Documentaries
Composer Howard Goodall takes a musician’s look at one of rock music’s seminal albums in Sgt Pepper’s Musical Revolution (Prime, Tuesday, 8.30pm).
“Nothing like it had been heard before,” he says. “It changed the rules of what a record could or should be.”
Even the cover of the Beatles’ eighth studio album was revolutionary – the most expensive cover ever produced, and it was the first time lyrics were printed on an album sleeve.
Most people would know that the band and their producer, George Martin,
experimented with the limited technology of the time, but Goodall’s forensic examination of tracks such as Strawberry Fields Forever, Penny Lane (not on the album, but recorded as part of the sessions) and Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds is revelatory.
He explains how Martin fiddled with two recordings of Lucy to create the whole; how there are four layers of piano on Penny Lane; the use of such
unusual instruments as a piccolo trumpet, a harmonium and a Mellotron; and George Harrison’s melding of Western and Indian sounds on Within You Without You.
Goodall explains some of the musical techniques that, consciously or otherwise, John, Paul and George employed and discusses the songs as personal artefacts pulled from newspapers, posters or the Beatles’ childhoods.