Sgt Pepper was 50 this week. I’ve a slight obsession with the album and I’d thought I’d share some boss love with you fine peeps. It’s a grand collection of songs, but I’ll tell a little known story about a forgotten classic off the album and try and give some context to its release
The album was released in different times, the 60’s really was a radical place. LSD and cannabis seeped out of record grooves back then there was revolution in the air and the beatles seemed to be right at the epicentre. Many counter culturists who dabbled in LSD reportedly thought the group were omniscient and pulling the strings as though they were bending the decade to their will through the music they released. They weren’t far wrong.
Pop music was ultra-competitive back then with bands trying to outshine each other’s efforts. After the beatles released rubber soul, the pet shop boys very deliberately countered with pet sounds. A brilliant riposte containing one the most beautifully constructed pop songs in god only knows. That song is heavenly in theme, ambition and melody. As a reply brian Wilson must of thought he had delivered an artistic uppercut.
He had pushed on pop music
Unfortunately for him the beatles where miles ahead of the game, and about to take popular music to a place it had never been before.
They dropped Revolver as their reply to pet sounds. Elanor Rigby sounds familiar now, but its an astonishing song when you really listen to it. The classical composition, unfamiliar scale [written in an archaic folk scale last heard in popular use a couple of hundred years previous] and lyrics like ‘wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave; No one was saved.” And “Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door” It was as far as could be from 4-chord, yeah yeah yeah beatlemania
Or so you would think. The last track of the album was an absolute plot twist for popular music. A seismic shift that MUST of exhilarated all who heard it in the 60’s
Using tape loops and pioneering studio techniques, abusing existing sound equipment and pushing the 60s studio to its absolute breaking point, it used lyrics borrowed from the Tibetan book of the dead by an LSD pioneer. the band tried to capture on record the sound of an LSD trip. Fuck me, they succeded. Tommorow Never Know is a crazy soundscape even now.
20 years after acid house, modern ears still find it strange; 20 years before acid house I just don’t know how it would have been received. Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream indeed.
Wilson must have been shocked. Indeed we know he was. Trying to better Revolver consumed him and he and his band took to their studio. They weren’t to know that the beatles had already written much of Sgt Peppers.
It was against this backdrop that Paul McCartney visited the beach boys in their studio. He must have known the impact Revolver had had on popular music: placing avante garde drug laced music into the home’s of the teenage masses and redefining the scope of pop-bands. He must have known how hard the beach boys would have to work to come close to it. He did what any cocky scouse git would do. He sat down at their piano and played his latest song. He sang for the beach boys She’s Leaving Home – a moving song about a girl running away form home. written with mccartneys usual classical precision and melodic beauty it slowly unwinds a personal tale of loss and domestic grief and lays it out bare. its a boss tear jerker right at the heart of the album. He then got up winked and said ‘you better hurry up lads’ before leaving. Wilson must have felt like he had been nutmegged and had his pants pulled down.
He couldn’t finish his album and indeed wouldn’t release Smile until the end of the millennium.
I've rambled on a bit now so will simply copy and paste summat i had previously posted about peppers denoument : a day in the life
i have a certain obsession with some beatles records. a day in the life is one of them. i mean its moving and impersonal at the same time - a wonderful meditation on detachment. but its the extra attention to detail. mcartney at the height of his LSD comsumption asks for an aural happening, something that sounds like the end of the world. martin arranges for an orchestra to climb the scale and do so without vibrato then gets all four beatles and himself to thump a crushing E chord in 5 places of a grand piano. then ramps the mikes up so the reverb is so deep it drowns you, it lasts for minutes. its one hell of a statement and if it has been bettered as an album closing i've yet to hear it. [contrast that crushing closing chord with the equally infamous and rich opening chord to a hard day's night. academic texts have been written on that chord. martin was at the centre of all this creativity and hidden touches].
The whole album was an event upon release. the beatles debuted it by playing it through loud speakers across a scorching london summer. People had peppers parties where all they did was listen to the album.
Its a pop standard, a true classic that will surely stand the test of any length of time. Scarily the beatles also wanted to include strawberry fields and penny lane on the album, but chart rules meant they had to release them as singles. Incredible scenes and must have been a boss time to be young.
thanks for making it this far, hope it inspires people to dive into the beatles music
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