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The Beatles – Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)

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What does it sound like?:

This isn’t a review of the fiftieth anniversary edition (due next month).

That edition is going to be a full remix job. Presumably they’ve tamed the hard stereo separation (drums in one ear, vocals in another, etc), tidied up some of the vocal fluffs and replaced the EMI Studio echo chamber with some surround-sound digital reverb. I’m excited, but I’m also a little sad as it feels a bit like losing an old friend. (Nothing sounds as majestic as that EMI Studio echo chamber – skip to the line “… in his way, Mr K will challenge the world!” on “Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite” to hear it in all its glory).

Anyway, I felt it was time to prepare my ears by giving the trusty old original edition another spin. Please excuse my indulgence as I try to put this experience into words.

The first thing to say is, naysayers be damned. Pepper is a fine, fine piece of art.

It forms the point where pop music grew up, started taking itself seriously and forming an actual legacy instead of assuming it would fizzle out any day. There’s a horrific bitter-sweetness to that notion. We’re talking about the death of the vibrant, ephemeral, 45rpm “sixties” and the doors opening for concept albums and lifetime achievement awards.

Strange to say, then, that although Pepper probably did open a lot of doors, I actually find it a bit of an artistic dead end. It’s great, yes, but there’s only so much music-hall jolliness and kitchen sink surrealism you can take. This is why I find much of the pop world’s response to Pepper so tedious (The Incredible String Band and The Kinks being rare exceptions – two acts who managed to successfully hit that weird ley line of English through-the-looking-glass darkness Pepper scratches at). Pepper was more of a statement of intent than a creative manifesto.

I always think a good cover for an LP is critical, and Pepper has an absolute doozy. In fact, it might just be The First Great LP Cover In Rock. A pop art collage masterpiece, it’s as recognisable as Warhol’s Marilyn. It was also a sly way for the Beatles to place themselves in the pantheon of the good and the great. So it’s just perfect – the same balance of disarming cheekiness and casual genius that got the Beatles to this world-conquering stage in the first place. (I wish Lennon’s suggestion to add Hitler to the crowd hadn’t been vetoed, because that would only have added to the anarchy and arrogance).

The genesis of the album’s concept is a well-worn tale, the band’s feeling of being trapped and wanting to escape into a whole other persona. Let’s pretend we’re another band, putting on a variety show! This concept barely lasts five minutes, however. (They either got bored or had the savvy to realise how a much looser thematic connection would create a more satisfying whole). So after the opening title track and a little turn from Ringo as the doleful Billy Shears (“With A Little Help From My Friends”), both utterly charming and utterly harmless, we head into the unknown on track three with “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds”.

I find “Lucy” a bewitching piece, the euphoria of the chorus never quite overcoming the haunting, descending chords of the verses (same chord sequence as “Dear Prudence”, fact fans: one of Lennon’s signature tricks from his relatively limited bag).

A few things really start to hit you as you move through this first side of music. For a start, it’s clear that Paul is utterly dominating things here. As well as having by far the most tracks, his voice is omnipresent and his thematic guiding hand is unmistakable. It certainly sounds like the rest of the band are playing along to his tune, popping up for their star turns, then disappearing into the Pepper-y ether.

Paul definitely hit a rich vibe in early 1967, the kind of wistful, depressive poetry reminiscent of Paul Simon at his best. “Getting Better” and “Fixing A Hole”, while lyrically opaque, have an unmistakable melancholy and maturity to them. He sings about being a wife-beater and you shudder in horror.

“She’s Leaving Home” is his masterpiece, however – “Daddy, our baby’s gone” being one of those killer lines that punch you in the stomach. (By the way, I don’t get the hate for the Mike Leander string arrangement on this song. It’s the perfect balance of syrup and poignancy. I can only assume the hatred comes from a pro-George Martin conspiracy that got out of hand).

Sonically speaking, Paul’s bass playing is also a dominating factor on Pepper. Playing that signature Hofner, with a thuddy, bouncing, toy-like tone, and generally working by overdubbing rather than locking in with the drums by playing eye-to-eye, he dances all over the fretboard, going full Mozart with his counterpointing (on the rare occasions he settles on a root note, he makes it sound like he’s lowering himself to some obnoxious breach of etiquette). The thing is, despite being just about the most arrogant and attention-seeking bass performance ever committed to vinyl, it’s just magnificent. It’s also mixed LOUD as well, which helps a lot.

Coupled with Ringo’s drums (oh, those glorious thunderous rolls and fills – Ringo, will you marry me?), there’s a looseness, a lightness to the bottom end that makes this just about the whitest, unfunkiest rhythm section you’ll ever hear. James Brown, it’s safe to say, would have been baffled – a cream tea with jam and scones would have more groove in it.

But here’s the thing. That’s where the CHARM comes from. (Yep, I went there. Pepper has CHARM). So much of pop music since (particularly since the mid-seventies) has been about a driving, danceable beat. On the whole, we’ve forgotten how to be charming and whimsical like the world of Pepper.

(The lack of rhythmic drive on the LP is matched by a lack of sex. What little sex there is (“Lovely Rita” and the horny flirting in “Good Morning, Good Morning”) sounds more Benny Hill than Ben E King).

Side Two is the meat of the feast. Kicking off with “Within You, Without You” is a brave move. This is Pepper’s “Revolution No 9” moment – the track everyone pretends to hate, but actually enriches the overall palette immeasurably. I can’t imagine Pepper without this dreamy, droning piece of didactism. It feels strange to have 24-year old millionaire George Harrison lecturing you about the illusions of the material world, but for five minutes I believe him. It’s also fantastic proof of George Martin’s magic, his string arrangement, almost invisible to the ear, utterly complimenting and lifting the Indian instruments.

I can do without “When I’m Sixty Four” (the closest Pepper ever gets to proper fluff), but the aforementioned “Lovely Rita” and “Good Morning, Good Morning” are the band on overdrive. What I find amazing about the latter track is how close Lennon’s muse was to Syd Barrett’s at this time. Unfettered by the constraints of technical ability or an awareness of the “proper” way to do things, “Good Morning, Good Morning” rivals Barrett’s “See Emily Play” or “Bike” for sheer maniacal, all-over-the-place energy.

For all Paul’s dominance, Lennon’s “Good Morning, Good Morning” and “Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite” are critical to Pepper’s success. What they bring to the table is the notion of mayhem and cacophony. Technically speaking, it’s mostly the tape-loop aspects of these productions that do it – the seaside organ medley underpinning “Kite”, and the crazy animal sounds of “Good Morning”.

It helps to know that “Good Morning” came from a particularly insistent Kellog’s Cornflakes TV advert. Not since the Stones’ “Satisfaction” had a pop writer so perfectly lampooned the nagging malaise at the heart of the 9 to 5 lifestyle and the new consumer lifestyle. Here’s a glimpse into an alternative universe Lennon, born at the just the wrong time to surf on the success of the new teen culture, a school drop-out tamed by national service and damned to a life of suburban obscurity and domestic madness. What strikes me in this song is the repeated use of the word “nothing” – it takes the comforting, nostalgic void of “Strawberry Fields Forever” (“Nothing is real”) and turns it into a nihilistic nightmare (“nothing to do”, “nothing to say”, “nothing has changed”).

In this context, the animal noises make sense. Roger Waters certainly understood it, with his farmyard-themed concept album a decade later. We are animals and life is meaningless. We run and eat and copulate and defecate and make loud noises but nothing ever changes. I don’t think I’m reading too much into the animal sound collage to see the fox-chaser horns at the end as being symbolic of the Great British Empire, that ridiculous, bloated beast that thinks it rules the whole animal kingdom.

Just before this all gets too George Orwell, suddenly Pepper remembers it’s meant to be the swinging sixties and we’re back into a reprise of the title track. I said Pepper had no groove. I lied. With the reprise, we’re suddenly back in the Cavern with a rocking four-four beat. Lennon and McCartney sing a vocal harmony so close it’s hard to tell them apart, and for a minute and a half we’re with a group of young rockers again, the finest white R’n’B combo in the world heading for the toppermost of the poppermost.

I can’t really find the words to describe the closing track, “A Day In The Life”, probably my favourite ever Beatles song. It saddened me that the dear departed Ian MacDonald scoffed at the notion of it being described as the “Wasteland” of pop. Comparing it to T S Eliot’s masterpiece seems to me to be a good way of summing up its mighty power.

What is little more than two contrasting Lennon and McCartney compositions stitched together becomes a very sinister dream-world compression of all the themes we’ve witnessed in the last 35 minutes: the melancholy (“I heard the news today, oh boy”), the gruelling 9 to 5 life (“made the bus in seconds flat”) and the druggy escapism (“I’d love to turn you on”).

