Musings on the "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" 50th Anniversary Remix (Extended Deluxe Supercalifragilistic Edition) - Part I

We were gifted at the beginning of the month with the reissue of a refurbished and expanded edition of the Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. There are several different packages to choose from, from a "super deluxe" edition featuring 6 discs of music and video, to one that contains a vinyl LP pressing, all the way down to a two disk collection featuring a remix of the original album, plus a disk of alternate takes. I went for the $14 download of the basic package from iTunes. It also includes remixes of the songs Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane. All this is to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the albums original release.

There is a mix of legend, reverence, with more than a touch of contrarianism, surrounding Sgt. Pepper's legacy. It's generally hailed as a cultural touch stone - a snapshot of a brief moment when the culture was shifting, and Rock music was beginning to be taken seriously as an artistic form. It's also very popular to acknowledge the cultural importance of Sgt. Pepper's while dismissing it as a piece of work - that it's actually a terrible album, or at least that it isn't the best LP that the Beatles ever put out. Well, as my saintly Italian grandmother used to say as she was rolling out the cavatelli over a large wood board on her kitchen table, de gustibus non disputandum est. While pointless, it's still fun to argue about matters of taste, and I will here, as well as discuss the cultural impact of Peppa (as John Lennon used to call it), as well as my take on the new mix. 

Sgt. Pepper's was produced by the band, and their producer George Martin, following a turbulent 1966 world tour, that saw the Fab Four quit the stage, as it ended up, forever. It was released in time for what became known as the Summer of Love, in June the following year: a moment when hippie idealism was at it's height, and the youth counterculture went mainstream. The Beatles had long been discontented with doing personal appearances, since it seemed like no one was really listening, and they couldn't even hear themselves play over the screams of the fans. They had already begun to explore the possibilities of what could be done in a recording studio on Rubber Soul (1965) and, especially, Revolver (1966), often cutting tracks that couldn't be reproduced on stage with contemporary technology. Now, without the pressure of touring, or having to limit their arraignments to guitars, bass and drums, the Beatles went to work in late fall 1966, spending a then unheard of five months and, by some accounts, close to $100,000 on the project. 

Paul McCartney is credited with coming up with the idea of making a concept album, something new to Rock music. Since they had stopped touring, they would make an album and send it out on tour. They would assume new identities that would allow them to do things musically they ordinarily wouldn't. 

There was also a subtext of nostalgia to the project. The first two tracks that they worked on, Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane, were odes to places they used to hang out at during their childhoods in Liverpool. Due to pressure from management and their record label, the songs were released as a double A-side single in February 1967. Following the custom prevalent in the UK at the time, that saw including single releases on LP's as cheating the public, neither made the final cut of the album. George Martin always regretted this decision, and said that they should have included them, making Sgt. Pepper's a double album instead of the single disk.  

In the end, Sgt. Pepper's really isn't a concept album. The two songs that could have helped form a thematic bridge were left off, and the band quickly lost interest in the song cycle idea. Apart from the title track and reprise, which semi-bookend the record, the songs don't follow a particular theme straight through. In terms of sound, the band does go full psychedelic, which was only hinted at in previous recordings. They utilized crossfading from song to song on some tracks, as opposed to the normal two or three second gaps, which is often the hallmark of concept albums. But these are stylistic touches that conceal the fact each song stands on it's own.

Though it wasn't a concept album in the true sense, it did influence other groups to follow that path. Later in the year the Moody Blues put out Days of Future Passed, a song cycle that brought us allegorically through the various stages of life using the 24 hour day as its conceit. The LP features orchestral arraignments between rock tracks, leaving no gaps between songs. The Kinks put out two thematically linked albums, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society and Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) in 1968 and '69, respectively. The Small Faces put out Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake, a number one album in the UK in 1968, which featured a psychedelic fairy story that filled the second side of the LP. The Who's Tommy in 1969 went so far as to bill itself as a Rock Opera. And though writer guitarist Pete Townsend had been tinkering with the idea of producing an extended piece for some time, there's not doubt that the success of Sgt. Pepper's gave him and The Who's record label the impetus to see it through. In the following decade the likes of The Electric Light Orchestra and, most especially, Pink Floyd would make their bread and butter from the concept album, as well as utilizing the studio tricks the Beatles perfected on Pepper's. 

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But what about the album itself? As I wrote, this isn't a concept album in the true sense, but if we listen closely we can here a band that is at once at the top of it's game, and beginning to come apart. I'll give a song by song overview of the album the next time out.