It was Fifty Years Ago Today! The Beatles: Sgt Pepper and Beyond is a new documentary film celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album. It serves as a complement to the Making of Sgt. Pepper documentary from 1992 and also the recent PBS documentary, Sgt. Pepper’s Musical Revolution. While those films offer more of a focus on The Beatles’ recording process, It was Fifty Years Ago Today gives a more cultural context to the Sgt Pepper album.
This film was not officially sanctioned by The Beatles, and therefore no Beatles music was included. Instead it offers interviews with many people who were in the Beatles inner circle and also famous Beatle biographers. They all have some great insider stories and details to share.
For example, the documentary features rare interviews with The Beatles’ original drummer Pete Best, John Lennon’s sister Julia Baird, Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein’s secretary Barbara O’Donnell, Steve Diggle of the Buzzcocks, Beatles associate Tony Bramwell, Pattie Boyd’s sister Jenny Boyd, Hunter Davies, Simon Napier-Bell, Ray Connolly, Bill Harry, Philip Norman, Steve Turner, Andy Peebles, Freda Kelly and The Merseybeats.
Another plus is all of the rare historical footage of The Beatles that you don’t often see in “official” documentaries. However, the flow of the film is at times disjointed with one interview popping up in-between two other unrelated segments.
Also, the film title and DVD cover text leads you to believe that the focus is mainly on Sgt. Pepper. The film starts in August 1966 giving the background of why The Beatles stopped touring which led to their unlimited time in the recording studio. However, the film goes on for 2 hours, and covers material way past the release of Sgt Pepper in June 1967 to include the Beatles trip to India in 1968.
In this reviewer’s opinion, the film was about 30-40 minutes too long and all of the information about what happened after the death of Brian Epstein in August 1967 should have been omitted. The fact that it continues through 1968 leaves you to wonder where this “Sgt. Pepper” documentary is headed and wondering when it will end.
With that said, the interviews are very intelligent and interesting. There is also a second DVD of bonus extra footage of extended interviews with a few people featured in the original film. Highlights are the in-depth interviews with former BBC radio host, Andy Peebles, who interviewed John Lennon two days before he died, and Pete Best. Also included is a brief visual tour of Beatle-related sites in Liverpool and London, with a special stop at 34 Montagu Square, which has a special connection to John, Paul and Ringo.
For Beatles fans who like to get their hands on rare footage and interviews of The Beatles, then this DVD is for you. – T.Y.
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Why do the Fab Four endure when so many others fade quietly into popular music’s often unforgiving sunset? Beyond the glossy packaging and the culture (indeed, the counter-culture) of Beatlemania, what are the sonic nuances that made the Beatles a musical phenomenon for all time?
As John Lennon reminded us during one of his last interviews in 1980, the answer is nestled somewhere amongst their rich array of albums: “With the Beatles, the music is the point,” Lennon remarked, and “you have all this great music.”
To explain in more detail, one must address the significant recording accomplishments of the Fab Four. In other words, how did they progress musically, and which recordings represent the first-time achievement of a specific technique in their career?
As a result, here in my opinion, is a listing (in order of their original release date) of the Top 10 Musical Moments achieved by the Beatles in the recording studio:
1) “I Saw Her Standing There” (1963)
As the first track on the Beatles’ inaugural album Please Please Me (1963), “I Saw Her Standing There” explodes with a sense of urgency and abandon equaled only by the opening strains of “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” the song that would prefigure the group’s triumphant first visit to North America in February 1964.
Lyrically, “I Saw Her Standing There” bespeaks the same teenage amalgam of hopeful romance and ready acceptance that marks the band’s other works of this era:
“Well, she was just 17 You know what I mean And the way she looked Was way beyond compare”
McCartney and Lennon composed the song in the McCartney’s living room (on Forthlin Road) while playing hooky during John’s art school days. Lennon later observed that “we were just writing songs, like the Everly Brothers, like Buddy Holly, pop songs with no more thought to them than that – to create a sound. And the words were almost irrelevant.”
Although the lyrics devolve into a kind of innocuous optimism, the guitar work on “I Saw Her Standing There” fuels the track’s driving spirit. Based on a series of blues riffs, the song’s musical terrain includes a scattering of guitar embellishments that culminate in Harrison’s electrifying solo.
When an audibly excited McCartney counts off the tempo at the beginning of “I Saw Her Standing There,” the Beatles began ushering in a new sound that would erase and subsequently reconfigure the face of popular music.
2) The “middle-eight” on “And I Love Her” (1964)
The Beatles’ early work presages their later accomplishments in terms of its sheer variety. With a knack for crafting “middle-eights” – musical lingo for the eight-bar refrains that characterize their songwriting in the early 1960s – the Beatles were already searching for new musical vistas as early as A Hard Day’s Night (1964).
With “And I Love Her,” the band easily assumes a stirring Latin beat. Ornamented with Harrison and McCartney’s flamenco-like guitar arpeggios, “And I Love Her” swells with the rhythmic intensity of Ringo Starr’s bongos and Harrison’s intermittent claves.
For McCartney, “And I Love Her” is nothing short of a watershed moment. “With one stroke,” Tim Riley writes in Tell Me Why: A Beatles Commentary (1988), McCartney “gains the status of standard balladeer composer.”
McCartney’s enormous catalogue of romantic melodies and ballads finds its origins in “And I Love Her” and the discerning fan can draw a line from its composition to the emergence of such classic tunes as “I’ll Follow the Sun,” “Yesterday,” “Michelle,” “Let It Be” and “The Long and Winding Road.”
