Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Original Release (LP): 1967

Side One

1 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band 2:02 McCartney
2 With A Little Help From My Friends 2:43 Lennon-McCartney
3 Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds 3:29 Lennon
4 Getting Better 2:47 McCartney
5 Fixing a Hole 2:37 McCartney
6 She's Leaving Home 3:35 McCartney
7 Being For The Benefit of Mr.Kite! 2:37 Lennon

Side Two

1 Within You Without You 5:04 Harrison
2 When I'm Sixty-Four 2:37 McCartney
3 Lovely Rita 2:42 McCartney
4 Good Morning Good Morning 2:41 Lennon
5 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
(Reprise)		 1:19 McCartney
6 A Day In The Life 5:05 Lennon-McCartney
[Dog Cut] 0:05
[Inner Groove] 0:23
(on CD)
Original - Odeon Remastered - Parlophone
Mono Stereo Stereo
CD --- --- 370 746442 2
Cassette --- ? 566 746442 4
LP BTX 1004 SBTX 1004 066 746442 1

Images

Some people say this is the album that changed the history of rock and roll. Others claim that it was the first "concept album". George Martin calls it "The Ultimate Hippie Symphony".

No matter how you call it, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is, if not the best, the most important album in the Beatles career.
After four years following a busy schedule of live performances, they decided to leave the stage and dedicate themselves only to the making of a new album. They were not only getting tired, but also they were using more and more studio tricks on their songs, making them impossible to reproduce on stage.

For Sgt. Pepper's, The Beatles, with their producer George Martin and their engineer Geoff Emerick, developed these tricks, in a way never achieved before. Many songs had instruments, vocals or the entire song recorded off-speed, sound effects were applied (the crowd noises on the title track, animal sounds on Good Morning Good Morning) instruments were used in a different way (the crescendos on A Day In The Life), and using strange instruments like pianette (on Getting Better) and Indian tamboura (on Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds).

There is even a song in which the band doesn't play at all: Within You Without You, an Indian song conceived by George, whose instrumentation is given by Indian instruments (played by students of Indian music) blended with a superb orchestration by Martin. George's vocal is the only Beatle participation.

The songs, the effects, the concept, the cover: everything make this album unique, remarkable even today.

The Title and Concept

Based on an idea from Paul, that surfaced during the recording of the album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band would be an "alter-ego" of The Beatles. In the album, the artist would be Sgt.Pepper, not The Beatles. And as the group would not go on tour anymore, the album would represent a live show, with the band introducing itself on the first track, then performing several songs - each one with its own mood - and at the end, the Reprise, where the band says goodbye.
After developing this concept, everything was done to reinforce it in a different, revolutionary way: the cover photo, lyrics, and so on. It was also planned to be a double album, so the cover was gatefold. However, as there would be not enough material, it was released as a single LP, and to fill the empty jacket a "cutout sheet" was created, featuring Sgt. Pepper's goodies as a moustache, a picture, badges...

The Cover

One of the most famous (and copied) album covers of all time, it was intended to portrait the performance of the Sgt. Pepper's band, being attended by "the whole world". The "world" is represented by more than 70 characters, some universally known, some not (like George's indian gurus), chosen by the Beatles themselves. Also, as the band is "not the Beatles", the Fabs are also attending the show (as Mme. Tussaud's wax figures). There were many others vetoed (John wanted Jesus Christ and Hitler, for instance), some of them after the photo was made (these were faded out on the cover).
The characters were represented by photos, enlarged to the natural size. It was found out a little later that the pictures were copyrighted, so EMI staff had to make a great effort in order to pay for the rights on time!

On the back cover, the lyrics of all songs, over a picture of the group. It was the first pop album to feature lyrics on the package. The intention was to show the lyrics as it were from a poem book.

The gatefold cover features inside a closeup of the "Sgt. Pepper's Band".

"Paul Is Dead" Clues

The "Paul Is Dead Myth", that had begun some time before the album release, was strenghtened by several "clues" that appear on Sgt. Peppers:

Other Notes

The first two songs, as most of you must already know, are crossfaded. Other crossfades join the last three tracks: Good Morning Good Morning ends with a hen cluck that blends with a guitar note from Sgt. Pepper's... (Reprise) (an effect accidentally discovered by George Martin) and the crowd noise at the end of Reprise continues into the first seconds of A Day In The Life. But all tracks were actually recorded separately and joined after mixing.

The album also features two "bonus noises": the Dog Cut and the Inner Groove. The first was a 15 kHz tone, supposed to be heard only by dogs, cut mechanically into the LP master after the end of A Day In The Life. The second is a small piece of recording put into the end of the runout groove of LP on side 2, where there is normally only silence. (It was supposed to be repeated forever until the listener lift the turntable's arm - but automatic turntables lift it before the stylus meet the inner groove). The "Inner Groove" is part of a tape of studio noise recorded during the album's sessions. Some people say that it contains a message like "We'll be fucking like we're supermen" or others, when heard backwards, but it's actually only gibberish.
The US release doesn't have the noises, and Brazilian release has only the Inner Groove. In the UK the Inner Groove was removed after 1978.

International Differences

Credits on the cover and captions of the cutouts were translated, and the first releases obviously featured the Odeon plastic cover. Otherwise, the packaging was just like the original. The back cover had always plain red background, not the faded appearance as the first UK issue.

Since all Beatles mono LPs after 1966 were in Brazil combined from stereo, the beloved mono mixes of Pepper were never issued here.

The Brazilian issue doesn't have the Dog Cut, but it does feature the Inner Groove.

The CD booklet has an error: the picture index of characters is missing, although the list is there.

Remastered Differences

The CD issue of Sgt. Pepper's was part of its 20th anniversary celebration. This way, and being the most important Beatles album, it received a special 36-page booklet, printed on special paper in some pressings, featuring not only the song lyrics and reproductions of the sleeve pictures and cutouts, but also notes on songs by Mark Lewisohn (like the ones which would appear later on Past Masters and Anthology), historical notes, additional photos and an index of the characters that appear on the cover.
(It's needless to say that in Brazil nothing was translated).

These notes were then an important source of information, since neither Lewisohn's "Sessions" nor George Martin's "Summer Of Love", two of the most important books on Beatles' history, had yet been released.

The "bonus noises", created for LP format, had to be adapted for CD: the Dog Cut was created electronically and the Inner Groove is repeated for some seconds going into a fadeout.

Only CD has the comemmorative packaging: remastered LP is just like the older.

More Information:

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Special (E.Cabrera)
Beatles CDography (M.Rolig)

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