Rolls-Royce celebrates 50th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band

ROLLS-ROYCE has announced last week that it will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely

Hearts Club Band in its own way by bringing the colorful Rolls-Royce Phantom V, famous for being owned by John Lennon, back home to London for the British public to see.

Currently owned by the Royal British Columbia Museum in Canada, ‘The John Lennon Phantom V’ will travel from Canada to London to join ‘The Great Eight Phantoms’ – a Rolls-Royce

Exhibition, at Bonhams on Bond Street, an area visited regularly by Lennon in the late 1960s in this very car.

Fifty years ago, The Beatles, the iconic pop group of which Lennon was a founding member, was atop the charts with hits like I Saw Her Standing There, Can’t Buy Me Love, A Hard Day’s Night, All My Loving, I Should Have Known Better and I Feel Fine.

‘THE JOHN LENNON PHANTOM V’

The following year, on June 3, 1965 – the same day that Edward H White left the capsule of his Gemini 4 to become the first American to walk in space – John Lennon took delivery of something rather special. It was a Rolls-Royce Phantom V in Valentine Black. He would later say that he always wanted to be an eccentric millionaire, and the Phantom would become an important step towards that dream.

Lennon had the Phantom V customised in true rock-star style. The rear seat was converted to a double bed, a television, telephone and refrigerator were installed, along with a ‘floating’ record player and a custom sound system (which included an external loud hailer).

Then, in April 1967, just as the recording of the game-changing Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band studio album was finishing up, Lennon asked Surrey coachbuilders, JP Fallon, to give the Phantom a new paint job. The freshly-painted Phantom was unveiled days before the worldwide release of Sgt. Pepper’s on June 1, and it seemed part of the overall concept of the album. Leading news magazines declared it a “historic departure in the progress of music — any music” and, simply, “a masterpiece”.

The new color scheme is best described as ‘psychedelic’ and certainly the colors, particularly the dominant yellow, reflected the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. But look carefully and you will see it is no random swirl, but a floral Romany scroll design, as used on gypsy caravans and canal barges, with a zodiac symbol on the roof.

The Phantom V was used regularly by Lennon until 1969 (Lennon also owned a slightly less conspicuous all-white Phantom V). Having used it, pre-paint change, to collect his MBE with his bandmates in 1965, he then used it again in 1969 to return his MBE to the Palace, in protest against, among other things, the Vietnam War.

The car was shipped to the USA in 1970 when Lennon moved there and was loaned out to ferry other rock stars around such as The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and The Moody Blues. In 1977, after a period in storage, it was donated by billionaire Jim Pattison to the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

‘The Great Eight Phantoms’ – a Rolls-Royce Exhibition, will take place at Bonhams international flagship saleroom and galleries in New Bond Street, London, from July 29 to August 2.

SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND

Legend has it that a roadie asked Paul McCartney to pass the salt and pepper. McCartney mistook this for: ‘Sergeant Pepper.’ This set off a chain of events that resulted in the first major rock ’n’ roll album to be released without a designated single. Sonically, the LP format and use of stereo (despite being originally recorded in ‘mono’) lent itself to more expensive ‘hifi’ systems of the time. In addition to its innovative cover art, the album presented a number of innovations: no gaps between the songs giving the impression of a continuous concert; new production techniques including alternating the speed of the recording; a high pitched sound after the track A Day in the Life – which could only be heard by dogs. On what was known as the ‘run out groove’, laughter and muffled conversation could be heard, amplifying the sense of humor that the group had. Printed lyrics of the songs on the inside cover were yet another first.