3) The sitar accompaniment on “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” (1965)
One of the Beatles’ most remarkable sonic features concerns the vast musical sweep of their career itself. The utterly mesmerizing instrumental and lyrical leap from Please Please Me through Rubber Soul (1965) is matched only by the artistic heights that the band would later reach on Revolver (1966), Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), The Beatles [a.k.a. The White Album] (1968), and Abbey Road (1969).
On Rubber Soul, the Beatles effectively signaled the expansion of their musical horizons via Harrison’s well-known experimentation with sitar music – the exotic, microtonal flavor of which would adorn such Beatles tunes as the classic “Norwegian Wood” and “Within You, Without You” from Sgt. Pepper.
In “Norwegian Wood,” Harrison’s sitar lines accent the flourishes of Lennon’s haunting acoustic guitar. But they also provide a curious palette for Lennon’s confessional lyrics about an extramarital affair.
As with “I’ll Be Back” and “I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party” from Beatles for Sale (1964), “Norwegian Wood” represents a significant departure from the silly love songs that accounted for the band’s initial parcel of hits.
The lyrics themselves – far from underscoring love’s everlasting possibilities – hint at something far more fleeting, even unromantic:
She asked me to stay and she told me to sit anywhere So I looked around and I noticed there wasn’t a chair
Compare the words of “Norwegian Wood” with such earlier phraseology as
I ain’t got nothing but love, babe Eight days a week
And the Beatles’ intellectual development becomes resoundingly clear.
4) “A Day in the Life” (1967)
Fans and critics alike often refer to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as popular music’s first “concept” album. In truth, though, the Beatles’ notion of a fictitious ensemble peters out after “With a Little Help from My Friends,” the album’s second track.
The concept “doesn’t go anywhere,” Lennon later remarked. “But it works ‘cause we said it works.”
Perhaps even more significantly, Sgt. Pepper saw the Beatles erasing the boundaries that they had been challenging since Rubber Soul and Revolver.
“Until this album, we’d never thought of taking the freedom to do something like Sgt. Pepper,” McCartney observed. “We started to realize there weren’t as many barriers as we’d thought, we could break though with things like album covers, or invent another persona for the band.”
With “A Day in the Life” – the album’s dramatic climax – the Beatles virtually reimagined themselves as recording artists. Filled with variegated sonic hues and other assorted sound effects, the song contrasts Lennon’s impassive stories of disillusion and regret with McCartney’s deceptively buoyant interlude about the numbing effects of the workaday world.
The song’s luminous, open-ended refrain: “I’d love to turn you on” promises a sense of interpersonal salvation on a universal scale.
Yet Lennon and McCartney’s detached lyrics seem to suggest, via their nuances of resignation and unacknowledged guilt, that such a form of emotional release will always remain an unrealized dream.
As the music of the Beatles and a studio orchestra spirals out of control and into oblivion, a massive piano chord punctuates the song’s melancholic ambiance.
“In the end,” the Beatles’ legendary producer George Martin writes in All You Need Is Ears (1994), “the microphones were so live that you could hear the air conditioning. It took 45 seconds to do, and we did it three or four times, building up a massive sound of piano after piano after piano, all doing the same thing.”
As the zenith of the Beatles’ musical vitality, the chord that concludes “A Day in the Life” will surely reverberate for the ages.
5) “I Am the Walrus” (1967)
Written at the apex of the Summer of Love, Lennon’s self-consciously psychedelic “I Am the Walrus” functions – at least on a lyrical level – as a brilliant tirade against the ills of enforced institutionalism. Adorned with stunning wordplay and linguistic imagery, “I Am the Walrus” pits Lennon’s bitter vocals against a surrealistic musical tableau comprised of McCartney’s hypnotic bass, Harrison and Starr’s playful percussion, and Martin’s exhilarating string arrangements.
Inspired by Lewis Carroll’s nonsensical poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” “I Am the Walrus” opens with Lennon’s Mellotronin-toned phrasing designed to replicate the monotonous cry of a police siren.
As the song’s spectacular lyrics unfold:“I am he as you are he as you are me and we are altogether.” Starr’s wayward snare interrupts the proceedings and sets Lennon’s intentionally absurdist catalogue of images into motion.
While an assortment of cryptic voices and diabolical laughter weave in and out of the mix, Lennon’s pungent lyrics encounter an array of ridiculous characters – from a “crab locker fishwife” and a “pornographic priestess” to the “expert texpert choking smokers” and that madman of literary effrontery himself, Edgar Allan Poe.
When “I Am the Walrus” finally recedes amongst its ubiquitous mantra of “Goo Goo Goo Joob,” the song dissolves into a scene from a BBC radio production of Shakespeare’s King Lear.
Described by Ian MacDonald as “the most idiosyncratic protest song ever written,” “I Am the Walrus” features Lennon’s most inspired verbal textures, as well as the Beatles’ greatest moment of musical diaphora: in one sense, “I Am the Walrus” seems utterly devoid of meaning, yet at the same time its songwriter’s rants about prevailing social structures absolutely beg for interpretation.
6) Side Two of the White Album (1968)
Quite obviously, we hardly speak of albums in terms of “sides” in the compact-disc era. But yes, kiddies, there was a time when you could saunter into any record store and purchase long-playing records. We called them LPs, but they are now referred to, rather stylishly, as “vinyl.”
Side two of the White Album witnesses the Beatles in full swagger. With their dizzying array of musical styles, the nine tracks from “Martha My Dear” through “Julia” loom as masterworks of artistic virtuosity. They also illustrate the White Album’s stunning eclecticism – the true measure of the album’s resilience.
