldwide critical and commercial success, spending a total of 27 weeks at the top of the UK Album Chart and 15 weeks at number one on the US Billboard 200. A defining album in the emerging psychedelic rock style, the album was critically acclaimed upon release and won four Grammy awards in 1968. It frequently ranks at or near the top of published lists of the greatest albums of all time. In 1994 it was ranked number one in the book All Time Top 1000 Albums. In 2003, the album was placed at number one on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Sgt. Pepper is one of the world's best selling albums, having shipped 32 million copies.

Background

The Beatles had grown tired of performing live and stopped touring in August 1966. After the stress of their final American tour, in particular the postponed Cincinnati concert, the four of them — especially Paul McCartney, who was perhaps the most in favour of continuing to tour — decided that it was time to stop. They took a two-month break, and individually got involved in their own interests. George Harrison travelled to India to continue developing his sitar playing at the invitation of Ravi Shankar, returning with enhanced Indian cultural and musical influences. McCartney, along with Martin, wrote the music for the film The Family Way, getting an Ivor Novello award the following year for best film song for the track "Love in the Open Air". John Lennon acted in How I Won the War, and attended art galleries, where he met his future wife Yoko Ono. Ringo Starr spent more time with his wife and children. In November, during a flight back from a holiday in Kenya with his girlfriend Jane Asher and tour manager Mal Evans, McCartney had the first idea for the concept of an alternative Beatles band that would become the Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club band.

Production

The poster for Pablo Fanque's Circus Royal which inspired the lyrics for "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!"

Recording for the album began in late 1966 with a series of songs that were to form an album thematically linked to childhood and everyday life. The first fruits of this exercise, "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever", were released as a double A-sided single in February 1967 after EMI and Epstein pressured Martin for a released single. Once the singles were released the childhood concept was abandoned in favour of Sgt. Pepper's, 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 released only as a single in the UK and Canada at the time, but were 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's sessions but did not see a release until the soundtrack album for the animated film Yellow Submarine, released on 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. All four band members had already developed a preference for long, late night sessions, although they were still extremely efficient and highly disciplined in their studio habits.

By 1967, all of the Sgt. Pepper's 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 Beatles a virtual multi-track studio.

The Beatles used new modular effects units like the wah-wah pedal and fuzzbox, which they augmented with their own experimental ideas, such as 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 an instant and 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 a bit of 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. The Beatles use this effect 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.

"Within You Without You" was recorded on 15 March with Harrison on vocals, sitar and acoustic guitar; the other instruments (tabla, dilruba, swarmandel, and tambura) were played by four London-based Indian musicians while the rest of the Beatles watched, but did not participate.

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

The lyrics for Lennon's song "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!", were adapted almost word for word from a Victorian circus poster for Pablo Fanque's circus, which Lennon had bought at an antique shop in Kent the day The Beatles had been filming the promotional clip for "Strawberry Fields Forever" there. The sound collage was created by Martin and his engineers, who collected recordings of calliopes and fairground organs, which were then cut into strips of various lengths, thrown into a box, mixed up and edited together in random order, creating a long loop which was mixed in during final production.

This album also makes heavy use of keyboard instruments. A grand piano is used on tracks such as "A Day in the Life", a Lowrey organ is used for "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", a harpsichord can be heard on "Fixing a Hole", and Martin played a harmonium on "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!". An electric piano, upright piano, Hammond organ, glockenspiel and mellotron can also be heard on the record. Harrison used a tambura on several tracks, including "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "Getting Better".

The thunderous piano chord that concludes "A Day in the Life", 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 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 runout groove looping back into itself. 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".

Concept

With Sgt. Pepper's, The Beatles wanted to create a record that could, in effect, tour for them, an idea they had already explored with the promotional film clips made over the previous years, intended to promote them in the US when they were not touring there. McCartney decided that he should create fictitious characters for each band member and record an album that would be a performance by that fictitious band. This "alter-ego group" gave the band the freedom to experiment with songs.

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 was also recorded, and appears on side two of the original album (just prior to the climactic "A Day in the Life"), creating a "book-ending" effect. However, the band effectively abandoned the concept after recording the first two songs and the reprise. Lennon was unequivocal in stating that the songs he wrote for the album had nothing to do with the Sgt. Pepper's concept, and further noted that none of the other songs did either, saying "Every other song could have been on any other album". The album has been widely heralded as an early and ground-breaking example of the concept album.

Lyrics

Concerns that lyrics in Sgt. Pepper's referred to recreational drug use led to several songs from the album being banned by the BBC and criticised in other quarters.

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. Another line from the song, "Found my way upstairs and had a smoke/And somebody spoke and I went into a dream", seems to refer to the use of marijuana. A line in the song "When I'm Sixty-Four", "Doing the garden, digging the weeds/Who could ask for more?", has also been interpreted as a sly marijuana reference.

