Talk:Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Changing psychedelic rock to psychedelia

The words "psychedelic rock" never appear in the article. I count:

1. Wagner felt the album's music reconciles the "diametrically opposed aesthetic ideals" of classical and psychedelia, achieving a "psycheclassical synthesis" of the two forms
2. Womack credits the track's "driving rock sound" with distinguishing it from the album's overtly psychedelic material
3. Julien considers the latter a "masterpiece of British psychedelia".

Shouldn't the infobox instead link to Psychedelia?--Ilovetopaint (talk) 02:40, 24 July 2016‎ (UTC)

Concerns about: due weight under Retrospective criticism; inadequate coverage of Lennon's input

"Retrospective criticism" section

I think we need to address the coverage we're giving to detractors of Pepper under Retrospective criticism. This is partly because of the release's upcoming 50th anniversary and, I'm assuming, the likelihood of the article appearing again on the Wikipedia main page, but also further to points I made here back in 2015 or thereabouts, that no mention whatsoever is given to the uniformly rave reviews appearing in the ratings box. There's no doubt that Pepper's reputation has suffered massively since the 1980s if not before. As mentioned in the earlier discussion, its fall from grace was handled quite thoroughly in John Harris' 2007 feature on the album in Mojo; I've since come across other pieces that carry a similar message: Bob Stanley in The Guardian, Steve Turner in Q, and NZ critic Graham Reid on his site Elsewhere. As a sort of stopgap measure/bandaid solution in 2015, I added the box quote from Q/Mojo/Selector critic Chris Ingham, but I can't help thinking that, with the recent addition of the Opponents subsection, together with the failure to include critical assessment from the ratings box in prose, we're giving undue weight to the album's detractors.

My suggestion is we cut down the paragraph on Greil Marcus' view and perhaps halve the amount of text afforded others under Retrospective criticism and /Opponents. Then, introduce some of the comments from the likes of AllMusic, Pitchfork and The Rolling Stone Album Guide. FWIW, I do share the opinions of the album's many detractors, wholeheartedly. But try as I have, I just can't find any example where a rock critic has committed, in a dedicated album review, to conveying this unfavourable picture of Pepper in terms of a low or middling score or rating. Thoughts, people, please … JG66 (talk) 06:42, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

It does seem like that section is weighted rather heavily, especially considering how most of the detractors seem to make similar points and claims. On an unrelated note, In the review score box, I'm seeing the A.V. Club showing a review of A+, when that article actually gave Sgt. Pepper a B+. But beyond that, I question whether that article is even a valid review -- yes, it is facetious, but on the other hand it is also an honest and important opinion... I honestly do not know how that should be handled, but I have seen that article referenced in the review box for every other Beatles album, so I imagine it must have been discussed before. --Ansalern (talk) 06:22, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for that, I've corrected the score. I spotted another one recently (Paste) that had been upped to 100/100 … Naughty.

I recall reading some objections to including the A.V. Club 2009 reissue reviews, years ago. I'm not too bothered; to my mind, it's like many of Christgau's Consumer Guide "reviews" – you can wonder what on earth the writer's talking about but as long as there's nothing ambiguous about the rating (which there is with Christgau's bizarre symbols). If anyone comes across a review from Mojo, Q or another UK publication, I think that should be included, because the ratings box here is noticeably slanted towards US reviews right now. JG66 (talk) 06:59, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Lennon's input

In the past discussion(s), we also questioned the article's continual focus on McCartney, to the detriment of any perspective on Lennon, particularly. I then added a few bandaids to address this, cosmetically if nothing else. For instance: adding a box quote from Lennon on the drug issue under "Music and lyrics" (replacing what was a third McCartney box quote), and one from Harrison under Songs/Side two; also, from memory, a few sentences on Lennon, Harrison and Starr's unfavourable recollections of the sessions (some of which possibly belongs much later in the article). While Ian MacDonald and others do seem to paint Lennon as something of a zombie during the Pepper period, I've found other sources that aren't so quick to dismiss his input – they point out that his LSD intake, rather than hindering his ability to contribute, informs much of the album.

