Conventional wisdom often ties the beginning of the Beatles' break up to the sudden death of their manager Brian Epstein in late August 1967, almost two months after Pepper's release. Others will trace it to the appearance of Yoko Ono as a permanent presence in John Lennon's life in 1968. I would argue the disintegration had begun long before either of these two events. While the Sgt. Pepper's sessions weren't necessarily tense like the ones for The Beatles - better known as The White Album (1968) or Let it Be (recorded January 1969, released spring 1970), band unity was already fraying. George Harrison was a frequent no show in the studio, and only contributed one song. He would later say that he never really got behind the basic Sgt. Pepper's concept, and that his head was still in India where he had became enamored of the Subcontinent's music and Eastern spirituality. Ringo complained of having extended breaks between takes, to the point that the ample downtime afforded him the opportunity to learn chess. Even John Lennon would complain later that this was a Paul McCartney driven album, and indeed he was the main songwriter on only 4 of the 13 tracks, though his fingerprints are evident throughout.
As I've written before, the Beatles are usually thought of as the positive, slightly cheeky, progenitors of the '60's flower power movement: the white hat wearing good guys to the black hat wearing Rolling Stones. It's safe to say that they didn't start the hippie movement, but they became agents of it, even if they didn't necessarily see themselves as being a part of it. And, while there is a veneer of peace and love to their music, I would also argue that Sgt. Pepper's shows that there was more than a little discontent bubbling underneath the surface.
The album gets off to a sunny enough start, with the hard rocking title track segueing into With a Little Help From My Friends, featuring Ringo Starr on vocals. The new mix brings out the guitars, especially the lead guitar, on the Pepper's intro.
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds comes next, a fanciful track full of surreal images sung with a certain detachment by Lennon. All I'll say about the controversy surrounding Lucy in the Sky, is that it's possible for two things to be true at the same time: it's possible that John's son Julian drew a picture at school that inspired Lennon (as he always contended), and that his experiences with LSD informed the shape and direction of the inspiration. As I said, there seems to be a certain detached weariness in Lennon's voice, with some minor flourishes in the phrasing thrown in that break up the monotone delivery. These are fantastic images he recounts, yet he doesn't seem amazed. It's only McCartney's anthemic chanting on the chorus that offers any enthusiastic spark.
Getting Better is one of the true Lennon-McCartney collaborations where both men seem to have had an equal share in the writing (there's much debate about how much the two actually wrote together, as opposed to presenting mostly finished products to one another for final touches). In this case we have Paul's sunny outlook (I have to admit it's getting better / a little better / all the time) clashing with Lennon's caustic irony (It couldn't get more worse). The versus speak of foolish rules at school, beating girlfriends and blinding teen angst. Though the singer claims that his life is turning around, it's hard to let go of the jarring imagery that seems so out of place on a Beatles record.
Fixing a Hole is a self proclaimed "ode to pot," by Paul, in which he extols the mind expanding benefits of cannabis, in albeit very veiled language. Got to Get You Into My Life from their previous album Revolver, another unlikely tribute to marijuana, is an upbeat, Motown inspired romp that most of us took as being about the first rush of falling in love. Fixing a Hole, on the other hand, plods along, punctuating the verses with complaints about silly people fussing and fighting, wondering why the singer won't let them in. This is not someone who feels the urgency to let someone (or something) into his life, but very much wants to keep others out.
She's Leaving Home sees Paul pulling a maneuver usually done expertly by John Lennon, namely writing a song based on a news article he read. This story of a disaffected runaway is based on a true story, but in real life the girl was sent back home by authorities. I've always found this track very frustrating. It's beautifully performed by a small string ensemble (no Beatles were actually involved with the playing of instruments). The vocals, featuring McCartney on the verses and Lennon on the chorus, are spot on. The lyrics are brilliant. That is, until we get to the end. I always found the great reveal: that the girl ran away because she wanted to have "fun" to be a banal, anticlimactic ending to an otherwise sublime song. I mean, Cyndi Lauper made the exact same observation about what girls want 16 years later and no one accused her of being a genius.