"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" also became the subject of speculation regarding its meaning, as many believed that the words of the chorus were code for LSD. The BBC used this as their basis for banning the song from British radio. Again, Lennon consistently denied this interpretation of the song, maintaining that the song describes a surreal dreamscape inspired by a picture drawn by his son Julian. However, during a newspaper interview in 2004, McCartney was quoted as saying:

'Lucy in the Sky,' that's pretty obvious. There's others that make subtle hints about drugs, but, you know, it's easy to overestimate the influence of drugs on The Beatles' music. ... Just about everyone was doing drugs in one form or another and we were no different, but the writing was too important for us to mess it up by getting off our heads all the time.

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 lyrics printed on the back cover, the first time this had been done on a British pop LP. The Beatles themselves, in the guise of the Sgt. Pepper band, were dressed in custom-made military-style outfits made of satin dyed in day-glo colours. The suits were designed by Manuel Cuevas. Among the insignia on their uniforms are:

• MBE medals on McCartney's and Harrison's jackets. MBEs had been awarded to all four Beatles.
• The Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom, on Lennon's right sleeve.
• Ontario Provincial Police flash on McCartney's sleeve.

File:Sgtpepperinnerbag.jpg

The inner sleeve

In the centre of the scene, The Beatles stand behind a drum on which are painted the words of the album's title; the drum was painted by fairground artist Joe Ephgrave.

The collage depicted more than 70 famous people, including writers, musicians, film stars, and (at Harrison's request) a number of Indian gurus. The final grouping included Marlene Dietrich, Carl Gustav Jung, W.C. Fields, Diana Dors, James Dean, Bob Dylan, Issy Bonn, Marilyn Monroe, Aldous Huxley, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Sigmund Freud, Aleister Crowley, Edgar Allan Poe, Karl Marx, Oscar Wilde, William S. Burroughs, Marlon Brando, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, and controversial comedian Lenny Bruce. 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. Even now, co-creator Jann Haworth regrets that so few women were included.

The final bill for the cover was £2,868 5s 3d (equivalent to £65,758 today), a staggering sum for the time. It has been estimated that this was 100 times the average cost for an album cover in those days.

Reception

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic
Robert Christgau	A
Crawdaddy!	Issue 1.11
Ultimate Guitar	(9.8/10)
Pitchfork Media	(10/10)
The Telegraph
Sputnikmusic
Q
Rolling Stone

Upon release, Sgt. Pepper's received both popular and critical acclaim. The album was a global hit, with huge sales in Europe, North and South America, Africa, Japan, Australia, and even in the black market in the Soviet Union, where the Beatles were very popular and widely available. 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's 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."

One notable critic who did not like the album was Richard Goldstein, a critic for The New York Times, who wrote, "Like an over-attended child, Sergeant Pepper is spoiled. It reeks of horns and harps, harmonica quartets, assorted animal noises, and a 41-piece orchestra", and added that it was an "album of special effects, dazzling but ultimately fraudulent". On the other hand, Goldstein called A Day in the Life "a deadly earnest excursion in emotive music with a chilling lyric", and that "it stands as one of the most important Lennon-McCartney compositions, and it is an historic Pop event". However, he later changed his opinion, saying that the album was "better than 80 per cent of the music around today".

Frank Zappa accused The Beatles 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". That criticism later became the title of the Mothers of Invention album (We're Only in It for the Money), which mocked Sgt. Pepper's with a similar album cover.

In April 1967, Brian Wilson (who was suffering growing mental problems) was deeply affected by hearing a tape of the song "A Day in the Life", which McCartney played to him in Los Angeles. Soon after, Smile was abandoned, and Wilson would not return to complete it until 2003. Van Dyke Parks later said, "Brian had a nervous collapse. What broke his heart was Sgt. Pepper's."

Within days of its release, Jimi Hendrix was performing the title track in concert, first for an audience that included Harrison and McCartney, who were greatly impressed by his unique version of their song and his ability to learn it so quickly.

The chart performance of the album was similarly exceptional. In the UK it debuted at number eight and the next week reached number one where it stayed for 23 consecutive weeks. Then it was knocked off the top for 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's 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 second biggest-selling album in UK chart history behind Queen's Greatest Hits. Sgt. Pepper's won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, the first rock album to do so, and Best Contemporary Album in 1968. In the US the album shipped 11 million units, with sales of around 32 million worldwide. The album won Best British Album at the first Brit Awards in 1977.

Legacy

Sgt. Pepper has been on many lists of the best rock albums, including Rolling Stone, Bill Shapiro, Alternative Melbourne, Rod Underhill and VH1. In 1987 Rolling Stone named Sgt. Pepper the best album of the last twenty years (1967–1987). In 1997 Sgt. Pepper 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 2003, the album was ranked number 1 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums 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.

Tributes

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.

Awards

Grammy Awards

Nominated for seven Grammys in 1968, it would win four, including Album of the Year, the first rock album to receive this honour.