I think this playing down of Lennon's, and the others', input has partly resulted from the 20th anniversary campaign (It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, etc.) in 1987. As well as an attempt to address some of the scorn being directed at Sgt. Pepper and the Summer of Love ethos generally during the "greedy" '80s, if not long before then, this campaign coincided with McCartney ramping up the tenor of his complaints – subsequently furthered to the max in his book with Miles, Many Years from Now – that the Beatles' avant-garde leanings were being incorrectly credited to Lennon alone in the years since the latter's murder. So he succeeded in placing it beyond doubt that he directed Pepper, and pushed the album's cultural context in relation to the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds (which barely gets a mention in the pre-'87 Beatles biographies I've collected, and never in terms of it having an influence on Pepper) and to Zappa & the Mothers' Freak Out! Martin has certainly supported this line since 1987, and McCartney's dominance has also been underlined by Miles' book and by Geoff Emerick in his 2006 autobiography. But against that, one should bear in mind that Many Years from Now has been seen as Miles on the payroll, simply trotting out McCartney's claims and underplaying the others' role in the process, and that Emerick's book (his whole attitude towards anyone but McCartney, in fact) was trashed by Ken Scott as wildly inaccurate and mean-spirited, a view that author Robert Rodriguez also supports. I'm not arguing for a minute that Sgt. Pepper wasn't a McCartney-led project, nor that Pet Sounds wasn't a key influence on McCartney and Martin – besides, that is the picture that so many secondary and tertiary sources present anyway. Just that Sgt. Pepper was entered into as a full group project and was very much seen as one at the time and long afterwards, judging by the likes of Nicholas Schaffner's The Beatles Forever (1977), Carr & Tyler's The Beatles: An Illustrated Record (1978), Bob Woffinden's The Beatles Apart (1981) and Mark Hertsgaard's A Day in the Life (1995).

The other, directly related thing is the article's avoidance of how LSD served as a major inspiration for all things Beatle at this time. (Just guessing, but is the lack of such info in keeping with a desired tone across the encyclopaedia with regard to mentions of recreational drug use, perhaps? If so, then I don't know how one could begin to adequately describe a work from the psychedelic era.) By McCartney's admission, he had finally taken the drug after 18 months of badgering from his bandmates, in late 1966, by which point LSD had become illegal in the UK. Then, shortly after the album's release, he caused a controversy that MacDonald and others have likened to the More popular than Jesus episode, by publicly confirming that he had taken the drug and singing its praises. The article's near silence on the LSD factor contributed to the feeling I had back in 2015, that McCartney came across as having invented, initiated or somehow been on top of everything – the Beatles' decision to quit touring seemed to have emanated from him (which is why I added mention that he was the last to tire of playing live); that his bandmates appear to simply, willingly, follow their "leader" (hence the added comments about Lennon, Harrison and Starr's dissatisfaction with the project in retrospect, although maybe their complaints just add to the overly simplistic message, thinking about it …). Seems to me that by dealing more fully with the band's LSD use, we'd not only be presenting an accurate picture of the context in which Pepper was created and released, according to most sources, but it would automatically invite more about John Lennon and his muse. After all, he called Pepper an "acid album". JG66 (talk) 05:26, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

McCartney created the Sgt. Pepper concept and calls himself the album's "director". I've never seen the other Beatles take issue with his claim. I recall the opposite actually, with Lennon saying that he was losing interest in the group by the time of Pepper.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 14:28, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Right – and to repeat: "I'm not arguing for a minute that Sgt. Pepper wasn't a McCartney-led project …" I'm talking about the article's omission of anything substantial relating to Lennon's input (particularly in the "Concept and inspiration" section) and the LSD-informed perception that provided inspiration for the album. Like Harrison, Lennon was "losing interest" in being a Beatle since 1965, but that search for something meaningful outside of what the Beatles had come to represent didn't make him absent from the creative process. He fed it directly into their music. JG66 (talk) 04:51, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

TFA for 50th anniversary?

