SONGBOOK
SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND
A decisive moment in the history of Western civilisation.
– Kenneth Tynan, The Times
Sgt. Pepper for me it’s a fine album, it’s a fine album, but I did learn to play chess on it.
– Ringo Starr
TRACK LIST
Side 1:
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Lennon-McCartney)
With A Little Help From My Friends (Lennon-McCartney)
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (Lennon-McCartney)
Getting Better (Lennon-McCartney)
Fixing A Hole (Lennon-McCartney)
She’s Leaving Home (Lennon-McCartney)
Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite! (Lennon-McCartney)
Side 2:
Within You Without You (Harrison)
When I’m Sixty-Four (Lennon-McCartney)
Lovely Rita (Lennon-McCartney)
Good Morning, Good Morning (Lennon-McCartney)
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise) (Lennon-McCartney)
A Day In The Life (Lennon-McCartney)
Released: 1 June 1967 (Parlophone)
Highest chart position: 1
Weeks in chart: 256 (28 at number 1)
FAB FACT
Paul came up with the idea of an alter-ego band on the flight back from his trip to Africa, using the influence of psychedelic bands such as Big Brother and the Holding Company and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. Mal Evans and Paul started riffing during the in-flight dinner, and Sgt. Pepper was born.
FAB FACT
The album’s closing masterpiece, ‘A Day In The Life’, was one of John and Paul’s most outstanding collaborations. John wrote his verses at the piano with the Daily Mail newspaper of 17 January 1967 in front of him. It carried the story of the coroner’s verdict on the death of the Guinness heir Tara Browne (who first gave Paul LSD), who had run a red light while speeding in his Lotus Elan and crashed into a parked lorry, as well as one on a council survey in Blackburn that reported 4,000 holes in the town’s roads.
The Beatles recording Sgt. Pepper in Abbey Road studios. Alamy
Paul had the morning routine fragment, and he and John decided that they should fit the two pieces of music together. Paul added the refrain ‘I’d love to turn you on’ to John’s verses, and while unsure of what would go in between, Evans was recorded counting twenty-four bars then setting off an alarm clock. The ‘musical orgasm’ that then filled these bars was also Paul’s idea.
FAB FACT
The orchestral crescendo in ‘A Day In The Life’ was filmed on 16mm film during a special party session on Friday, 10 February 1967. Those present included Brian Jones, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Marianne Faithfull, Pattie Harrison, Graham Nash, Donovan, Mike Nesmith from The Monkees, and art collective The Fool (who arrived dressed as tarot cards). The orchestra were there in full evening dress and joke accessories such as false noses, bald caps, fake glasses, moustaches and nipples, as well as streamers, bubbles and party hats. John told Martin he wanted the noise in the twenty-four bars to sound like ‘the end of the world’, while Paul made the less abstract suggestion that each player start playing quietly on their instrument’s lowest note, ending as loudly as possible on their instrument’s highest note, and to get there, in the bars in between, as randomly as possible. Both Martin and Paul conducted the orchestra, Paul noting that the string players tended to follow each other, while the brass players were more comfortable with improvisation. The film of the evening was never broadcast, though snippets of the session were shown in the Beatles Anthology documentary.
The Beatles chat through Pepper ideas with George Martin. Alamy
FAB FACT
George Martin’s experience with sound effects was used with great success in a number of songs on the album: the audience laughter in the title song was taken from a live recording of Beyond the Fringe; in ‘Good Morning, Good Morning’, he added the animal and hunting sounds, though it was John who instructed him to put them in the order of how each animal could be eaten by its successor; in ‘Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!’, with another brilliantly abstract instruction from John – ‘I want to smell the sawdust’ – Martin gathered together tape of calliope pieces and other fairground noises, had engineer Geoff Emerick throw them up in the air, and then reassembled them in random order; and between the final chord of ‘A Day In The Life’ (made by John, Paul, Ringo, Martin and Evans all pounding an E major chord on three pianos) and the gibberish on the run-out groove (many fans got in touch to say if you played that small section backwards it sounded like The Beatles shouting ‘We fuck like Superman’) is a high-pitched whistle that only dogs can hear.
Pop artist Peter Blake created the album cover, on the recommendation of art dealer Robert Fraser, after a conversation with Paul who was brainstorming his ideas of a wall of fame and a mood of municipal gardens and military bands. Each Beatle was asked to come up with a list of heroes to include on the cover: John suggested Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe and Lewis Carroll, who all appeared on the finished cover, as well as Jesus and Adolf Hitler, who did not; Paul’s suggestions included William Burroughs and Fred Astaire; George suggested various Indian gurus such as Mahavatar Babaji and Paramahansa Yogananda; and Ringo was happy to go along with everyone else’s suggestions. Mahatma Gandhi was to appear on the cover, but that was vetoed by Sir Joseph Lockwood, Head of EMI, who thought it would be too controversial in India. The photograph was taken by Michael Cooper at his studio on 30 March 1967.
FAB FACT
Once the final acetate was ready, Paul took it to Mama Cass’s house in Chelsea and blasted the album out into the street as the sun rose, much to the neighbours’ delight; they appeared bleary-eyed but applauding at their doors. On release, the album shot straight to the top of the chart, and became the biggest-selling album of all time until it was toppled by Michael Jackson’s Thriller in 1982. And although the album quickly achieved legendary status, not everyone was a fan: the BBC banned ‘A Day In The Life’ and ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ for ‘promoting drug use’. Contrary to belief at the time, ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ was named after a drawing done by John’s son, Julian, and had nothing to do with LSD.
