SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND

Surely more has been written about Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band than about nearly any piece of twentieth-century music. It has the best claim to the appellation "most influential rock album ever." It's credited with punctuating the ascendance of the album over the single as the primary form of rock music, of sparking the "concept album" trend, of introducing postmodernism into pop music, and even of spawning the genre of "progressive rock." While earlier examples of concept albums, prog rock, et cetera can be found, Sgt. Pepper is not a derivative of any of these. Rather, I (and many others before me) would argue, it was the first LP to fully integrate these ideas.

We can argue endlessly about the location of the headwaters of progressive rock. Sgt. Pepper's claim to being prog-rock's ultimate progenitor is largely unrelated to its status as a concept album?the contention is that early prog largely grew out of a melding of rock & roll with high(er) art, or more narrowly, that it melded (post-)psychedelia with harder, electric-guitar-oriented rock. With Sgt. Pepper, the Beatles and producer George Martin did this without following a template. That the album was released before most other similar examples seems to be further evidence of its claim as "the first progressive rock album."

If pressed for a year, I'm pretty sure most music historians would cite 1967 as the point where the forty-minute, long-play album supplanted the seven-inch, 45 RPM "single" as the primary way rock bands were judged. The first two songs recorded for Sgt. Pepper were "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever," but these were ultimately excluded from the album, released instead as a single three months prior to the LP release. The single was another gold-certified chart-topper, although the songs would've charted higher and had a higher combined sales total had they been released separately. But more to the point, each side is regarded as a masterpiece (I regard "Penny Lane" as the greatest pop song ever). So Sgt. Pepper is often regarded as the best album by the greatest rock band, despite overtly eschewing "Strawberry Fields" (#1 in Australia, Belgium, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden; #2 UK; #8 US) and "Penny Lane" (#1 in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the US; #2 UK). Meanwhile, with some very minor exceptions, there were no singles released from Sgt. Pepper.*

So how great is this album? To be fair, there are a few pedestrian songs here, all on Side Two: George Harrison's overlong "Within You Without You," Paul McCartney's silly "Lovely Rita," and John Lennon's equally silly, but more endearing, "Good Morning Good Morning." None of these is a disappointment, but imagine replacing any two of these with "Strawberry Fields" and "Penny Lane." Some listeners have referred to McCartney's "When I'm Sixty-Four" as fluff, but I strongly disagree; it's my favorite song here.

By the time Sgt. Pepper was released, McCartney had eclipsed Lennon as the Beatles' premier songwriter. Nonetheless Lennon's "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is an all-time classic, as is his contribution to "A Day in the Life;" and the Lennon-McCartney collaboration "With a Little Help from My Friends" is excellent. Furthermore, both "Lucy in the Sky" and "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" are historically important, given their influence on late-1960s popular music.

But McCartney's Sgt. Pepper compositions are even better. And while the title song may stand out as the most accessible, the trio of consecutive McCartney songs on Side One, "Getting Better," "Fixing a Hole," and "She's Leaving Home" represent a pop sophistication only matched by Brian Wilson. None was a single, nor does any one stand alone as a Beatles classic. Each, however, is a good example of a type of song that was still emerging at the time, which we now refer to as an "album cut" or a "deep cut."

I could go on explaining why I think Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is so great. My suggestion to any fan of prog rock?and indeed to any fan of popular music: get it. I doubt you'll be disappointed.

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*"She's Leaving Home" was released as a b-side in Italy (1967) and four-song EPs from the album were released in Argentina and Spain in 1967 and 1968. A promo single, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" b/w "A Day in the Life" was pressed in Italy in 1967. Also, in 1978 a three-song single ("Sgt. Pepper's" / "With a Little Help from my Friends" b/w "A Day in the Life") was released worldwide in connection with Michael Schultz's film Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, starring the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton.