The Passion of Sgt. Pepper

A landmark popular music album reconsidered over one half-century later. When what’s taken as your best is really the beginning of the end.

On 1 June (2 June in the U.S.) 1967, The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. As this album with the colorfully striking and instantly iconic cover appeared after a relatively long, quiet stretch after calling it quits on years of touring, Sgt. Pepper was considered a comeback album. Strange as it may seem to us in the distant galaxy of the early 21st century, but it had been over three years since the band had appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, and in the hurried-up world of the emergent global popular culture of the mid- to late 1960s, The Beatles were already considered old hat and on the way out.

As the album was called Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and as Paul McCartney was hyping it as The Beatles pretending to be another band entirely, the album is also considered the first “reinvention,” or rebranding of a popular music act—and, given the circumstances, just in the nick of time. As always, to fully appreciate this requires an understanding of the way things were when world superstars like The Beatles were a brand new phenomenon.  Consider the world of February 1964, when “the loveable moptops” in matching suits played on Ed Sullivan, versus the world of June 1967. Google the images. 

Hint: They looked nothing like this three years ago, not even the year before.

Now realize that, with what most critics consider The Beatles’ peak as a band, they had all of two years, two months, and 22 days to go until they were over. The last time the four men would be all together in one place was for the final promotional photo shoot at John Lennon’s Tittenhurst mansion on 22 August 1969. They had just exhausted their last bit of tolerance for one another on their last album, Abbey Road, finished just days before. Look at those photos and flash back two years before, then three years before that. It’s curiously apropos seeing that black-and-white world turn into fuzzy color. (Coincidentally, The Beatles’ previous album, Revolver, had a black-and-white art motif versus Sgt. Pepper’s blasts of blues, pinks, reds, greens, etc.)

I disagree with the generally accepted notion that Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was The Beatles’ peak. All the hype stripped away, Sgt. Pepper was a better-than-average Paul McCartney album with very special guests and the most painfully mediocre songs of his Beatles career. 

But it was so well-produced! Ahead of its time! Revolutionary! 

Please. “Fixing a Hole”? “Lovely Rita”? 

“When I’m Sixty-Four,” while cute, is yet another one of Paul’s “rooty-toot songs” as described by producer George Martin, and more scornfully as “granny music” by George Harrison. When John Lennon was asked what his contribution to the song was in his final interview for Playboy magazine, he sniffed that such a thing would never occur to him. (The song was indeed all Paul’s, as he’d composed “When I’m Sixty-Four” when he was 16 and still living at home.) The best I can say for it is it’s a relief following the tedium of George Harrison’s twangy-dangy, boop-bop-bop of “Within You Without You.” Finally, something with a melody!

A somewhat deceiving image. George was famously bored throughout these sessions. Ringo had so little to do he learned to play chess to pass the time. They were no longer four guys learning songs to play for a show. It was more like two, sometimes three guys seeing how much studio jiggery-pokery they could load up their own songs with. They still had many classics to record, but it would only get worse from here.

Imagine if the quasi-metal stomp of “It’s All Too Much,” recorded during the Pepper sessions, but discarded for 1968’s Yellow Submarine soundtrack, had opened side two instead. I imagine a much better album. Even John Lennon’s contributions, aside from “Lucy in the Sky,”  “Good Morning, Good Morning” and the much ballyhooed (because much produced) “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” seemed forced to me. (The White Album, in which they practically all made solo tracks, is where Lennon would really shine in this declining phase of the band.)

Yes, Sgt. Pepper had “With a Little Help from My Friends,” “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” and the greatest John Lennon and Paul McCartney collaboration to end them all, “A Day in the Life,” but this album was the beginning of the end. The Beatles’ last album as a cohesive band was Revolver. At the beginning of June 1967 the band was no longer touring, founder John was psychologically checked out as leader, and Paul was much too eager to take over. With the band soon to lose the guidance of manager Brian Epstein, as of June first, The Beatles had all of two years, two months, and 22 days left as a working entity.

I know I’ve mentioned that fact already.  My contrarian take on one of their most iconic albums aside, I simply can’t get over how much quality work did get produced, and over such a short, febrile period of changes in fashion and attitude. We’ll never see such times again, let alone such a band.