McCartney’s baroque-sounding “Martha My Dear,” with its crisp brass accompaniment, introduces the sequence, which meanders, rather lazily, into Lennon’s bluesy “I’m So Tired.” Lennon later recalled the song as “one of my favorite tracks. I just like the sound of it, and I sing it well.”
Written during the Beatles’ famous visit to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s retreat at Rishikesh during the spring of 1968, McCartney’s folksy “Blackbird” imagines a contemplative metaphor for the United States’ civil rights struggles during the 1960s.
The sound of a chirping blackbird eventually segues into Harrison’ edgy political satire, “Piggies.” Interestingly, the songwriter’s mother, Louise Harrison, composed the tune’s signature lyric – a punishment suitable for misanthropic politicians everywhere: “What they need’s a damned good whacking!”
The White Album’s song cycle continues with McCartney’s countrified “Rocky Raccoon,” a track that shifts, rather astonishingly, from the disquieting universe of cowboys, gunplay and saloons into a gentle paean about nostalgia and loss.
Starr’s “Don’t Pass Me By,” with its barrelhouse piano chorus, steers the sequence abruptly into the sudsy world of the beer hall. Originally entitled “Some Kind of Friendly,” the song became a number-one hit, rather fittingly in Scandinavia.
One of McCartney’s finest blues effusions, “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?” explodes from the embers of “Don’t Pass Me By” and brilliantly sets the stage for the side’s final two numbers, “I Will” and “Julia.”
A soothing melody about the tenuous interplay between romance and commitment, “I Will” remains one of McCartney’s most memorable experiments in brash sentimentality.
Arguably his most powerful ballad, Lennon’s “Julia” memorializes the songwriter’s late mother while simultaneously addressing his spiritual deliverance at the hands of his newfound soul mate, the ”ocean child” Yoko Ono.
7) The guitar lick at the end of “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey” and the piano melody on “Sexy Sadie” (1968)
Unfortunately, the Beatles’ considerable impact upon popular culture often seems to obscure the minute particulars of their musicianship. Two instances from the White Album especially underscore their dexterity as musical craftsmen, as well as their phenomenal aural leaps from, say, “Can’t Buy Me Love” through their finest artistic accomplishments during the late 1960s.
A moment of pure excitement and adrenaline, the guitar riff at the conclusion of “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey” accentuates an otherwise peculiar song about social politics with the bruising panache of rock and roll. A rhythmic burst of high-octane modulation, the guitar phrasings at the end of “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey” exemplify the breadth of the band’s extraordinary musical prowess.
As Lennon’s acidic lullaby to the Beatles’ experiences under the Maharishi’s dubious tutelage, “Sexy Sadie” bears mention for its salacious lyrical contents alone:
We gave you everything we owned just to sit at your table Just a smile would lighten everything
In terms of sheer artistry, though, the song reveals the band in full aesthetic throttle. As McCartney’s tinkling piano phrases spar with Harrison’s bristling guitar, “Sexy Sadie” maneuvers effortlessly through chord changes and one harmonic shift after another.
When the song finally ascends to its closing musical interchange, the Beatles’ instrumentation and Lennon’s spellbinding vocal coalesce in a breathtaking instance of blissful resolution.
8) Harrison’s guitar solo on “Something” (1969)
Harrison comes into his own, of course, on Abbey Road, the Beatles’ magnificent swan song. The unbridled optimism of Harrison’s “Here Comes the Sun” is matched – indeed, surpassed – only by “Something,” his crowning achievement and the classic tune that Frank Sinatra would famously dub “the greatest love song of the past 50 years.”
For much of the song, Harrison’s soaring guitar, his musical trademark, dances in delectable counterpoint with McCartney’s jazzy, melodic bass. Instrumentally, the fusion of their guitar work produces an exquisite musical tapestry as “Something” meanders toward Harrison’s most unforgettable of guitar solos, the tune’s greatest lyrical feature – even more lyrical, interestingly enough, than the lyrics themselves.
A masterpiece of utter simplicity, Harrison’s solo reaches toward the sublime, wrestles with it in a bouquet of downward syncopation, and hoists it yet again in a moment of supreme grace.
9) The Abbey Road medley (1969)
There is little question that, even during its production, the Beatles regarded Abbey Road as their final studio album. Their growing interpersonal and financial tensions were exacting a seemingly immutable toll on their artistic relationship.
As the workmanlike Beatles went about the business of recording their musical finale, McCartney and Martin began assembling the medley that would conclude the album.
“I wanted to do something bigger, a kind of operatic moment,” McCartney remembered.
In contrast with the pop operas of that era by The Who and The Small Faces, The Beatles’ medley essentially consists of an assortment of unfinished songs. Yet McCartney and Martin’s inspired post-production efforts ensured that the medley enjoyed a cohesiveness from which we can draw larger musical and lyrical motifs.
While the medley features the Beatles’ penchant for balladry in such literary characters as Mean Mr. Mustard, Polythene Pam, and the eccentric female protagonist who meanders in and out of the narrative of “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window,” the sequence reaches its most profound instances during such classic numbers as “You Never Give Me Your Money,” “Golden Slumbers,” and “Carry that Weight.”
In “You Never Give Me Your Money,” McCartney’s plaintive piano strains give way to Lennon and Harrison’s dueling rhythm guitars. As Harrison later observed, the song “does two verses of one tune, and then the bridge is almost like a different song altogether, so it’s quite melodic.”
