A sacrilegious Sgt.Pepper thread...enter at your own risk

I love the percussion on that one too. The better my stereo became the more I appreciated this album. It truly was ground breaking at the time.

Beagle are you getting the responses you wanted???

 

You can't -- I agree completely. I was just musing that those who lived through it's release probably have a much more emotional view of it than those for whom it's just that album always clogging up the top of the "greatest albums ever" polls.

And what's music without an emotional response?

Ryan

 

None of the Beatles LPs are overrated.

 

Beagle,
I guess you can't argue taste, and you like what you like, but regarding your comments about Ringo... do you even think his drumming is terrible on "A Day in the Life"? In my opinion that's a real tour-de-force of weird creativity for him. Some bizarre drum fills that a more "professional" drummer probably would never have thought of, but which fit the tone of the song perfectly. I guess in terms of drumming, I'll take a sloppy, creative player over a solid, bland, perfect-timekeeper any day.

 

Actually, Paul told Ringo a lot of what to play, if not John depending on who's song it was. Ringo got cheezed off a few times, but when he came back, he waited for Paul or John to tell him what to play. Yeah, Ringo wasn't a brainiac, but I still love him and the sound he had. I loved the way he cranked open the snare drum spring all the way. The sound on the single "Revolution"! Love it!

 

What I noticed about this comment was that you also used it in your comment on the Ozzy remasters.

"I listened to some of Blizzard Of Oz and it sounded clean and tinkered with, the new bass and drum parts inserted with tweezers and surprisingly well blended with the original parts. Nice but fake. And to hell with Ozzy and his manager wife."

 

This is a great thread.

I tend to view Sgt Pepper in two ways. In an historical context it is most certainly NOT overrated.

But I must admit it has not aged as well as most other Beatle albums IMO. When I listen to it I tend to program around a three song block - She's Leaving Home, Mr Kite & Within You Without You. Now - replace SLH with Penny Lane, & kick off "side two" with Strawberry Feilds Forever (dumping WYWY) and you have an album as strong as any Beatle disc.

Just as a side note - Abbey Road is THE perfect rock album.

-Michael

 

VERY interesting thread.

You had to be there, a teenager in 1967 or 68, I can't even remember.

The Beatles were always good for a new 45 every 3 months or so. Suddenly. Penny Lane & Strawberry Fields showed up on American Bandstand as a VIDEO!! No lip syncing live shot. The Beatles looked weird, and the songs were not the typical "great beat and we can dance to it" Bandstand type of tunes.

The mainstream pop-rock people were moving towards the Monkees. There was a long time after Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields where there was no new Beatles 45. People thought that the Beatles were breaking up. New bands were taking over the tops of the charts.

Then, out of nowhere (remember, us kids had no internet, no Entertainment Weekly, no one knew what a "Billboard" was) came word of a new Beatles album. We rushed out to get it (buying the mono version because the stereo was a dollar more), put it on the turntable and...
...........
..........

WHOA! What the heck is this??? AWESOME!

That's how I remember it.

The weird thing is that I remember that even our PARENTS sort of liked it!
"When I'm Sixty Four" struck a note with them.

Anyway, sure there are weak spots, but the first three tracks and the last two can stand the test of time with anything.

Remember, "timing IS everything".

:-jon

 

Jon.
Thanks for sharing your perspective. We often forget the huge impact something had in it's day.

 

Yes I was there, a truly wonderful time!

 

SPLHCB?

Well, it was no Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones LTD., but it had its moments.

 

I once saw on a documentary "The Making Of Sgt Pepper" George Martin admits that the biggest mistake he ever did was to succumb the pressure of releasing a single and so went ahead and released "Strawberry Fields" & "Penny lane", and for whatever reason couldn’t include them in Sgt Pepper... , I think with this statement even he has admitted that Sgt Pepper has some weak points. I think these points are only amplified because the rest of the album is just so mind blowing. Yes mind-blowing!! Guess what I wasn't There either; I was born in 67, too young & also old enough to appreciate this work of "ART". One of my earliest memories is listening to Sgt. Pepper on my dad's 8 track. For me the weak points are "She's leaving home" which should really be "Penny Lane" and "When I'm sixty four" Which should have been "Strawberry Fields". Contrary to many comments I've read I happen to LOVE "Within you.." and "Fixing a hole", I think that these songs help to creates the atmosphere of everything that I think is so awesome about this album. Harrison admitted that it was little more than just overindulgence, but in the rights hands (George Martins) the songs live up to the album cover. I disagree that the album hasn't aged well; on the contrary I would say that it has aged to a pretty fine vintage.

 

It's still light years ahead of anything out there today.

 

Wonderfully put Steve. Our love for that Album has made it "legendary".

 

A couple of days before June 1st 1987 I went to a place where they receive ads for local newspapers and filled a form to insert a small paid space saying "It was 20 years ago today".

The store made a big fuss out of the whole thing, that it required clearance from the editors of the paper as it was in a foreign language and having no phone or address nor a "point". After some discussion, I got PO'd and left, thinking that it was not a good idea after all.

 

I'll never forget how hot it was during the summer of '67...but we had air conditioning
.....I was holding the album telling my parents 'the beatles look WEIRD' and I think they agreed
The songs that blew me away at the time were Mr. Kite, Within You Without You, Lovely Rita and A Day In The Life. Each one was just so far out at that time. I think, like all albums, it has weak 'moments' but I also believe all the tracks are at least acceptable and some that show 'phenom artistry'. It probably got a few million kids to look more favorably on experimenting with psychedelics
For me, however, the White Album is the all-time 'IT' Beatles record.
The impact of that has never waivered since late '68.
but then again, they're all masterpieces.

