As you know, there are a good number of pop music expert critics out there who feel obliged to make sure that their audience knows good pop from bad pop, especially on magazines such as Rolling Stone. It's pretty funny to read articles by these guys about Pepper, tripping over themselves to write the most insightful critique concerning the place of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the eighth album by The Beatles (meaning the eighth in order of release in Britain), in the Constellation of Iconic Albums of All Time.
There are many unique characteristics of this album, but most of them are relative to the Beatles: Sgt Pepper was a milestone in the development of the Beatles as a group. One characteristic is absolute, namely that this is arguably the first concept album released by a popular group, where the cuts were loosely tied together by some thread; in this case, a music hall performance by a fictitious band. Another important distinction is that most Beatles albums, up to that point, featured songs the majority of which could be performed live, on stage. Pepper, in contrast, had orchestral sounds almost from beginning to end, and would have sounded terrible performed live.
At least one writer criticized the songs of the album as being substandard, an opinion to which this fellow is welcome though he might be all alone in his opinion. (For instance, he criticizes Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds as being too repetitive. Well, ok. The Beatles were on drugs, at least a few of them, and we must take the lows with the highs.) I think most of the songs in Sgt. Pepper were outstanding, and to me, more memorable than a lot of the songs from earlier albums, most definitely helped along by the music-hall Sgt. Pepper theme. (That was quite a clever idea, and it raised the quality of the album, from the point of view of its saleability, very high. To this day, Sgt. Pepper is considered to be one of the greatest albums ever, by some because of its historical significance, by others because they're fans.)
I'm not convinced that it is absolutely necessary to run out and buy the 50th anniversary $125 Sgt Pepper package, unless you're a maniacal die-hard Beatles fan and an audiophile combined. It does have some nice things in it, e.g. a totally remastered CD with material from the original tapes, a Blu Ray disk with 5.1 stereo, a CD of the original Mono mix, and lots of souvenir type stuff. But you owe it to yourself to buy at least a CD of the basic album. In a few months, we are sure to find for sale the new remastered album offered by itself, for maybe $20, and it is bound to be offered for even less presently.
Annotated list of the songs on the album, with comments by Arch
Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
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This is a very hard metal introduction (lead vocals by Paul
McCartney) to “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” in music-hall style,
and the "One and only Billy Shears," singing the first actual song, which is
Ringo singing “With a little help” (below).
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With A Little Help From My Friends
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Ringo sings this innovative song. It features an interesting bass
line and sound, and extra brass instruments above and beyond the usual
Beatles guitars. Three years later, Joe Cocker performed a triple-time version of this song at Woodstock.
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Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
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John Lennon performs this song (inspired by a drawing by a kid:
Julian Lennon, I believe) with the new harmonic sequences that Paul and John
were experimenting with. It has a psychedelic feel, both the performance and
the lyrics.
Since high school, John Lennon had been writing a certain avant-garde sort of nonsense poetry, and here you get a good, psychedelic blast of it. "Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly, the girl with kaleidoscope eyes." This album features the boys playing something called a Mellotron. This was a keyboard connected to an array of tape loops. You could play any note into a microphone on the mellotron, and it would make a full keyboard's worth of tape loops of this sound, and you could play it like an organ. ("Full keyboard" is probably an exaggeration; it might have had just a few octaves' range.) This instrument, I believe, adds fullness to this song. It certainly gives the introduction to "Fixing a hole", see below. |
Getting Better
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A John Lennon / Paul McCartney duet, which is the song that could
most easily have been performed live on stage. There is an interesting drum
sound, with an Indian feel to it. Again, there are a few great lines in the lyrics, e.g. "I used to be cruel to my woman, and beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved. Man, I was mean, but I'm changing my scene, and I'm doing the best that I can." I'd love to have written that.
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Fixing A Hole
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Most definitely a McCartney song, performed by Paul McCartney, with
an interesting bass line.
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She’s Leaving Home
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There was a lot of excitement about this cut (sung by McCartney)
because it featured a string quartet. It was the late sixties, and the theme
of alienation was treated by a lot of the popular poetry (and song
lyrics) of the time.
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Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite!
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John Lennon sings this circus-themed song, essentially the exact
contents of an actual poster. (The poster is reproduced in the Anniversary
Package.)
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Within You Without You
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George Harrison had already begun experimenting with Indian music and
instruments, and the Beatles invited several Indian musicians to contribute
to this song. It ends with a horse-laugh, which might indicate a certain
ambivalence about it.
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When I’m Sixty-Four
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A very clever song (Paul McCartney) in the whimsical style of his
parodies of songs of the thirties and forties. It is so well written, it is
very likely to continue being played occasionally for decades to come. It is scored for a wind ensemble (I can hear a clarinet or two in the sound mix).
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Lovely Rita
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Another Paul McCartney song (though it does sound like a
Lennon-McCartney collaboration) that comes across as a throw-away, but is
nonetheless very memorable. The lyrics are delightful, for example:
Lovely Rita meter maid May I inquire discreetly When are you free to take some tea with me? |
Good Morning Good Morning
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Now, this one is the one that comes closest to being a filler. It is
John Lennon, not at his best.
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Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)
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A sort of outro, essentially a different version of the first cut.
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A Day In The Life
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A poignant song by John Lennon, continued with Paul McCartney, ending
with John Lennon, and the famous “forever chord,” which is a big chord,
mostly on the piano, extended artificially to fade out after several minutes.
There are many references to items in the news at the time: holes in Blackburn, Lancashire; someone blowing his mind in a car at a traffic light, etc. |