The genius of the profound 1967 Beatles song that John Lennon held up as George's greatest
A firm favourite topic for Beatles obsessives to kick around during those long-into-the night deliberations is just which of their eleven (we don’t count Magical Mystery Tour or Yellow Submarine, okay!) studio LPs was their singular best.
Whether you’re a Revolver man, an Abbey Road girl or your softest spot is reserved for their 1963 debut Please Please Me (we know there’s a few of you out there), what really isn't a matter of opinion is that on the wider cultural stage, it remains 1967’s Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band that is the most synonymous with the Beatles at the peak of their powers.
For many, it remains the greatest album in pop’s storied history. It’s certainly one of the most interesting from a technical and band narrative point of view, being the first of the Beatles' studio-based career.
In fact, it was this vivid cauldron of a record that solidified the very idea of ‘the album’ in popular culture, and underlined its status in devotees as the most crucial component of an artist's canon.
“The pop revolution was driven by 45s - an LP ‘the prize’ for success and even then comprising two hits and a lot of filling,” said writer David Hepworth in his album-centred book A Fabulous Creation: How the LP Saved Our Lives.
“It was Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band that changed all that: not merely a collection of songs but an album - though one might call it a song cycle. After Pepper nothing was ever the same again and the acquisition of albums was an essential part of every student’s life.”
Expanding on Revolver’s initial forays into unknown sonic regions tenfold, Pepper found John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr firmly shunning the trappings of their prior identity as a mass market, entertainment spectacle.
Instead, inspired by the pioneering studio work of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, they decided to use their hard-won global platform to metamorphose into a creative force the likes of which the world had never seen.
Connecting the musical threads that spanned Britain’s past and present - and rippling with the philosophy of the counterculture - the Beatles recast themselves as the house band of the Summer of Love.
Source: musicradar.com/Andy Price