 

My $.02 on Sgt. Pepper,

I was just 7 years old in 1967, but I was a huge Beatles fan (thanks to my older siblings). Due to the excitement in my house on Sunday February 9, 1964 I have a vivid memory of watching The Beatles on Ed Sullivan.

My brother and/or my sisters would buy each Beatles record the day it was released, and if I was a good boy, I could get a copy of my favorites to play on my own record player.

Unexpalinably, my brother waited until late December that year to pick up Pepper, and he showed up on Christmas Eve at grandma's house with it.

I remember the excitement just looking at the cover brought on! We all took turns passing it around - there was so much to see!

With all my family gathered around the phonograph, my brother put it on for the first time and we played the both sides, non-stop, without a word being said. When it ended it was flipped over and played again, and again...

It was amazing, to say the least. I loved the Beatles for their high energy songs--up until then I had played the flip side of my HELP! 45 (I'm Down) so many times that the groove turned white!

I could feel the reaction of my older relatives in that room and it had a major impact on me.

Sgt. Pepper was unlike anything any of us had ever heard before - and that Christmas Eve we played it over and over, non stop, well into Christmas morning! It was a huge event for me.

It's a wonderful Christmas memory, and I have the Beatles and my late brother to thank for it.

P.S. - I begged my father to pick up a copy for me - and he did so right after the holiday.

 

Those are the kind of memories that make the music so special as the music fills our souls with wonderment. Ya have to have been there at the time. It makes a world of difference. Nothing else digs deeper when the music's fresh and new.

 

Can any album mean what SGT PEPPERS did in its time? There may have been better albums, including some from The Beatles. And certainly there have been better-selling records, from Michael Jackson to The Eagles. But I don't think anyone can seriously debate the greatness (quality, influence and impact) of SGT PEPPERS.

Look, you might argue that Motown/Spector/Brian Wilson employed far more accomplished arrangements/musicianship/songwriting. Maybe you'll take a different tack and argue The Byrds, VU, or Hendrix essayed a better rock album the first time out. If you're an especially bad case, you might point out that so-and-so released a concept album before PEPPER, prove your geekdom, and miss the point besides. But SGT PEPPER was taken seriously, even by people who didn't care about The Beatles. In other words, you can argue that PEPPER isn't The Greatest Album of All Time because PEPPER made such conversations possible.

Before PEPPER, rock (or rather, rock 'n roll) was something for the kids, before they graduated to Sinatra, Fitzgerald, and The Big American Songbook of Sophisticated Songwriting and Original Broadway Cast Recordings. If you were especially bohemian, maybe you'd detour into folk, jazz, or even blues. Remember that Elvis, The King of Rock and Roll, went to Hollywood to get a real career, and that Dylan's electrification was a betrayal. Motown legends aspired to supper club gigs.

PEPPER changed all that. Here were The Beatles, that cutesy Brit Boy Band with the screaming chicks who can't even hear them, doing something that was...labored over, an attempt at art, although still recognizably rock 'n roll. As was sonically obvious to everyone, even people who didn't give a damn about the Beatles, a huge investment of time, sweat, and artisitic decisions had been made to create this noise. Like it or not, PEPPER was something worthy of adult consideration and a NY TIMES review.

Yes, the ingenous studio trickery of George Martin made the songs sound bigger than they really were. The songwriting is better on REVOLVER, RUBBER SOUL, or FOR SALE, HELP, and practically everything else they did up to that point. And all the exotic instrumentation is presaged in the (superior) albums and singles immediately preceding PEPPER. But PEPPER was a sustained piece of jaw-dropping professional popcraft from teen idols, the very definition of faddish ephemera. The Beatles exceeded the breathless hype of "art" that preceded PEPPER, and managed to confirm what some people had been saying since WITH THE BEATLES: that this music was as valid as anything else out there.

Now everyone could hear it. The Beatles had grown up, become adults producing adult entertainment, without going to Hollywood or Carnegie Hall. And if they could expand their art within their genre, then their audience could follow them and the scene, too. With PEPPER, The Beatles, producers and products of mass culture, validated themselves and their audience.

Yes, I've got a dozen or three albums I'd rate higher than PEPPER. But we can only argue that PEPPER isn't the greatest album of all time if we pretend that history doesn't happen.

 

Billy Preston jammed with 'em on 'Get Back'. Does that count for anything? I wonder how much of that tune Billy actually laid down? I've often wondered.

 

Thanks for the great thread...........I always thought Pepper to be overrated, and overproduced........But from an historical perspective, it's not overrated.....I know that.....especially from all the personal stories that I read on this forum......Thank you......It really has helped me to see it's significance more clearly....The significance of Pepper is huge, because it was the first album ever that was overproduced with a concept...........and it blew peoples minds.......It was sooooooo different too......so we played it over and over because it was such a new direction for the Beatles and rock/pop.......


I'll still take Revolver, and Rubber Soul over it any day........

-Wes

 

I believe that the Beatles intentionally wanted Pepper to be a radical departure from what they had done in the past. They were tired of touring, tired of teeny boppers and tired of trying to make the 'next big single'. Pepper was definitely juxtaposed to all of that and succeded in tearing down those walls. With this new 'concept' album they could do what *they* wanted to do for once and in doing so they forged a new direction in music and socially that would indelibly mark change from that day forward.

If it doesn't click then probably their intention probably was not received.

 

Someone said it earlier, and I think Steve echoed the sentiment somewhat--you kinda had to be there. The music takes you back...

 

LOL! Someone