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The Fab Files: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

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Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

first released June 1st, 1967

Nothing about this album is what you think it is.

It was not the first concept album. It was not the first "real" rock album. It was not the first rock album with "meaningful" lyrics. It is not the greatest album of all time (as if such a thing could be determined). It is not, according to many modern-day Beatle fans and critics, even their best album.

It does deserve the reams and reams of words scholars, rockers, and theorists have attributed to it over the years. In much the same way that a child's first step is his most important, Sgt. Pepper is rock's most important album. Rock and roll -- as an art form, as folklore, as a movement, as a vehicle of expression -- would jump higher, run faster, and kick harder, but it would never recreate the feeling of possibility, the utter unity, of this beautiful piece of plastic. This album kicked off the Summer Of Love, the finest mass cultural awakening the modern world has ever known. And, as always, the Beatles were its vanguard, which in popular music means not the creators of styles, but their best assimilators.

That's not a backhanded compliment. The Beatles were able to take the artistic dabblings of artists across the spectrum, find their true selves in it, and broadcast it clearly enough so we saw ourselves in the final product. This is the goal of any true artist. Had the Beatles broken up after Revolver or even Help!, they would have already achieved that goal; Sgt. Pepper was different, however. In keeping with the true spirit of self-discovery, a process which began with the Beat poets and climaxed with the Beatles, this album was about reflecting things in ourselves that we didn't even know were there. What's "A Day In The Life" about? I'm not sure. As a child, one without the benefit of knowing John and Paul's philosophies and the history of popular music, I was even less sure. All I knew was that the song was "scary". And it was. Is.

I used to have a recurring nightmare as a child. It didn't involve definable things or events; it was simply a feeling. Me, alone, in the darkness, falling in a circular pattern towards the earth. The worst part was that as I got closer to the ground, my speed increased; I was careening faster and further out of control. I'm guessing it had a lot do with some repressed fear and anxiety. The important thing is that when I heard "A Day In The Life," it sounded like the reverse of that process, as if God had picked me up off of the ground and flung me violently into the air; as if I were falling up.

I didn't have the capacity to understand it at the time, but it seemed as if that musical orgasm was my ticket into another plane of existence, a world that might have something more rewarding in it than collecting bottlecaps or trying to get to different kinds of First Bases. A place where I could finally, be Someone. "Eight Days A Week" had given me some of that same feeling, but only as regards Earthly pleasures (hold me, love me). This song, and the album it climaxed, were about the emotions behind the pleasures, the Truth buried under the action. It was about transforming oneself, as a lot of good Rock had been, but more blatant: I was learning how to transcend the mundane experience of things like dragging a comb across my head, how to go into a Dream and emerge with the capacity to tear into the raw and bloody gristle of Life Itself.

I was fourteen years old.

The Album

The Writing And Recording Of The Album (in the Beatles' own words) from The Beatles Ultimate Experience
The recording timeline for the album from A Beatles Recording Timeline
The Official Release Info, available through Masanori Yokono
The Recording Variations from Joseph Brennan
What Beatles Fans Think, from Rate Your Music
The impact, concept, and magic of the album, explained to us by saki at the rec.music.beatles home page
More opinions from Epinions.com
The Paul death clues, from Paul Is Dead
A Lithograph Of The Album Cover available at visualgallery.com
A MIDI file of the entire full-length album, from David Barnes (click on "Listen")
Compare prices and buy it right now at MySimon.com