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! is one of those example of Lennon not being able to catch a break. Like with Lucy, he was accused of making drug references (this time related to heroin), but unlike the previous song I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. The words were taken, pretty much verbatim, from a 19th century circus poster he bought in an antique shop. Nonetheless people still accused him of writing a "drug" song. It's easy to understand why, since the track utilizes all sorts of tape loops, backward masking, among other assorted studio tricks, backed by hypnotic organ parts played by producer George Martin. The lyrics are certainly not about drugs, but the overall atmosphere is rather trippy, which lead people to conclude that if it walks like a duck...well, you get it.
Side two open's up the George Harrison's lone song writing contribution to Pepper, the Indian influenced Within You Without You. As with She's Leaving Home, no other Beatles play instruments, and only Harrison sings, along with playing the tambura, sitar and, acoustic guitar. He's backed by a group of London based Indian musicians, along with a western string quartet. George Martin thought it would be interesting to mix the classical instruments of the two cultures together, something that had never been done before. The lyrics, heavily influenced by Hindu philosophy, with a dash of the Gospel, speak of the world of illusion we live in, and the need to break down the barriers that stand between us. We can indeed change to world with love, but will lose our souls if we try to possess it.
When I'm Sixty-Four is a song McCartney wrote when he was 16, and was one of the first recorded for the album in December of '66. It's a light, fluffy piece, showing Sir Paul's love for the British music hall tradition he'd picked up from his father, who'd been an amateur musician, and who also happened to turn 64 years old when the band recorded it.
The next two tracks, Lovely Rita and Good Morning Good Morning, are often dismissed by critics, and yet are two of my personal favorites by the band. I see McCartney (on Rita) and Lennon (on Morning) approaching the material with heavy doses of irony, playing off old pop music tropes with tongue firmly in cheek. Lovely Rita pokes fun at traditional love at first sight pop song, with it's whimsical serenading of a meter maid. The Beatles had been around the world a few times by this point, their vision was expanding beyond the limits of what was usually sung about by pop acts, as evidenced by earlier track on both Pepper and Revolver. A few years before, Paul may have written this with a bit more earnestness, but now he gives way to total absurdist whimsey. In a way, he's saying goodbye here, affectionately, to the silly love songs of his youth that he's outgrown.
Good Morning Good Morning is a less than sentimental look back at the protagonist's teenage years, through the prism of a man dissatisfied with the place he's presently at in life as well. There really isn't much here lyrically, but I always "felt" that Lennon was saying a lot by way of the arraignment and the few sparse lines he does offer. The use of brass and drums, reminiscent of a high school marching band, with references to visiting the old school, and going to a show hoping for a chance meeting with a certain girl, recall the awkwardness of adolescent school days. Going back only reminds him of how much he hated it, yet he's unhappy with his present workaday life as well. The existential angst is punctuated by a blistering guitar solo (played by Paul). As the track careens to a raucous ending, we hear the sounds of animals stampeding. The procession is arranged in such a way as to suggest smaller creatures being trampled or devoured by larger beasts, culminating in the sound of fox hounds being spurred on by horses and the cry of a bugle. In other words life is just a matter of keeping one step ahead of what's trying to crush you: it's not exactly, All You Need is Love.
The Sgt. Pepper's Reprise, the last vestige of the original alter ego concept, energetically leads us to the end of the album, and the band's crowning achievement: A Day in the Life.
An entire book could be written about A Day in the Life, never mind a blog post, but I'll just offer a few scattered reflections here. It's arranged in disjointed sections, sung alternately by John, in the weary detachment he employs through the LP, and then by the peppy, if not quite enthusiastic, Paul. John reflects on the death of a man in a car crash (based on Tara Browne, the Guinness brewery heir who was killed at 21), the opening of a war movie, and the news report on the poor condition of the roads in a Northern town. These are three disparate fragments that come together to show a man's ambivalence with life. The story of the man's death is sad, yet he laughs at a photo of the fatal wreck. The crowd finds the war movie distasteful, but he feels compelled to see it. The government counting of potholes is just plain absurd. After the second of John's vignettes we have an orchestral bridge made of a chaotic progression building upward to a plateau where we meet McCartney offering a more prosaic image of a man beginning his day. But the groundedness doesn't last, as our everyman wage slave goes off "into a dream" after taking a smoke (of what, I'll leave to your imagination). We float back to Lennon singing about the Lancastrian potholes, them we're off once more on our cacophony of sound, again building, finally reaching a dizzying climax punctuated by multiple pianos and a harmonium simultaneously hitting an E-major cord.
