It's been 50 years, The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band hasn't gone out of style
I was in school when the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released 50 years ago, in 1967. I was gobsmacked by the innovative album cover - never seen till then.
Psychedelia at its very best; whimsy thrown in for good measure; scores of contemporary and historical figures populating the cover; a bit of self-indulgence. But what the hell? They were the Beatles and nothing was out of bounds.
And didn’t Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention doff their hats to the "concept" in their We’re Only in It for the Money? Even the Rolling Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request was said to be influenced by Sgt Pepper’s, including the album cover.
In fact, there were more than 40 takes on the album cover art - both as parody and as tribute. The cover is the most iconic, most recognisable, image of the last century; and the most influential. The revolutionary music and the album cover were set to change the music landscape in the most fundamental manner.
The music could wait. First the people on the cover needed to be identified. And that became a fascinating game. There were black and white and coloured images of faces. The intriguing collage of movie stars, artists, writers and deep thinkers begged the question as to why they were placed there.
The raison d’etre for the album was for the Beatles to create an alter ego for themselves. They would pretend they were members of Sgt Pepper’s band rather than the Beatles to give themselves a fresh start. This would enable them to get a chance to experiment with music.
The idea of the album cover was to depict that their alter ego had just played a concert in the park. There would be a photograph of them with the people who had watched the concert. Towards this end, they made a list of the people they would have liked to have in the audience at this imaginary concert. Life-size cut-outs were made onto hardboard and used for the group picture.
So, who were the chosen ones? The literary world was represented by Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allen Poe, Aldous Huxley, Dylan Thomas, HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Lewis Carrol; the film world by Mae West, Marlon Brando, Shirley Temple, Fred Astaire; there was Bob Dylan (music); Sonny Liston (boxer); and several gurus - Sri Yukteswar Giri, Sri Mahavatara Babaji, Sri Paramahansa Yogananda, Sri Lahiri Mahasaya (all there because of George).
There were many other luminaries. John also wanted Jesus, Gandhi, and Hitler. But they didn’t make it. The most poignant presence was that of the Beatles' former bandmate, bass player Stuart Sutcliffe who had died in 1962, at the age of 21, from a head injury.
The Beatles were also on the cover in two different guises. One was in black and white - suits and mop top haircuts from the Beatlemania era, borrowed from Madame Tussauds. In the other guise, they were dressed in brass band uniforms in Day-Glo colours. They sported large moustaches.
This look of theirs has become an abiding image in the history of the band. This "look" featured prominently in a Beatles tribute - called Strawberry Fields - I saw at a Sunday brunch in BB King Blues Club & Grill in New York many years ago. Similarly, when we saw the Beatles musical - Let it Be - in Savoy Theatre, London, some years ago.
Pop artists Sir Peter Blake and his then wife Jane Haworth won the 1968 Grammy for Best Album Cover, Graphic Arts.
Let’ s discuss its music and what the fuss was all about.
The album was lauded by critics and the public alike for its innovations in songwriting and music production. The album effortlessly bridged the chasm between art and popular music. The boundaries of pop music were pushed like never before through an experimental approach. Remember, this was 1967, the Summer of Love. The album managed to serve as the musical representation of a whole generation.
And consider the competition. The Velvet Underground’s The Velvet Underground & Nico; The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s two albums (Axis: Bold as Love, and Are You Experienced?); and The Doors’ self-titled debut.
The list of spectacular albums in 1967 was extensive. Each of these albums was huge in its impact on music. But Sgt Pepper’s held its own and broke through the clutter. It was the first rock album to win a Grammy - four of them, to be exact - in 1968. To date it has sold more than 32m copies.
The influences in Sgt Pepper’s were diverse - from avant-garde to conventional. Vaudeville marked its presence in Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite, traditional-sounding string arrangements animated She’s Leaving Home, music hall melody peeked through in When I’m Sixty-Four, the Indian influence completely dominated Within You Without You.
The album concluded with the mind-bending A Day in the Life. For good measure, the album had something for dogs as well - a high-pitched tone, inaudible to the human ear, but not to dogs.
The BBC banned several of the album’s songs such as A Day in the Life, because of its lyrics "I'd love to turn you on"; And Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite, because of its lyric "Henry the Horse", which contains two slang names for heroin; Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, because it believed the title stood for LSD (John denied the reference and said the song was inspired by a drawing his four-year-old son Julian had done).
Such is the timeless influence of this album that Britain’s biggest exam board, the AQA, has made it a central theme of a refreshed GCSE music course. The students study the melody, harmony structure and rhythm - and the meaning of the lyrics - of three songs from the album - Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, With a Little Help from My Friends and Within You Without You.
The album aided the development of progressive rock by incorporating all its essential characteristics. Lyrics were more poetic, technology was harnessed for new sounds, music was elevated to the status of "art" and the studio, rather than the stage, became the focus of musical activity.
Music was created for listening, not dancing. It also marked the beginning of the Album Era - for the first time in the history of the music industry, sales of albums outpaced sales of singles.
And now some good news. Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane, the two memorable songs of the Beatles, written specifically for Sgt Pepper’s but finally left out of the album because they were released as singles earlier, are set to be finally included in the album when it is re-issued on June 1 to mark its 50th anniversary. The music world is buzzing with speculation about the ideal placement of these two songs in the album.
Such is the iconic status of Strawberry Fields Forever that a section of the Central Park in New York is named Strawberry Fields as a memorial to John who wrote it. The entrance is opposite Dakota Apartments where John lived. When I last visited the memorial, it was packed with tourists, fans and music pilgrims.
Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song,
And I'll try not to sing out of key.
John, Paul, George and Ringo sang, in perfect key, 13 unforgettable songs, and made a monumental album. 50 years later, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is still "getting by with a little help from" its grateful friends.