The central sonic motif of the piece, however, is that great orchestral crescendo (twice repeated, of course, for effect). We’re back in the world of cacophony here, and all that music hall charm is cast to the winds. It sounds like nothing less than the universe being sucked out from under you.

And then, of course, we end. On that glorious and unmistakable C major chord played on about ten pianos at the same time. Duuuuummmmmmmmmm.

(Fade).

Follow THAT, say the Beatles. (Cue everyone else in the world trying to, and failing).

What does it all *mean*?

The pinnacle of pop music. Yeah, I do believe that for the thirty five minutes it takes for the Pepper trip.

Just a year or so before this, even the Beatles themselves thought they were riding a wave that was going to end soon. Until this point, they acted and sounded like they were creating music for the moment, for a generation of teenagers who would move onto something else soon. I find it astonishing that fifty years later this record still has such power and longevity.

Goes well with…

A good pair of headphones to hear the little subtle details and get the full trippy effect.

Release Date:

Might suit people who like…

… em, people who like music? I don’t know. I’m been in love with this record for so long that appreciating it is like breathing. Probably not healthy, no….

18

Comments

  1. Superb Arthur. A joy to read. I’d only venture to suggest that had SFF and Penny Lane not been scrubbed from the running order, today we’d scoff at the very idea that Good Morning, the reprise or WYWY might have adequately replaced them.

  2. “I’m also a little sad as it feels a bit like losing an old friend” – your old records will still exist, they will not be impounded by the Apple old stereo mix police

  3. Fade, you say? What about that allioppa wha ca you si etc on the circular groove (Or Paul is dead, when played backwards.) Without that it is just any other Beatles band LP.

  4. If you put “A Day In The Life” on the CD jukebox in our local pub around the time that it first came out on CD, the system would keep playing the loop bit over and over and it would clog up the system.

    Made me laugh.

    Sometimes the landlord had to unplug the thing, thus wiping out the previous orders of Wacko, Madonna and Whitney Houston, thereby clearing it, if you were quick off the mark, for copious quantities of psychedelic fare.

      • Must have just been that machine – Rose and Crown pub, Woodford Green, about 1988.
        It would only happen at the end of “A Day In The Life,” playing the 3 second clip over and over again, and refusing to go onto the next track.

        Landlord unplugs jukey to remedy situation, no music, slam on 10 tunes before anyone notices.

        Calculating, but entirely necessary, measures to get through the dire 1980s.

  6. Excellent, thanks Arthur – you’ve said everything I would have done but much better! My only qibble is that there is only a passing reference to ‘Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite’, which rounds off the first side so…er…splendidly. I always thought this track truly incorporated the prevailing fashion of the time for Victorian/Edwardian ephemera and, whilst the album is clearly driven by Paul, shows Lennon buying into and contributing to the concept/ feel of the whole piece.

    I know the naysayers will point out that, song for song, there are arguments to say there are better albums, but this was groundbreaking and the effect at the time was astonishing – and there IS a concept here; one of looking back, of nostalgia, of maturity, of observation of the way things were changing musically, artistically, and socially, which had been coming, but seemed to be realised here…..and The Beatles were suddenly cool again.

    • Lennon was scathing of his own contribution to Pepper. He was out of it on drugs, of course, and later said it was his worst album. His song writing might have been lazy, but the peculiar time signatures add to the atmosphere. As Arthur says the lack of groove is part of the appeal. For lyrics, he used verbatim, anything hanging around; a poster for a fairground, a cereal packet, a child’s picture. Besides all of his A Day In Life part, even his lines on She’s Leaving Home (“We gave her everything money can buy”) were a direct lift from a newspaper. This roots Pepper in the reality of 1967 but the music and the overdubs render the mundane magical. Lennon, despite his own opinion, is right at its glorious, psychedelic heart.

      • Lennon once told George Martin that he’d like to rerecord everything The Beatles ever did – especially SFF.

        He’s not a reliable witness for his own career as he changed his mind more often than his underpants. Gobbling LSD like Jelly tots during Pepper it took him 18 months to realise that Macca had stolen ‘his band’ away AKA done the hard graft while he floated around on the ceiling

          • I can’t help thinking that it’s sometimes too easy to remember and over emphasise the differences that arose between them rather than the countless times they worked together to produce fabulous records – discord makes for a better story perhaps.