Interesting that user:JG66 should mention in the previous section the possibility of this article being Wikipedia:Today's featured article on the 50th anniversary as I was just coming here to suggest we push for that. As things stand at the moment there is no chance of that happening as it has been a TFA before, but that doesn't mean we can't suggest it. As it happens I managed to get a second appearance for a TFA once before by suggesting that we ran the Transit of Venus article to coincide with the occurence of transit on 5 June 2012 - but I think that was only the second time a TFA had been rerun. I achieved it then by making a request to the then director of TFAs, but since then things have changed. There is an ongoing discussion about rerunning TFAs at Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article#Time to think about re-running TFAs but they are talking about only rerunning articles after at least 5 years and there is some opposition to that. This article was a TFA less than three years ago so do others think it's worth making a request? BTW there is an article in todays Sunday Times saying that Apple are planning a rerelease of the album with Strawberry Fields forever and Penny Lane included, to mark the 50th anniversary. [1]. Richerman (talk) 13:29, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for that, Richerman … Personally, given the situation you've outlined, I wouldn't be pushing for this article to be a TFA again. There's the issue I raised above – the need to convey the retrospective reviewer ratings in prose (per MOS:ALBUM#Album ratings template), if nothing else. Another point that someone raised here in the discussion a couple of years ago (having been stonewalled during the FAC, so I gathered): the absence of anything substantial on John Lennon's perspective. The "Concept and inspiration" section reads pretty much as if the entire project was McCartney's, and worse, that it was mainly an attempt to copy recent albums by the Beach Boys and the Mothers of Invention. Lennon was doing his own thing, as his biographers have it, and it should be represented too. Not to mention the Beatles as a whole: they were all into progressing with each record. That is there, in a way, but it's in one of the many long notes (nb7), under Recording and production. Anyway, I'll add a part II to the section above this, to give some more detail … JG66 (talk) 15:12, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Oh certainly, we would need to be sure it was up to scratch before it was put forward. There's nothing like an upcoming deadline to concentrate the mind...:-) Richerman (talk) 16:24, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Ah, I hear you on deadlines ... I'm fabulous at applying the requisite focus, but equally adept at missing 'em! JG66 (talk) 06:08, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Lead's opening paragraph and the foremost historical merits of Pepper

My concern is with this sentence:

Time magazine declared it "a historic departure in the progress of music" and the New Statesman praised its elevation of pop to the level of fine art.

Two questions:

1. Why is it especially notable that reviewers for Time and New Statesman praised the album? Is it because these magazines did not typically regard popular music so highly in those days? If so, I think the statement does not age well, and the vast majority of people reading the sentence will have no idea that that's what they're supposed to infer.
2. Shouldn't it be more general and non-specific? Example: "... upon release, was lauded by critics who recognised it as an innovative work" would impart the same information in less words and without privileging certain institutions or individual opinions. The lead doesn't even tell us why Pepper was innovative until we're three paragraphs in.

IMO the sentence is a poor summation of the album's historical merits. Based on my understanding of what was most important about Pepper, I think the sentence should be replaced with something that acknowledges these points:

• It was an innovative work; specifically for its approaches to music production, songwriting, and graphic design
• It had strong, immediate associations with the late '60s psychedelic zeitgeist (Summer of Love)
• It helped bridge a cultural and social gap between low art and high art

Not sure how to paraphrase this in just a few words but maybe somebody else can work it out.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 13:11, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

First broadcast?

I'm pretty sure that the first broadcast of this album was over pirate radio. I can't remember which one, but it took place before the official release of the album. I remember it because I was in London at university at the time and a group of us recorded the album on a tape recorder in a flat in North London (I was holding two pairs of wires together throughout the recording because we hadn't had time to properly wire the setup).

I realize that such a tidbit doesn't change the course of history, but if somebody could track down which radio station achieved the coup it might be of interest.--50.68.134.51 (talk) 17:31, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Ah yes, Radio London (from your own article on Pirate Radio): "In 1967, Radio London got an eight-day UK exclusive on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, playing it first on 12 May 1967 – the album was in the shops on 1 June 1967" --50.68.134.51 (talk) 17:40, 18 May 2017 (UTC)