The lyrics bespeak the tragedies of misspent youth and runaway fame:
Out of college, money spent See no future, pay no rent All the money’s gone, nowhere to go
As “You Never Give Me Your Money” comes to a close, the song’s bluesy guitar riffs segue into the chorus of a children’s nursery rhyme:
One, two , three, four, five, six, seven All good children go to heaven
Later in “Golden Slumbers,” McCartney resumes the medley’s earlier themes with a deft reworking of Thomas Dekker’s 400-year-old poem of the same name. As the medley progresses toward its symphonic conclusion, the song’s bitter nostalgia – “Once there was a way to get back homeward / Once there was a way to get back home” – yields itself to a larger realization, in “Carry That Weight,” that we inevitably shoulder the past’s frequently irredeemable burden for the balance of our lives.
In “Carry That Weight,” McCartney acknowledges his own culpability in the Beatles’ dissolution, yet his rather humbling, self-conscious lyrics extend an olive branch to his increasingly distant chums:
I never give you my pillow I only send you my invitations And in the middle of the celebrations I break down
In its highly polished final form, the Abbey Road medley encounters the Beatles at the height of their decidedly literary faculties. In many ways, the medley functions as McCartney’s clever reconfiguration of Shakespeare’s “seven ages of man” in As You Like It.
From “You Never Give Me Your Money” through “The End,” his lyrics impinge upon the inherent difficulties that come with growing up and growing older. Only the power of memory, it seems, can placate our inevitable feelings of nostalgia and regret – not only for our youthful days, but for how we lived them.
Appropriately, McCartney concludes the medley with a quasi-Shakespearean couplet – “A cosmic, philosophical line,” in Lennon’s words: “And in the end the love you take / Is equal to the love you make.”
In The Beatles as Musicians: Revolver through the Anthology (1999), Walter Everett astutely reads the medley as “a very personal final gift from Paul McCartney to his mates, as well as from the Beatles to the world.”
As the moving coda to a brilliant career, the Abbey Road medley – perhaps more than any other moment in the Beatles’ unprecedented musical catalogue – witnesses the band’s creative powers in full bloom.
10) “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)” (1970)
Granted, “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)” hardly begins to rank among the Beatles’ finest songs. Originally released as the B-side of “Let It Be” – the group’s penultimate number-one hit – this whimsical tune never fails to arouse even the most jaded listener’s nostalgia for the Fab Four’s inherent sense of fun.
Recorded by the band in 1967 and completed by Lennon, McCartney and the Beatles’ faithful roadie Mal Evans in 1969, “You Know My Name” is a uniquely comic moment in the group’s discography.
“We had these endless , crazy fun sessions,” McCartney fondly observes in his introduction to Mark Lewisohn’s quintessential The Beatles Recording Sessions (1988).
A pastiche of lounge-style vocal stylings and Monty Python-esque humor, the song features the late Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones on saxophone, Lennon playing the maracas, and Harrison on the xylophone.
From its soul-pounding blues introduction to the song’s swanky samba refrain, “You Know My Name” is propelled – in unforgettably comic fashion – by Lennon’s hilarious falsetto vocals and the dappled chorus of grunts and mumbles that mark the tune’s sizzling conclusion. Although it could never hope to challenge the likes of such classics as “Hey Jude,” “Come Together” or Revolution,” You Know My Name” clearly occupies a distinctive niche in the storied history of Beatlemania.
Any list of great Beatles songs is inherently flawed, of course, and can never really begin to account for the totality of their artistic achievement. If nothing else, though, this roster of distinguished Beatles moments illustrates the essence of their timelessness. It is worth nothing that a significant portion of their greatness can be attributed to the simple fact that they never wore out their welcome. And, in the well-trodden words of Lennon and McCartney, you know that can’t be bad.
[This article was originally printed in the Fall 2002 issue of Daytrippin’ Magazine (No. 20) and is also featured in the Daytrippin’ Anthology.]
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Ringo Starr invites everyone to celebrate his 77th birthday on Friday, July 7, 2017 – either with him in Los Angeles, or virtually on social media. The ex-Beatle’s Peace & Love birthday celebration has become an annual event and will take place in front of the Capitol Records Tower in Hollywood, California where Ringo will be joined by family, friends and the public to come together in a moment of Peace & Love at Noon.
If you can’t be in L.A., Ringo also invites everyone everywhere to think, say, or post #PeaceandLove at noon their local time, thus generating a wave of Peace & Love that moves over the planet on July 7 starting at noon in New Zealand and ending at noon in Hawaii.
In fact, you don’t have to go anywhere, or say anything, you can post #PeaceandLove, say it or just think “Peace and Love,” anywhere you are, at work for example, or otherwise busy, and know you are still contributing Peace and Love to the moment.
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The Peace & Love birthday celebration was a concept born in 2008 when Ringo was asked in an interview “what would you like for your birthday” He replied: “more Peace & Love.” This marked the beginning of a yearly tradition where Ringo has hosted events all over the world including NYC’s Time Square and Chicago, to Hamburg, Germany and Capitol Records in L.A.
“I can’t think of a better way to celebrate my birthday, or a better gift I could ask for, then Peace & Love. How great that this idea keeps growing and spreading. Thanks to everyone supporting it. Peace & Love, Ringo.”
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This annual celebration of ‘Peace & Love’ continues to expand every year, embraced by people all over the world. Here is a list of locations so far:
Bogota, Colombia: Parque El Virrey
Buenos Aires, Argentina: Monumento a “La Flor,” Parque de las Naciones Unidas
Carlini Base, Antarctica
Chascomus, Argentina: TBD
Iowa, Fairfield Maharishi University
Las Vegas, Nevada: Cirque Du Soleil, Beatles Love
Lima, Peru: Parque John Lennon, Distrito San Miguel
Liverpool, England: Cavern Club
London, England: Abbey Road
Madrid, Spain: Slow Mex, Near Plaza Dos de Mayo
Masterton, New Zealand, Hedley’s Book Shop
Montevideo, Uruguay: Letrero de “Montevideo, Rambla Pocitos, (casi Luis A de Herrera)
Moscow, Russia: Red Square – St. Basil’s Cathedral, Monument to Minin and Pozharsky
NYC, New York Alices Tea Cup Chapter 1 (Starwberry Fields)
Panama City, Panama: Panama Canal
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Bar Veloso
Saint Petersburg, Russia: Embankment of River Neva
San Jose, Costa Rica: La Sabana Metropolitan Park, Across from National Stadium
San Salvador, El Salvador: Monumento “Cristo de La Paz”, Km. 9 Carretera a Comalapa
Sao Paulo, Brazil: TBD
Tokyo, Japan: TBD
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Remember to participate and share your “#PeaceandLove” wishes with Ringo by posting #PeaceAndLove messages, photos and videos on Ringo’s official Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/995150243851506/
[Excerpts from official press release]
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“Sgt. Pepper – Wow! Was it really 50 years ago today? Can’t be true…”
– Paul McCartney in April 2017
On May 26, The Beatles will release a new remixed version of their groundbreaking Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album on CD and vinyl, and this 50th anniversary edition is a vibrant achievement. Giles Martin and Sam Okell took the original master tapes from the classic 1967 Beatles album and enhanced the sound to bring it up to date to the stereo standards of the 21st century.
Mixed in stereo and 5.1 surround audio, this is a vast improvement over the 2009 remastered Beatles CD version. This is the first time the album has been remixed. The original four-track session tapes were the source and Giles Martin used the original mono mix produced by his father, Beatles producer George Martin, as a guide.
When comparing the 2009 remastered Sgt. Pepper CD to the remixed 2017 version, it’s like going from black and white to color. The 2009 remastered version almost sounds muted when compared to the 50th anniversary remix due to the fact that the sound of the vocals, guitars and drums are all brought to the front.
Paul McCartney commented on the remix in a recent Q&A with Japanese fans: “It’s very clear. So whereas the old mix was just sort of a general mix, this time you can hear every little instrument. And it was quite surprising to hear, ‘Ooh, I’d forgotten we did that.'”
The sound is so clear and enhanced that you can even hear McCartney shouting in the background at the end of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (reprise).” You’ll also hear an unexpected addition to the end of “Within You, Without You.”
Ringo Starr also raved about the new remix. A friend of Ringo’s reported that “it originally was recorded on a 4-track with a lot of overdubs, which buried the drums. Now, the drums have been lifted and come through as they should. He was pleased.”
The remixed Sgt. Pepper CD is definitely worth getting, no matter how many previous versions you have. While you can just get the remixed CD by itself, here’s why you should get the Super Deluxe edition.
If you love to hear outtakes and get a glimpse into how The Beatles’ song process took place, you’ll especially enjoy Disc 2 of the Deluxe package. Here you get 18 tracks including five takes of “Strawberry Fields Forever” and five takes of “A Day in the Life.” These outtakes include an alternate attempt at creating the dramatic piano sound at the end of “A Day in the Life”, instead with all of The Beatles humming in unison. Note that Disc 2 on the Super Deluxe version is different from the outtakes included on Disc 2 of the 2-CD Deluxe set.
Disc 3 offers 15 additional outtakes for the diehard Beatles fan. Disc 4 offers the entire album in the original mono mix, along with 6 additional mono tracks including “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane.”
If you are not that interested in outtakes, the Super Deluxe package is still worth the money because of the lavish hardcover book and The Making of Sgt. Pepper documentary on DVD and Blu-ray.
The Making of Sgt. Pepper documentary was made for the 25th anniversary of the album’s release and contains great interviews with Paul, George, Ringo and George Martin. The highlight is watching George Martin sit at the engineering controls in the recording studio and isolate either the vocal or instrumental tracks on several of the songs and discuss The Beatles’ recording process.
The six-disc Super Deluxe set comes with a 144-page hardcover book the size of an album. The book includes chapters written by different writers on various aspects of the album. Topics include the design of the cover, the album’s musical innovations and its historical context by Beatles historian, author and radio producer Kevin Howlett; composer and musicologist Howard Goodall; music producer and writer Joe Boyd; and journalists Ed Vulliamy and Jeff Slate.
The book also features rare photographs, reproductions of handwritten lyrics, Abbey Road Studios documentation, and original ‘Sgt. Pepper‘ print ads. Last but not least, there is a complete list of every person featured on the Sgt. Pepper cover. You could spend hours and hours looking at that.
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Take your time and savor every aspect of the Sgt. Pepper 50th anniversary Deluxe edition. By the time you get through it all, the new White Album reissue project will be ready! – Trina Yannicos
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The Beatles released their album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, during the “Summer of Love” on June 1, 1967. Sgt. Pepper was unlike any album of its time. It was considered unprecedented in many ways due to the innovative ideas and musical techniques presented on the album.
The album cover, the printed lyrics, the musical composition, the lyrical contents and the overall concept of the album proved upon its release to have a great impact on popular music as well as on the rest of popular culture. Considering the attention it was given through prestigious publications such as Newsweek, Time, The New York Times and The Washington Post illustrates that it was recognized as a significant event in the history of the 1960s.
The music industry honored The Beatles monumental achievement at the GRAMMY Awards given in 1968. Sgt. Pepper won for Best Engineered Album, Best Pop Vocal Album, Best Contemporary Rock and Roll Performance, Best Album Cover and Album of the Year. The album’s revolutionary and brilliant qualities were praised. In 1993, the album entered the GRAMMY Hall of Fame.
