Sgt Pepper’s getting better all the time!
SGT Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band might not be the best Beatles album (my vote goes to Abbey Road), but it was the one that had the greatest impact.
It’s no wonder Paul McCartney calls it ‘a lasting piece of art’ and Ringo Starr still marvels at how it captured the spirit of the Sixties.
From Peter Blake’s pop art sleeve to its ambitious track sequencing — many of its songs were stitched together without a break — it broke new ground when it was released in 1967, and millions are still enjoying the show today.
With next thursday marking Sgt. Pepper’s half-century, it’s no surprise that there is now an anniversary reissue, but there’s something refreshing about the new perspective that giles Martin, son of original producer george, has brought to the album.
the package comes in a range of formats, including a ‘deluxe’, two- disc version with unplugged out-takes — an edition that also restores Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane to their rightful places on the record (they were cut from the LP after being released as a double A-side in February 1967, four months before Sgt Pepper).
Working from the original master tapes, Martin has remixed all 13 tracks, adding brightness and muscularity to the overall sound.
With Ringo’s lusty, soulful drumming and some of the noisy guitar squalls brought to the fore, the Beatles sound direct and alive.
Some will cry sacrilege at how this messes with their treasured memories, but that would be missing the point: the band’s arrangements have been left intact, leaving this closer in spirit to 2003’s stripped- down Let It Be . . . Naked than the liberty-taking mash-up of 2006’s LOVE.
the Beatles were at a crossroads as they began writing new songs in November 1966, four months after playing their last ever live concert in Candlestick Park, San Francisco. Spurred on by the boldness the Beach Boys had shown six months earlier on Pet Sounds, they decided to become a studio-only group.
It wasn’t their initial intention to make a ‘concept album’, but things developed as they experimented with exotic instruments, echo and overdubs. the kaleidoscopic sounds that resulted were driven by the melodies of great pop, but the band embraced emerging, heavier rock styles. the new mixes reinforce this, placing Ringo more centrally on Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds and giving extra emphasis to McCartney’s lead guitar on the title track.
Echoes of Californian psychedelia are easy to detect, but the Beatles shone a peculiarly British light on the prevailing hippie trends and Sgt. Pepper appealed to all ages.
WHEN I’m Sixty-Four looked at the ageing process while evoking the music hall of george Formby; She’s Leaving Home was a heartwrenching kitchen sink drama that examined the generation gap from both sides.
the bonus disc presents alternative takes of all 13 songs in the same order as they appear on the original album. Stripping away layers of sound, it gives a fascinating glimpse of the band at work in their Abbey Road lair.
With A Little Help From My Friends and getting Better appear as instrumentals, while the title track is stripped of its familiar French horn.
Within You Without You puts the onus on its Indian sitars and tablas rather than the orchestral strings that were superimposed later, and good Morning good Morning is cleaner and less cluttered than a finished version dismissed by John Lennon as ‘garbage’.
What is most remarkable is just how contemporary it all sounds. Fifty years on, rock’s most famous moment is still a treasure trove.