The Beatles Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Review

It took 129 days between Autumn 1966 and Spring 1967 and yes, it changed the world. Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band may have all but disappeared under an avalanche of hyperbole, but if there’s one reason why this album stands the test of time because its sum is greater than its whole. After five listens most people will know it as a suite, where “Lucy In The Sky” ALWAYS follows “With A Little Help From My Friends”. It will always be thus...

The reason it took 129 days isn’t due to the band’s indulgences at the time. On the contrary, the fabs were extremely disciplined with their studio time. It’s just that taking an album this complex to fruition in those days took a hell of a lot of time. These guys weren’t just recording songs, they were inventing the stuff with which to make this record as they went along. But with George Martin and his backroom boys on hand the Faberge psychedelic egg that was finally laid on the eve of the Summer Of Love came so fully-realised that it changed the way we listened to recorded sound for ever. Pepper is at once warm and familiar and wild and strange. Cosy and English with a very empirical eye on the exotica of the East (George’s underrated “Within You Without You”). Shot through with Peter Blake-assisted Edwardiana, it was also as fashionable as it could possibly be.

It was also some kind of concept album, coming with its own alter-ego mythology and very much addressing the pressing concerns of their generation ie: how to achieve higher states of consciousness in 60s suburbia. Pepper is riddled with the Beatles’ trademark love/hate affair with the Establishment as their own lives were suddenly shoved unceremoniously up against those of the chattering classes: “She’s Leaving Home”’s blow at straight parenthood; “Lovely Rita”’s suggestion of sexual deviancy and “A Day In The Life”’s oblique references to minds being blown on buses and in rush hour traffic. Yet it’s a far cry from the militancy of their American peers. Paul’s “When I’m 64” is pure nostalgia for his parents’ golden age which was taken from them. Less kicking out of the jams as having them on scones at tea-time.

Yet what WAS revolutionary here was the sonic carpet that enveloped the ears and sent it spinning into other realms. There was the nursery rhyme surrealism of “Lucy In The Sky”, the crazed calliopes of “Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite” and, of course the lysergic collage of ''A Day In The Life'', promising the meaning of life in its endless final chord. It still rings on today…