Sgt. Pepper’ s Lonely Hearts Club Band is 50 years old
I started thinking about the song Happy Together because of the coming New Minstrels and The CompanY show at the PICC on Feb. 13 and I decided to check up on the original artist. I found out that it was by rock band The Turtles and that the song was a big hit in 1967.
It was while checking on this that I found out that 1967 was indeed an incredible year for the hit charts. Why, it was the year when Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles was released on June 1. It was the eighth studio album by the Beatles and the follow- up to the previous year’s Revolver. It was the first concept album in history and it would change the sound and also the face of popular music forever.
For one, other artists started looking at their album covers a new way after Sgt. Pepper. Suddenly glamour shots on the LP had become very old hat. The trendsetting cover shows the Beatles in front of a collage of photos of famous people from various eras. It was done by British artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth. Back then identifying the figures in the cover became a sort of game for many. It was named Best Album Cover at the Grammy Awards a year later.
For another, the arrangements for rock songs acquired new, exciting changes. It was Paul McCartney who came up with the idea for Sgt. Pepper. He was also the one who thought it would be great to do an entire album filled with songs that could have been performed by a 19th century military band led by a Sgt. Pepper. John Lennon, George Harri- son and Ringo Starr instantly liked the idea, mainly because it would give them the freedom to experiment with various types of music styles like classical and exotic Indian sounds.
Producer George Martin, doubtless also excited at the remarkable way that his young charges from Liverpool were absorbing musical influences, helped them along. He even had a 40- piece orchestra in the studio playing for the rock songs. With this the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album rose to the level of art, a brilliant collection that marked the start of progressive music.
Sgt. Pepper was an instant success and spent weeks at No. 1 in the hit charts all over the world. It became the first rock album to win for Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards in 1968. Aside from the Best Album Cover trophy, it also won for Best Contemporary Album and Best Engineered Recording Non- Classical.
The songs included are Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, With A Little Help From My Friends, Lucy In The Sky with Diamonds, Getting Better, Fixing A Hole, She’s Leaving Home, Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite, Within You Without You, When I’m 64, Lovely Rita, Good Morning Good Morning and A Day In The Life.
Also in 1967. The Bee Gees, a trio of brothers from Australia, made its recording debut with the single Spicks And Specks. By the time they got to its second release, New York Mining Disaster
1941, the group has become an international sensation. Years later the members would star in a movie based on the Sgt. Pepper album with Peter Frampton and of course, Beatles music… Elvis Presley married Priscilla Beaulieu at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas… in August, the manager of the Beatles, Brian Epstein died of an overdose of sleeping pills.
It was also the year The Doors made its debut with Light My Fire; The Jimi Hendrix Experience with Purple Haze; Engelbert Humperdinck with Release Me; The Jefferson Airplane with Somebody To Love; and it was the year when the movie The Graduate came out. It starred Dustin Hoffman and Ann Bancroft and a magnificent soundtrack of songs by Simon & Garfunkel. The Sounds of Silence, Scarborough Fair, Mrs. Robinson and others. And the hits of the year were: Daydream Believer and I’m A Believer by the Monkees; To Sir With Love by Lulu; Something Stupid by Frank Sinatra and his daughter Nancy; Light My Fire by The Doors; Happy Together by The Turtles; Windy by The Association; Groovin’ by The Young Rascals; Can’t Take My Eyes Off You by Frankie Valli; By The Time I Get To Phoenix by Glen Campbell; I Say A Little Prayer by Dionne Warwick; It Must Be Him by Vicki Carr; A Whiter Shade Of Pale by Procol Harum; There’s A Kind
Of Hush by Herman’s Hermits. There was also a double- sided hit single of Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever by The Beatles. The songs were originally supposed to go into the Sgt. Pepper album but were released ahead by the band’s label Capitol that wanted a new hit by the band. The Beatles later removed them permanently from the final song line- up of Sgt. Pepper.