The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Navigation

You are here: Home / Forum / Sgt Pepper Super Deluxe Edition

Sgt Pepper Super Deluxe Edition

by 105 Comments

Will be 6 discs:

1) Remixed stereo version

2) and 3) Unreleased outtakes

4) Mono mix extended album

5) and 6) DVD and Blu-ray with Story of documentary plus surround sound versions.

144 page book

1

Comments

      • I also have a pre-order in with Amazon Canada for 73 Canadian $ including shipping to the U.K. But there will probably be 20% VAT and a Post Office charge of £11 so that will take it to £62 or thereabouts. That is cheaper than Amazon Italy (£87 including shipping) which is my fall back if Am. Can. renage.

        Oh and this looks bloody superb as does the content, it far exceeds what was expected by most fans of the HJH. The snipers can do one before they start, I’ll say it again ‘Bloody Superb’!

        • @Baron Harkonnen is this ‘how to scrape the barrel’ part 52? If the stuff was any good it would have been on the original release.

          What a waste of time – oh no, sorry its got some nice pictures, I forgot. Makes it much more worthwhile.

          • It’s not about improving on what exists on the released LP it offering insight into how it came to be.

            Yes I’ve got a 5 CD set of Pepper out-takes. Yes a 4 CD one of Strawberry Fields from ‘It’s Not Too Bad’ demo take 1 through to Rock Band multitracks

            And yes, I will , sorry, have already place an order. I have few other vices , let me have my cake!

  3. It seems incredibly lop-sided to have only gone this far (too far?) with “Sgt. Pepper’s,” and ignored everything up to 1967!

    As an aside, those look remarkably like CDs.
    But wasn’t the CD market supposed to be dying on its feet?

  8. What an outrageous rip-off.
    £140 for 6 discs works out at £23:33 each on average.
    Yes, I accept there is a book and one is a DVD, but that hardly justifies the extra £100 that I’d suggest is the excess cost of what I’d be prepared to pay. This is material that is 50 years old (as is the point of the exercise) that will already have earned a fortune in royalties. It is gouging.
    Not that I expect anyone at EMI will care.
    It is hard to imagine anyone back in 1967 wanting to celebrate the release of any music that had been composed in 1917. Elgar’s Fringes Of The Fleet celebrated 50 years then. One of his lesser known works, for sure.

  10. Well I’ll get it, eventually

    I can still remember – my 14th birthday, for once my parents bought me what I wanted.

    They also bought me a DIY shelf/cupboard thingy – like, Ikea, but this is NZ in 1968. So I spent my birthday putting this unit together, and listening to SPLHCB. I STILL have an image of myself in my bedroom making my little piece of furniture when I listen to certain songs.

    I don’t care what anyone else says, I LOVE this album, warts and all – what’s so wrong with When I’m 64 anyway – it was a huge part of my musical upbringing. What’s more, my kids love it too.

  11. All the supposed naff (thought so, because they don’t cater for male, ex-Paul Morley era NME readers) songs are great.
    “When I’m 64” and “Within You Without You” from Sgt. Pepper’s, “All Together Now,” “Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da,” “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,’ “Yellow Submarine.”
    The last time I listened to “Sgt. Pepper’s” the song I most enjoyed was George’s one.

  12. I’ll be buying the 6 disc version, but begrudge the duplication of video/HD audio content on DVD & BluRay. Similar to the Floyd behemoth, there will be a disc (or in PFs case, discs) which will never be played. Anyone owning a BR player will never use the DVD, and vice versa. What is the point of this? Either have 2 version, one for each format, or drop the DVD.

    • Probably simpler to have 1 version, and for Blu-ray people the DVD is easier to rip to a hard drive if you want to do that. Or just give it to a friend

      • Why not include neither but give a website link to have either a) a download code, b) the DVD or c) the BluRay disc sent out to you. Maybe an 0300 phone number too for digital Luddites without computers, tablets or smartphones

        Some interaction with the punters!

    • I think Dai has it there, Gary. With 1+ it was easier to have 2DVD plus CD or 2Bluray plus CD, because the video bit was, in effect, the dominant element of the package.

      With this, it’s definitely not. I’ve got a BluRay player in the shape of a Playstation 4 wired up to a telly with crap speakers, so I’m completely uninterested in a 5:1 mix *anyway* but I think if we want the nice bits, we’ve to put up with this!

  14. I know it’s a lot of money but… these things usually are. And what… we expect discounts from the Fabs, who gave us the red album over two CDs for £22 back in 1993? That was the chart price and all.

  16. What I want to know is will it contain outtakes of the words from the Side 2 run out groove?
    That’ll make it worth the money! 👍Carnival Of Light be damned.