            I thought Lennon wanted to go back and remix rather than re-record everything, especially the early stuff, but I may remembering a different occasion. Just found this from Giles Martin…

            “My dad went to see John Lennon in 1980 before he died, and John said to him: ‘Do you know what I’d really like to do? I’d love to record everything again.’
            “Dad said, ‘Really? How about Strawberry Fields?’
            “And John said: ‘Especially Strawberry Fields.'”

            • I’ve definitely heard this direct from the horse’s mouth, I’m sure of it. Not Lennon, George Martin. Probably in that 1990 Radio 1 documentary Lennon Remembered – remember that, anyone? Simon Mayo did the voiceover, great series. And I particularly remember it for accidentally airing the uncensored version of Working Class Hero at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon.

      • A lot of JWL’s later interviews have an awful Stalinist year-zero revisionism about anything pre-Yoko. Quite pitiful that he felt the need to sound as if he gave as little of a fuck about the Beatles as she did.

      • His worst album, eh? What a sad and knobbish thing to say. Alone the triptych of Lucy/Kite/Morning featured more good songs than his entire solo career (OOAA). Lazy came after the Beatles: Oh Yoko, anybody?

        A quote to rank with the best drummer one for sullen stupidity.

        • But his brazen outspokenness (along the blatant wrongness that goes with it) is one of the reasons I love him! You know you’re getting an honest view of what he thinks at that moment!

          • Very good review of it, Arthur, and have to agree with just about everything you say, particularly the charm and the pinnacle and the bass. However, an “utterly dominating” McCartney on side one is putting it a bit strongly. They all put in a shift and Lennon, especially if we include the other recordings from that year, was never better.

            PS See Bartleby below for details. So who says it was a fallow period for Lennon? Apart from he himself, obviously.

  7. “It saddened me that the dear departed Ian MacDonald scoffed at the notion of it being described as the “Wasteland” of pop. Comparing it to T S Eliot’s masterpiece seems to me to be a good way of summing up its mighty power.”

    Can I just say that whilst I enjoyed Revolution in the Head, Ian McDonald didn’t half talk through his arse, and there’s a LOT of subjective opinion masquerading as definitive fact in that book.

    • Oh but stating opinion as fact is rock writing in a nutshell. Of course it’s a subjective take but it often sends you scurrying back listen to the music, sometimes with fresh ears, so it does its job

      • yebbut, it’s all about tone, isn’t it? I get your point, but McDonald didn’t have it. In other words, you could pick up a book about, say, 1971 and despite the position the author takes and despite how compelling an argument the writer makes, it feels like there’s enough ‘give’ in the writing that it’s not as if you’d feel like a chump for disagreeing.

        McDonald managed to be both authoritative (which I could forgive) and patronising, (which I won’t). He did send me scurrying back to the music, but mainly for me to do that double take thing and mutter ‘he’s talkin’ balls, he is…’

  9. Very well written review, it is a very good album but, for me, it only comes in 6th or so in their albums. If we count the Magical Mystery Tour it may not even be their best 1967 album! I think pop truly grew up with Pet Sounds a year earlier, and it is a far superior album. As are Forever Changes and Odessey and Oracle from the same era. The fact it was The Beatles makes it stand out, but it’s relatively inconsistent with a few songs one could describe as ordinary (by their standards).

    I have ordered the box set but will only get it if I can for the original Amazon Canada giveaway price of $58.

    • I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Revolver is the best album ever made. There are no twee love songs on it, as there are on pet Sounds, and its production is far better.

      • “Twee love songs”. What’s wrong with that? And if you look at the rough concept of Pet Sounds as being about coming of age and falling in love then they fit perfectly. Not that I consider them twee. I think production is perfect, one of the greatest produced albums ever.

        Apart from YS, Revolver has a few other relatively average songs, I Want to Tell You, Love You To, Good Day Sunshine and Dr Robert. Still better than Pepper though.

        I should also add The Village Green Preservation Society to the list of almost concurrent masterpieces, leaving out more rock orientated stuff like Blonde on Blonde and The VU and Nico.

        • Brian Wilson is perfectly capable of gorgeous romanticism, Don’t Worry Baby being an early and excellent example. I adore Kiss Me Baby, Let Him Run Wild & The Little Girl I Once Knew from just the year before. The marriage of music and lyric is wonderful. They certainly sound more intriguing than the ones on Pet Sounds where the celebrated multi-layered complex music renders the lyrics ‘twee’. You may like the production. I find it shrill and lacking in colour, unlike Rubber Soul, an album it attempts to emulate (according to Brian himself).

          Sloop John B irritates me as much as Yellow Submarine irritates DFB. There are two instrumentals on Pet Sounds that add little. Mike Love’s adenoidal voice ruins most Beach Boys tracks he is allowed anywhere near. Throw those in the bin and you are left with half a decent album, at best. I’d happily swap all of of the remains for Kiss Me Baby.

          Having said that, I’ve just checked and I find I have four different copies.

          OOAA

          • I could deal with all your points in turn but for now I will just say that the instrumentals are absolutely gorgeous. I also think Brian was inspired by Rubber Soul rather than trying to emulate it

              • Not a massive fan of Love either, but he only has one complete lead on the album (Here Today) and a few co-leads. Brian has 8 leads or co-leads. And I love Here Today, was the first song I heard off the album (on a compilation). What you find “twee” I guess I find romantic, innocent and meaningful (considering they were in their early 20s at the time).

                Sloop is the relative low point, but I do find the vocal harmonising pretty great. As for the production, I find it extremely colourFUL, I do hope you are listening to a mono version which is what Brian would have wanted. And, I know you don’t agree, but best heard on vinyl.

  10. It’s interesting that 67 is seen as a fallow period for Lennon. This is, after all, the year he wrote Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, Mr Kite, Strawberry Fields, the wilder, wackier and ethereal part of Day in the Life, I Am the Walrus and All You Need is Love. Altogether, not a bad trough to have!

    • He’s my favourite Beatle but I never warmed to LSD and find All You Need is Love to be fairly plodding and uninspired. He was pretty amazing (and prolific) in 68 though!

  11. That was a great read, and enough to make me listen to the album from start to finish for the first time in who knows how long.

    The detail which leapt out at me was about the line from She’s Leaving Home. I always thought that the key line in the song is the repeated ‘She’s leaving home after living alone for so many years’. She’s leaving, and she’s right to go, she’s ‘free’, no matter how shady the man from the motor trade may be. That’s just the way it struck me when I first heard the record in my teens, and it’s stayed with me.

    It never occurred to me to feel distressed for her parents, or at least the mother who comes across as self-centred (”How could she do this to me?’)’, even if her calling her husband ‘Daddy’ rather than ‘Norman’, or any other two syllable name, makes it clear that she sees the roles they play in life as parents, and that she can no longer keep that pretence up.

  12. Released on the same day as David Bowie’s debut, and Leonard Nimoy Presents Mr Spocks Music from Outer Space

    I can only echo what’s been said above – not their strongest album, but certainly “groundbreaking”.
    As a technical exercise as to what 4 musicians, a producer and a (fairly archaic) studio can produce, it’s a phenomenal record.
    The concept idea may have been partially abandoned after the opening two tracks, but it’s still sort of there with a disjointed collection of tracks like a Variety Show,

  13. “Pet Sounds” is probably the only one of those Top 100 stalwarts that I regularly listen to.

    I always seem to be listening to “the other one/ones!”
    “Da Capo,” “Something Else,” “Beatles For Sale,” “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere,” “White Light/White Heat,” “Strange Days,” “Nashville Skyline,” “Axis: Bold As Love,” “Out Of Our Heads,” “The Who Sell Out….

  16. I heard the Simon Mayo interview with Giles Martin on Radio 2 today, and the playing of two tracks; the “new” Sgt. Pepper’s and With a Little Help from My Friends.

    As Mayo kept pointing out, “I’m in a studio with fantastic speakers and it sounds great;” however, on my radio/dvd speakers (i.e. normal), Ringo was not nearly as much Ringo as he’s appeared to be Ringo all the times before, but, in fairness, George’s backing vocals really came through.

    That said, this is an event (rare in 2017 – see the Premier League – see anything!), and so £15 doesn’t seem too much to part with in my local Sainsbury’s next Friday.

    However, I think it’s the “alternate” CD2 I’ll utilise as … well … I don’t want “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” to sound different, unless it actually is “different” in the first place.

  17. Hmm, Ringo sounded better on Nicky Campbell’s programme this morning …

    Politicians, eh.
    I ask you, that crafty Theresa May – calling a General Election ten days after the release of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
    Yikes, there’s a half-chance that 0.0008 of us might even be “happy.”
    In 2017, mind you – almost unheard of!

    They don’t miss a trick, do they.

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