The song is primarily a work of John Lennon, with strong contributions by McCartney, and Ringo Starr providing affective drum fills. Ringo may not have been flashy like Keith Moon or technically expert like Ginger Baker, but he had the most heart, and feel for the emotion of a song, and it's on full display here.
A Day in the Life, like the rest of Sgt. Pepper's is disorientating and a bit disorientated. It's the work of four men who have just come to end of a major phase of their lives, and are wondering where to go from here. With the end of touring Beatlemania was over. Harrison, as well as being uncomfortable with his celebrity status, was unhappy with being a junior partner in the band (the way the group's publishing contract was structured had Lennon and McCartney earning more on songs written by Harrison than Harrison did). The "Quiet Beatle" was overheard to say on the plane ride back to the UK after their last show in San Francisco, "I guess I'm not a Beatle anymore." Lennon was also disillusioned with fame. Though he had a supporting role the movie How I Won the War, filmed in Spain in the fall of '66, according to his ex-wife he otherwise spent most of those early post touring months hanging out at home, watching soap operas and the nightly news. He was in a marriage he wanted out of, and a band he was quickly losing interest in.
Paul was arguably the only one really interested in keeping the band going. But he wasn't content to just keep on doing the same thing though. The famed cover, which he had a big hand in planning, features cutouts of the Beatle's heroes in the background, also has wax figures of the "old," matching dark suit wearing, clean shaved Mop Tops from a few years before set to one side, with the flesh and blood Beatles, dressed in their colorful mock military uniforms, with individualized haircuts and facial hair, front and center. Some have speculated if they aren't actually arranged in front of a tomb where the Fab Four of I Want to Hold Your Hand fame are being buried and a new incarnation of the group is being born.
Whatever the truth, Sgt. Pepper's isn't an ode to the Summer of Love as the popular myth would have it. Magical Mystery Tour, a combination sound track, compilation album released later in the year is more representative of the '60's utopian mythos that bloomed in the months after Pepper's release. This a very personal statement made by young men still searching for their way in life. There are major dark shades between the silver linings, and foreshadowing of the eventual end of the Beatles that was only a couple years away.
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As for this new edition, Giles Martin, George Martin's son, oversaw the remixing, and he got it right. The music is much brighter, with the guitars ringing, chugging and grinding higher up in the mix. Generally there is a depth of sound that earlier generations of CD transfers have lacked. It's a minor point, but there are effects, sung lines and phrases that were either muddled or inaudible previously that jump out at you here. Yet, in spite of all this "tinkering" the album still sounds like the Sgt. Pepper's fans have always known and loved - just more so.
I've actually heard complaints about the "cleanness" of the sound. There are times when an artist and producer are going for a more muddled, rugged sound. The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street is a famous example. It's true, as legend has it, that many of Exile's basic tracks were recorded in the basement of Keith Richards' French chateau over several weeks in the summer of 1971. The resulting album, released a year later, is a collection of dark blues and country influenced rock that, in deed, sounds like it was recorded in somebody's basement - though not necessarily in France. What's not so well known is that much of what was recorded in Richards' basement didn't make the final cut, and the band ended up spending even more time in record studios in London and Los Angeles to get it to sound that way. They wanted that dark, muddled sound, and for a future producer to clean it up would be equal to colorizing Citizen Kane or putting lip stick on the Mona Lisa.
In the case of Pepper's, the Beatles were looking to experiment with various sounds, tape effects and instrumentations. They had begun to really explore the possibilities of what could be achieved in a studio the in 1966 with Revolver. Now, freed from concert touring, they had the time and motivation to do just that. This new mix strikes that fine balance between improving the overall quality of sound, while preserving the essence of the original recording fans are familiar with.