  17. The 2 CD set seems to have a disc not included in the 6 disc box, although I’m guessing all the tracks are there somewhere!? It is an ‘alternative’ Pepper sequenced in original LP order…

    Disc: 2
    1. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
    2. With A Little Help From My Friends
    3. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
    4. Getting Better
    5. Fixing A Hole
    6. She’s Leaving Home
    7. Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!
    8. Within You Without You
    9. When I’m Sixty-Four
    10. Lovely Rita
    11. Good Morning Good Morning
    12. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)
    13. A Day In The Life
    14. Strawberry Fields Forever
    15. Strawberry Fields Forever
    16. Strawberry Fields Forever
    17. Penny Lane
    18. Penny Lane

  18. Does anyone have a link to some detail on the two-CD set? I would buy the 6 Disk set in a heartbeat if I could actually justify the £140 but the amazon pre-order for the smaller version has no detail at all beyond the track listings

  19. Where is HP Saucecraft when we need him? Just stop and think for a minute… how much has all this cost to actually produce?
    Nobody in the world will buy it except for obsessives : you can just see the strokey-beard meeting at HQ – “We’ve got all this free stuff lying around doing nothing. How much do you think we can charge if we include every piece of fluff we swept off the floor and, of course, we throw in a DVD and a glossy booklet (I can get my daughter to do that, she’s thinking of going to Slade if she gets two B’s and a C)? I was thinking a tenner? What’s that you say, Jenkins – a hundred quid?? Put that spliff down and get real, you plonker!”

  20. I have the album on LP, bought about 1988, and a CD, bought from a charity shop around 2000, for a quid. Also have Anthology 2, bought at great expense, when that came out. Fucked if I’m shelling out for it again.

  21. Just curious about something. In today’s terms, how much did the original Sgt Pepper LP cost in 1967?

    I’ll be getting the two disc set of this. Can’t really justify anything over £60 for the big box set!

    • I do know that the White Album was thirty shillings when in came out, which was considered fairly steep. A quick skeg around tinternet reveals that this would now be around fifteen quid.

      Fifteen quid to buy any kind of physical White Album is a bloody decent price.

      • I remember LPs were 32/6d in 1963, so I suspect the White album was actually more like £2.10s. in 1968. The calculator I found makes that the equivalent of just over £30.

        We have forgotten how expensive music was until very recently.

        • Well, I stand corrected. Where I got that figure from I don’t know.

          The obverse of that is how cheap music is now, on CD at least. In the early ’90s I would take a 40-minute bus ride* to buy CDs that were 10.99 as opposed to the 12.99 charged by my local HMV. They went up quite a bit in the mid-late 90s – as things do – but have since plummeted. Now I would say…. eleven quid for a single CD? What is it, pressed on titanium??

          (*yeah, costing two quid. But it was the principle)

          • Last weekend I rode my bike to a record shop*, handed over cash in return for a vinyl LP**. How analogue/retro am I? Or am I just old?

            (*) Yes, they do still exist.
            (**) Amy Winehouse’s ‘Back to Black’, half-speed mastered.

      • Mine too, but I think he bought it in ’69 or ’70 when he got his record player, so not a first press.

        Btw my dad’s look around this time is pretty much an amalgam of all four Fabs’ faces in the SP gatefold pic. He didn’t need to cut out one of those ‘taches.

        • Actually my parents’ current copy is a later one from the 70s (black and silver label). Their original mono copy, absolutely STF*, was part of a little stash of albums – if you will, a starter pack – that they gave me with my first record player, Christmas 1981. (It also included Yellow Submarine and, er, Scouse the Mouse). I remember poring over the sleeve and being amused by the fact that the Beatles looked different from how they did in Help!, but I don’t remember actually listening to it – or anything by the Fabs post Red album – until the 20th anniversary came up …. 1987 again…

          (*your potty-mouthed expression, lady)

  23. I was reminded of a mention of Sgt Pepper (there are several – John McL is a fan) from ‘Bathed In Lightning’, from one Steve Voce in ‘Jazz Journal’ – a very entertaining and readable writer (still contributing 50 years later) but he delivered one serious hostage to fortune back in 1967…

    Extract:

    Pop music had progressed exponentially in the previous
    five years, and the barriers were no longer sustainable on any grounds of
    superiority in sophistication or intent. For Steve Voce at Jazz Journal, it was
    time to go down to the beaches and make a stand in the best traditions of King
    Canute. ‘Every once in a while, [someone] will come up to me and knowingly
    pose a rhetorical question: aren’t the Beatles great? There are many ways to
    answer this question … I’ve found a short and simple one, however: no.’
    Voce was not speaking for the whole of Jazz Journal’s audience. Nevertheless,
    after a flood of letters questioning this stance, he merely added more sandbags
    to the barricades the following month:

    ‘The Beatles are merely the symbol, unwilling or otherwise, of a
    society whose values have slumped to the acceptance of a gimmick,
    the fad and the eccentric. [Pop] can only produce lasting music by
    accident, and such accidents are rare. It is a music whose only value
    is financial and it is planned for and appeals to unseeking minds. For
    jazz to accept a compromise with it would be fatal to jazz. … The
    various amalgamations and liaisons between jazz and pop music must
    be resisted at all costs. … It is certain that we were morally better off
    when jazz was a tight little world completely ignored and treated with
    contempt by those outside it. … Coupled with the undefined values of
    the avant-garde in jazz the position is made even more precarious …’

    The month after that, Voce metaphorically harrumphed and put into print
    the sort of thing destined to be resurrected in history books decades later: ‘I
    wonder how often Sgt Pepper will be played in three years’ time?’

    • “[Pop] can only produce lasting music by accident” strikes me as spot on – for this period, at least. A lot of pop musicians had -and still have – no notion of their music having any lasting value. Even Zappa famously snorted with derision at the notion of his music lasting beyond his death.

      Of course the obverse of this is that supposedly more earnest jazzers create music that lasts forever… which they clearly don’t in most cases. If anything most jazz, played in live settings and lost on the wind, is as ephemeral as music gets.

      There’s nothing wrong with producing something brilliant by accident. Listen! I just farted a cop show theme!

  24. Stupid price. The CD is probably at an all time low in terms of value – I look behind me at the collection I accumulated in the 90s and 00s and wish I’d stuck with Vinyl as my CD collection is worth a fraction of what I paid for it. So it’s galling when Beatles Band try and pretend CDs of some Pepper out-takes are worth 23 quid a pop.
    Even at £100 (presumably there is postage on that from Beatles.com) Universal are taking the piss for 6 discs in a box. £50-60 would be more like it and I bet they’d sell a shedload – it’s not exactly an overlooked 60s curio is it?

    I don’t buy many SDEs but I’ve bought some very nice ones from XTC, King Crimson, Verve, Simple Minds etc which represent far..far better value for money in terms of content per ££ than this.

    • When were these things (records, box sets…) priced according to value for money? Is 60 minutes of Frank Sidebottom “more value” than 30 minutes of Elgar? It’s entertainment, and it’s a business, and they set the price at what they can get away with. Of course you can charge more for “The Beatles” than for XTC or The Verve.

      Me, I would have preferred if they’d done a Led Zeppelin – issue all the Beatles albums as Super Deluxe 6-disc sets in bundles of 4 and be done with it in half a year. Then release the “Let It Be” movie in time for Christmas (with 10 hours of outtakes, presumably).

      • Your last idea is the best. The DVDs could even be themed – “Bickering” (three discs), “Complaining about how cold it is” (1 disc) , “Glowering” (two discs), “Desultory shuffling through half-remembered Hamburg setlists” (2-discs) “Trying to behave like grown-ups in front of Billy Preston” (about half a disc)

          • I wonder what the extra bits in the box would be.

            A shiny red plastic jacket… a “Magic Alex Nuclear Fission” kit (actually a painted matchbox with some pipe-cleaners stuck into it)… a pamphlet giving medical advice to former clients of Maggie May… some heroin… the possibilities are endless.

    • Well you are not really paying that much for each of the CDs, you are paying for the container that holds them, book, scarves, marbles etc. This seems to be the only way these days (apart from vinyl) that record companies can make money from physical releases. I refuse to pay $150 though for a mediocre McCartney solo album in a box where you have to even download half the additional audio content.

  25. I have looked very carefully at the track listings. CD 3 & 4 are chronological outtakes that document the creation of the album and the single. All very exciting, but, where is Only A Northern Song? That was recorded before Within You, Without You. Perhaps, George’s representatives on earth didn’t have the clout to get it included. Or, maybe, we are going to be treated to a Yellow Submarine Super Deluxe Box Set sometime next year.

    For a hundred quid, I expect to hear Only A Northern Song on Sgt Pepper!

    I am disappoint.

  26. I’m up for hearing the remix, should bring an increase in clarity. I’m the only person I know who likes the Yellow Submarine Songtrack – remixed from the multitrack tapes with high-end playback gear (not the authentic 60s kit Abbey Road had to dig out of storage to play back the mix masters for the first round of Fabs reissues).

    I’m definitely up for the 2CD set and possibly the box if/when the price is right.

  28. Been listening to Pepper a fair bit recently to prepare my ears for the May remix. Amazing how fresh a good record can sound when You’ve had a break from it for a couple of YEARS.

    A few ob xx

  30. So my amazon Canada order was cancelled because if a price error. they did give me $30 for my trouble though. Pre-ordered the double vinyl instead and it is effectively free, as I had another credit.

Leave a Reply