THE INFLUENCE OF RADIO ON THE BEATLES SIMPLY CAN’T be overstated. You might, indeed, think of Sgt. Pepper as a big radio programme. Take something like our use of sound effects as a way of extending our repertoire and range. EMI was such an all-encompassing record company of the old variety that they had a sound library in the same building as the studio. If I wanted to include the sound of blackbirds singing on the song ‘Blackbird’, I could just find it in the catalogue and order it, and someone would go up and get it from the library and bring it down to the studio. So we started messing around with this library, and it was very liberating.

One of the things that always intrigued me as a kid was how a presenter could be introduced on the radio. Let’s say it was Ken Dodd, the great Liverpudlian comedian. He’d come on and go, ‘Well,’ and then the studio audience would go ‘Ooooh’ and laugh. My mind would be on fire. What did he do? Did he drop his trousers? Did he make a funny face? Did he produce his trademark tickling stick? What did he do? I really liked that mystery. So I’d say to the other guys, ‘Let’s use a library sound of an audience when “the one and only Billy Shears” is introduced to sing “With a Little Help from My Friends”.’ We’d use that effect like Ken Dodd. We really enjoyed titillating the imagination.

And it’s your imagination that’s the powerful force. With television and the movies it’s laid out for you; you can see how a character named Henrietta Gibbs looks. In radio, you make your own Henrietta Gibbs. That was the great thing about Sgt. Pepper. They tried to make a movie of it, but it didn’t work, because everyone’s already got their own picture.

Conducting the orchestra. Studio One, Abbey Road Studios, London, February 1967

The other big influence on Sgt. Pepper, which is certainly very much to the fore in ‘A Day in the Life’, is that at that time I’d been listening to a lot of avant-garde stuff. Stockhausen. Luciano Berio. John Cage – you know, Cage’s silent piece 4'33". Being intrigued by all that, I wanted to have an extraordinary instrumental moment in the middle of ‘A Day in the Life’. So I talked to George Martin, who was arranging the orchestra. In the same way that choreographer Merce Cunningham would say, ‘Pull them across the stage on a rope,’ my instruction here was for everybody in the orchestra to start on the lowest note on their instrument and go to the highest note on their instrument over the course of a certain number of bars.

When we got to the session, George Martin had to plan it out for them. Classically trained musicians are thought not to like the idea of improvisation, but I found it interesting that the orchestra split itself into groups. The strings were like sheep: ‘If you’re going up, I’m going up. I’m not going to be left behind.’ But the trumpets and the wind instruments were very receptive to the idea of letting it all hang out, perhaps because they’re somewhat overlooked in the orchestra. They were game for anything.

We ourselves were determined to really go for it and find ways of bringing all these other components into what was known as ‘popular’ music. We liked the idea that what we were attempting was an extension, rather than just a continuation, of the tradition.