Sgt. Pepper was considered the first of its kind in many respects. For example, Sgt. Pepper became one of the first rock albums to eliminate the periods of silence traditionally heard between songs. As a result, the concept of the album was to recreate a concert-like performance of the make-believe Sgt. Pepper’s band.
Also contributing to the uniqueness of Sgt. Pepper was the album cover. It was a collage of The Beatles surrounded by famous historical, literary and entertainment figures ranging from Edgar Allan Poe to Marilyn Monroe to Bob Dylan. Apparently, the Beatles’ record company, EMI, obtained permission from each celebrity to include them on the cover.
Musically, this was an extraordinary album not just because of the complex musical arrangements, but also because of the wide variety of instruments used ranging from an electric guitar to a 41-piece orchestra.
The lyrics of the songs had a great effect because of the many ways they could be interpreted. Sgt. Pepper marked the first time that the lyrics were printed on the cover of a major pop release. As a result, the printing of the lyrics put a greater emphasis on the meaning of the songs. Consequently, this rock album, which had several different aspects to analyze, received near-unanimous raves and very little criticism.
Throughout the States, it was widely agreed upon that Sgt. Pepper was a superior achievement for The Beatles. Taken along with the Beatles’ previous successes, Sgt. Pepper‘s release created an outpouring of esteemed praise for The Beatles.
In Time‘s cover story (9/22/67), music writer Christopher Porterfield described The Beatles as “messengers from beyond rock ‘n’ roll, they are creating the most original, expressive and musically interesting sounds being heard in pop music.” Meanwhile, in Newsweek (6/26/67), Jack Kroll called them “Britain’s new Poet Laureate.”
The Beatles were being hailed as the greatest in their field, and by some they were being hailed as the greatest humans on earth. According to Philip Norman in his book Shout! The Beatles in their Generation (1981), Dr. Timothy Leary, a famous personality in the hippie movement, claimed that the Beatles were “the wisest, holiest, most effective avatars the human race has ever produced.”
At the same time, the album itself was receiving the highest critical acclaim. According to Norman, The New York Times Review of Books declared that Sgt. Pepper marked “a new and golden Renaissance of song.” Meanwhile, according to Nicholas Schaffner in his book The Beatles Forever (1977), Tom Philips of New York’s Village Voice called Sgt. Pepper “the most ambitious and most successful record album ever issued.”
The majority of critics had a similar positive response to the album. Obviously, the most influential part of the album was the music. In The Washington Post (6/18/67), Carl Bernstein expressed his view of this amazing creation: “The Beatles have managed to create a musical infinity through a miraculous metamorphosis of dozens of Eastern and Western musical ideas, some centuries old, others from our own era and more than a few from the future.” It was the opinion of many critics that Sgt. Pepper was the most amazing rock album to date.
However, the real proof that Sgt. Pepper was an astounding musical achievement rested in the views of other musicians. Surprisingly, in the classical music world, Sgt. Pepper received great praise.
According to Time (9/22/67), classical conductor Leonard Bernstein declared that the song “She’s Leaving Home” was one of the three great songs of the century. Also, Time reported that classical composer Ned Rorem claimed that this song “is equal to any song that Schubert ever wrote.” Rorem also insisted that the best songs on Sgt. Pepper could compare with those by composers Monteverdi, Schumann and Poulenc.
Meanwhile, within the rock world, the reaction was just as great. According to the authors of The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of the Beatles (1983), after first hearing Sgt. Pepper, The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson gave up working on his own upcoming album since he believed Sgt. Pepper to be the greatest album ever made and nothing could top it.
If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then The Who and The Rolling Stones greatly admired The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper. They both took up the challenge of matching it with their albums, Tommy and Their Satanic Majesties Request.
Although the overwhelming response to Sgt. Pepper was positive, there were a few negative responses. According to Schaffner, Richard Goldstein of The New York Times “dismissed most of the songs [on Sgt. Pepper] as pretentious and gimmicky.” On a more severe note, according to Philip Norman, the John Birch Society, an ultra right-wing Christian group, claimed that the Beatles “were part of a Communist conspiracy and their music displayed ‘an understanding of the principles of brainwashing.'”
The BBC expressed their own form of negative response when they banned the song “A Day in the Life” from being played on the British airwaves. They stated that the song was promoting drugs through lyrics such as “I’d love to turn you on.”
Some fans of The Beatles also saw Sgt. Pepper as a prelude to the inevitable commercial exploitation of the counterculture. According to Schaffner, Robert Somma in Crawdaddy criticized The Beatles because “they tidied up the drug scene, made psychedelia as palatable and mind-blowing as Congress.” Nonetheless, these criticisms were among the few that appeared amidst the plethora of praise for Sgt. Pepper.
Not only did Sgt. Pepper promote good and bad reviews for itself, but it created a new form of criticism for all rock albums which came thereafter. Following the strong reaction to Sgt. Pepper, serious critical reviews on rock albums came into existence. Prestigious publications started including commentaries on The Beatles and rock music in their issues. Until then, the only source of rock journalism came from fan magazines and the underground press. After Sgt. Pepper, a whole new genre of critical review emerged leading to the birth of magazines such as Rolling Stone and Crawdaddy.
The majority of America looked favorably on the release of Sgt. Pepper. The most enthusiastic were the youth of America or the counterculture. With the release of Sgt. Pepper, the youth of the sixties believed that the Beatles were the spokesmen for the counterculture. The hippies studied and dissected the album, believing that it held prophecies, messages and signs for them.