Year	Winner	Award
1968	Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band	Album of the Year
1968	Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band	Best Album Cover, Graphic Arts
1968	Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band	Best Engineered Recording, Non-Classical
1968	Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band	Contemporary Album

Grammy Award nominations

Year	Nominee	Award
1968	Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band	Group Vocal Performance
1968	Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band	Contemporary Vocal Group
1968	"A Day in the Life"	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.

Track listing

Sgt. Pepper was the first Beatles album to be released with identical track listings in the UK and US. The American release did not originally contain the side two runout groove and inner groove sound effects that were restored for the worldwide CD issue, released on 1 June 1987.

All tracks are written by Lennon–McCartney except where noted

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" (George Harrison)	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)"	McCartney with Lennon and Harrison	1:19
6.	"A Day in the Life"	Lennon and McCartney	5:39

Track list information according to Graham Calkin, Mark Lewisohn and Ian MacDonald.

Personnel

According to Mark Lewisohn and Alan W. Pollack

The Beatles

• John Lennon – lead, harmony and backing vocals, lead, rhythm and acoustic guitars, Hammond organ, piano, handclaps, harmonica, tape loops, sound effects, kazoo, tambourine, maracas, comb and paper (on "Lovely Rita")
• Paul McCartney – lead, harmony and backing vocals, lead, acoustic and bass guitars, piano, Hammond organ, handclaps, vocalisations, tape loops, sound effects, kazoo, comb and paper (on "Lovely Rita")
• George Harrison – lead, rhythm and acoustic guitars, sitar, lead vocals on "Within You Without You", harmony and backing vocals, tambura, harmonica, kazoo, handclaps, maracas, comb and paper (on "Lovely Rita")
• Ringo Starr – drums, percussion, congas, tambourine, maracas, handclaps, tubular bells, lead vocals on "With a Little Help from My Friends", harmonica, kazoo, final piano E chord

Additional musicians and production

• Neil Aspinall – tambura and harmonica
• Geoff Emerick – recording and mixing engineer; tape loops and sound effects
• Mal Evans – counting, alarm clock and final piano E chord
• George Martin – producer and mixer; tape loops and sound effects; harpsichord on "Fixing a Hole", harmonium, Lowry organ and glockenspiel on "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" Hammond organ on "With a Little Help from My Friends", piano on "Getting Better" and the solo on "Lovely Rita", final harmonium chord
• Session musicians – four French horns on "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", (Neill 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, conducted by Martin and McCartney

Charts and certificates

Charts

Chart (1967)	Peak position
Australian Albums Chart	1
Norwegian Albums Chart	1
UK Albums Chart	1
US Billboard 200	1
Chart (2009)	Peak position
Australian Albums Chart	16
Brazilian Albums Chart	20
Finnish Albums Chart	9
Italian Albums Chart	9
Mexican Albums Chart	13
Norwegian Albums Chart	31
Portuguese Albums Chart	4
Spanish Albums Chart	22
New Zealand Albums Chart	12
UK Albums Chart	5
US Billboard 200	114

Certifications

Region	Certification	Certified units/sales
Australia (ARIA)	Platinum	70,000^
Brazil (Pro-Música Brasil)	Gold	100,000*
Canada (Music Canada)	8× Platinum	800,000^
Germany (BVMI)	Platinum	500,000^
United Kingdom	—	4,908,288
United States (RIAA)	11× Platinum	11,000,000^
* Sales figures based on certification alone. ^ Shipments figures based on certification alone.

The album entered the UK Albums Chart on 3 June 1967 and remained there for a total of 201 weeks. In the US the album stayed in the Billboard 200 chart for 175 weeks. It remained at number one in the US for a total of 15 straight weeks, longer than any other Beatles album released in America during the sixties.

See also

• List of best-selling albums worldwide
• List of best-selling albums in the United States
• Top best-selling albums by UK Chart
• List of Beatles songs

References

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• Sheff, David (2000). All We Are Saying. New York: St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 0-312-25464-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• "The All-Time 100 Albums". Time. 2007. Retrieved 20 November 2007.
• "2001 VH1 Cable Music Channel All Time Album Top 100". VH1. 2007. Retrieved 19 November 2007.
• "Arts: Sgt Pepper: take two; In 1967, Jann Haworth co-designed the iconic cover for Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band with her then husband, Peter Blake. Now she has revisited the idea - and this time women get a proper look-in".
• "Creating the Cover". 2008. Retrieved 14 April 2008.
• "Suomen virallinen lista". yle.fi. Retrieved 25 November 2009.
• Penman, Ross (2009). The Beatles in New Zealand...a discography. ISBN 978-0-47-315155-3.
• Cross, Craig (2005). The Beatles: Day-by-day, Song-by-song, Record-by-record. ISBN 0595346634.
• Lewisohn, Mark. Sessionography in Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band [CD booklet]. Apple/EMI Records.

External links

• It Was 40 Years Ago Today..., an April 2007 Parade magazine article
• Recording data and notes on mono/stereo mixes and remixes from the English version of the Beatles Fanclub of Norway
• 40th Anniversary retrospective from The Age