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St Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

 

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was the eighth album by The Beatles and is generally considered their masterpeice.   It remains one of the most influential albums of all time by prominent critics and publications, ranking number 1 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

Less than seven months after recording Revolver, The Beatles returned to Abbey Road Studios on 24 November 1966 to begin the 129-day recording sessions for their eighth album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They had originally intended their next album to be invocation of Liverpool as they remembered it from childhood.  But having completed 'Penny Lane' and 'Strawberry Fields Forever', their enthusiasm for the idea quickly began to wane.  Their next song, a McCartney number inspired by the latest London craze for Victorian militaria, would instead inspire a change of direction. 

Paul later recalled: "It was an idea I had, I think, when I was flying from L.A. to somewhere. I thought it would be nice to lose our identities, to submerge ourselves in the persona of a fake group. We would make up all the culture around it and collect all our heroes in one place. So I thought, A typical stupid-sounding name for a Dr. Hook's Medicine Show and Traveling Circus kind of thing would be 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.' Just a word game, really."

George Martin later recalled the rehearsal of 'St Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'.  'Just an ordinary song, not particularly brilliant as songs go. When we'd finished it, Paul said: "Why don't we make the whole album as though the Pepper band really existed, as though Sergeant Pepper was doing the record.  We can dub in effects and things".  From that moment, it was as if Pepper had a life of its own'.  Released on 1 June 1967 it was a completely self-contained album meant to be played and experienced from start to finish, Sgt. Pepper broke the mold in that no singles were released from it. Drama critic Kenneth Tynan called the album a decisive moment in the history of western civilisation.  In America the New York Times declared that it heralded 'a new and golden Renaissance of Song'.