Besides the supposed drug messages in the lyrics, the hippies also interpreted some songs to be a put down of their parents. According to Porterfield, “She’s Leaving Home,” with its story about a teenage girl who runs away from home, was thought of as an anthem for the younger generation. As reported in Time, one 15-year-old hippie commented that the Beatles were “saying all the things I always wanted to say to my parents and their freaky friends.”
According to Jon Wiener in his book Come Together: John Lennon in His Time (1984), Robert Christgau, a writer for the music magazine Cheetah, claimed that Sgt. Pepper served as a “catalyst for the entire youth movement.” Sgt. Pepper was considered to be the perfect soundtrack for the “Summer of Love.” It managed to express almost every aspect of the merging youth subculture.
The cover story in Time (9/22/67) summarized the main messages the album relays: “tension between the generations, the loneliness of the dislocated ’60s, and the bitter sweets of young love in any age.” The youth movement could strongly identify with these messages.
Not only did the younger generation respond to Sgt. Pepper, but for the first time the older generation took a serious look at the Beatles and their music. Sgt. Pepper caused many adults, including parents, professors and business executives, to start taking the Beatles and rock music seriously. It was the first rock album that many people bought, and consequently, average adults started to formulate their own views on the Beatles’ music.
According to Time, Tom Leland, an Atlanta psychiatrist, stated that on Sgt. Pepper the Beatles were “speaking in an existential way about the meaningless of actuality.” Also reported in Time, Robert Tusler, a teacher of 20th century music at UCLA, declared that The Beatles “made an enormous contribution to electronic music.”
Some adults proclaimed that with the release of Sgt. Pepper, popular music had progressed into an art form. According to Time, musicologist Henry Pleasants declared, “The Beatles are where music is right now.”
This sudden change in perspectives on rock music may have been strongly influenced by the gradual progression of the Beatles’ music. The sharp contrast from the Beatles’ earlier music to the later music of Sgt. Pepper was a drastic change from simplicity to complexity. This metamorphosis, which also reflected the changing of the times, resulted from The Beatles desire to grow, experiment and expand their horizons.
This progression caused people to recognize the dramatic effect of popular music as art. Jack Kroll of Newsweek compared the Beatles to other artistic writers: “…loss of innocence is, increasingly, their theme and the theme of more ‘serious’ new art from the stories of Donald Barthelme to the plays of Harold Pinter.”
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band definitely set a new standard of achievement in popular music due to the immense positive response it received almost everywhere. As Jim Hoagland declared in The Washington Post in 1967, “music may never be the same again.” And it wasn’t.
In 1987, on its 20th anniversary, it was voted the greatest album of all time by a worldwide panel of critics. Looking back on the album in retrospect, it obviously had weaknesses. Richard Harrington claimed in The Washington Post in 1987 that the only songs that hold up well are: “With A Little Help From My Friends,” “She’s Leaving Home,” “Getting Better” and “A Day in the Life.” However, he still agreed that the album had tremendous influence over the music industry and the American public.
The music industry changed in several ways after the release of Sgt. Pepper. Since the album took four months to make at a cost of approximately $100,000, the record business began its transformation into a billion dollar industry. Consequently, the album format was emphasized, and recording and marketing techniques were reshaped. After Sgt. Pepper introduced the idea of a “concept album”, this idea was widely imitated. Also no respectable rock star would ever again put out a dull album cover.
Immediately following Sgt. Pepper, there was an unprecedented amount of freedom of expression in rock songs. Due to the acceptance of rock as art, every major album could expect to be critically analyzed and examined like a new novel. This criticism is still prevalent today in such magazines as Rolling Stone, which also celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.
Sgt. Pepper also inspired a new age of studio experimentation and lavish productions. It is generally recognized that with Sgt. Pepper, the Beatles reached their peak in regards to experimentation and influence. This album was definitely seen as a turning point in the music industry.
Concerning American society, Sgt. Pepper also had a great influence. The music seemed to distill the moods of that time. It opened up the eyes of the people, young and old. The album accurately personified the psychedelic sixties. It reflected the beliefs and thoughts of the people, especially the youth.
Landgon Winner wrote in The New Yorker about the feeling evoked by the release of Sgt. Pepper: “The closest Western Civilization has come to unity since the Congress of Vienna in 1815 was the week the Sgt. Pepper album was released. For a brief while, the irreparably fragmented consciousness of the West was unified, as least in the minds of the young.”
Will there ever be another album/CD that will have as enormous an impact as Sgt. Pepper did? Judging from the 50 years since Sgt. Pepper‘s release, that seems highly doubtful.
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The Beatles Channel Coming May 18 Exclusively on SiriusXM (PRNewsfoto/Sirius XM Holdings Inc.)
It’s long overdue!
The Beatles finally get their own radio channel on Sirius XM on Channel 18. That happens to be right next to the Elvis Presley Channel on Sirius XM Channel 19 which has been around since 2004!
Here are the official details:
The Beatles Channel will showcase all-things-Beatles with regular and special programming spanning the history-making careers of the band and its members: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. The channel will explore The Beatles’ entire career including their hits and deeper tracks, live recordings, rarities, and solo albums, while also spotlighting musicians who have inspired, and have drawn inspiration from, The Beatles.
Paul McCartney said, “I still remember the thrill of when we first heard our music on the radio, but I don’t think any of us would have imagined that we’d have our very own Beatles radio channel more than 50 years later. The SiriusXM channel will have it all, 8 Days a Week.”
Ringo Starr added, “Great news, The Beatles will have their own channel on SiriusXM. Now you can listen to The Beatles, Any Time at All. Peace & Love.”
The Beatles Channel Coming May 18 Exclusively on SiriusXM (PRNewsfoto/Sirius XM Holdings Inc.)
“We are so proud to announce the most popular band in history has joined us for their own SiriusXM channel,” said Scott Greenstein, President and Chief Content Officer of SiriusXM. “We’ve worked with The Beatles and Apple Corps Ltd. to create a channel that is as vital today as when the band’s music was first recorded. The channel will be all-things-Beatles, 24/7. The soundtrack of our world, made by John, Paul, George and Ringo.”
On June 1, The Beatles Channel will celebrate “Pepper Day” on the 50th Anniversary of the band’s acclaimed Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, playing the album’s new Anniversary Edition stereo mix in its entirety. The album spotlight will be accompanied by commentary by the album’s original producer, the late George Martin, and by his son, Giles Martin, who produced the album’s new stereo and 5.1 surround mixes from The Beatles’ session tapes, guided by his father’s original, Beatles-preferred mono album mix. Apple Corps Ltd./Capitol/UMe will release ‘Sgt. Pepper‘ in several Anniversary Edition configurations on May 26.
[Source: excerpts from official press release]
The Beatles Channel will launch at exactly 9:09 am ET on Thursday May 18, and will be celebrated as part of SiriusXM’s free listening preview program, offering 24/7 listening on inactive SiriusXM radios from May 17 to May 30.
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It was 50 years ago on June 1, 1967 when The Beatles surprised the world ushering in the Summer of Love with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the groundbreaking masterpiece that became popular music’s most universally acclaimed album. To salute the occasion, The Beatles will release special CD and Vinyl packages of the Sgt. Pepper 50th Anniversary Edition on May 26. The album is newly mixed by Giles Martin and Sam Okell in stereo and 5.1 surround audio and expanded with early takes from the studio sessions, including 34 previously unreleased recordings.
“It’s crazy to think that 50 years later we are looking back on this project with such fondness and a little bit of amazement at how four guys, a great producer and his engineers could make such a lasting piece of art,” says Paul McCartney in his newly-penned introduction for the Sgt. Pepper Anniversary Edition.
“Sgt. Pepper seemed to capture the mood of that year, and it also allowed a lot of other people to kick off from there and to really go for it,” Ringo Starr recalls in the Anniversary Edition’s book.
This is the first time Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band has been remixed and presented with additional session recordings. To create the new stereo and 5.1 surround audio mixes for Sgt. Pepper, producer Giles Martin and mix engineer Sam Okell worked with an expert team of engineers and audio restoration specialists at Abbey Road Studios in London. All of the Anniversary Edition releases include Martin’s new stereo mix of the album, which was sourced directly from the original four-track session tapes and guided by the original, Beatles-preferred mono mix produced by his father, George Martin.
Ringo Starr has expressed his delight at the new remastered Sgt. Pepper recordings. According to Keith Allison, former Paul Revere and the Raiders bassist, who was recently hanging out with Ringo: “He thought it was great! Why? Because it originally was recorded on a 4-track with a lot of overdubs, which buried the drums. Now, the drums have been lifted and come through as they should. He was pleased.”
Fans have been waiting for a new stereo remix of Sgt. Pepper since the original stereo release was rushed out with no input from The Beatles. The mono version was what The Beatles and George Martin had poured their heart and soul into back in 1967.
“No matter how well you know the album, this remix is full of nuances any fan will notice, especially the bottom end —Ringo’s kick drum really reveals new dimensions,” explains Rolling Stone writer, Rob Sheffield.
“The alternate takes are full of discoveries; hours of new Beatle music that gives a taste of how many treasures remain in the vault. It’s not just historic value — it’s an astounding listening experience,” says Sheffield, who got an exclusive first listen to the Sgt. Pepper outtakes.
The Super Deluxe set includes a 144-page hardcover book featuring new introductions by Paul McCartney and Giles Martin, and chapters covering comprehensive song-by-song details and recording information, the design of the cover, the album’s musical innovations and its historical context.
The Super Deluxe edition also includes a DVD and Blu-ray featuring the previously unreleased documentary film The Making of Sgt. Pepper (broadcast in 1992), with insightful interviews with McCartney, Harrison and Starr, and in-studio footage introduced by George Martin.
For Record Store Day on April 22, Apple Corps Ltd./Capitol/UMe will release an exclusive, limited edition seven-inch vinyl single of The Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane,” among the first songs recorded during the ‘Sgt. Pepper’ sessions, which began in November 1966.
(Source: Includes excerpts from official press release)
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It was Fifty Years Ago Today! The Beatles: Sgt Pepper and Beyond is a new documentary film celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album. It serves as a complement to the Making of Sgt. Pepper documentary from 1992 and also the recent PBS documentary, Sgt. Pepper’s Musical Revolution. While those films offer more of a focus on The Beatles’ recording process, It was Fifty Years Ago Today gives a more cultural context to the Sgt Pepper album.
Ringo Starr invites everyone to celebrate his 77th birthday on Friday, July 7, 2017 – either with him in Los Angeles, or virtually on social media. The ex-Beatle’s Peace & Love birthday celebration has become an annual event and will take place in front of the Capitol Records Tower in Hollywood, California where Ringo will be joined by family, friends and the public to come together in a moment of Peace & Love at Noon.
In Time‘s cover story (9/22/67), music writer Christopher Porterfield described The Beatles as “messengers from beyond rock ‘n’ roll, they are creating the most original, expressive and musically interesting sounds being heard in pop music.” Meanwhile, in Newsweek (6/26/67), Jack Kroll called them “Britain’s new Poet Laureate.”
