It Was 20 Years Ago Today...

[mousepod]

It was 20 years ago today, that Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles celebrated its 20th anniversary.

For a while, it topped the critics polls as the greatest all-time rock album - lately, it isn't even guaranteed to be listed as the best album by The Beatles.

So 40 years on... does anyone still listen to this album?

[Snowflake]

I'm woefully behind in adding Beatles to my CD collection. I always loved Sgt. Pepper and thanks to you, I now have Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band running through my head endlessly....

[DreadPirateRoberts]

It's one of the few Beatle's CDs I own. I've listened to it in the past month or so.

[€uroMeinke]

It was 20 years ago today, that Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles celebrated its 20th anniversary.

For a while, it topped the critics polls as the greatest all-time rock album - lately, it isn't even guaranteed to be listed as the best album by The Beatles.

So 40 years on... does anyone still listen to this album?

Hmmm - I have the picture disk, maybe I should pull that out of the garage and give it a spin today

[DreadPirateRoberts]

listening now...

[Alex]

Until recently I didn't even know it was a Beatles thing rather than an actual band.

[wendybeth]

It's one of my most favorite records, and I still listen to it regularly.

[Ghoulish Delight]

I haven't listened to it lately, but that's because I listened to it incessantly as a teen.

[innerSpaceman]

I remember when Sgt. Pepper first came out on CD, and without realizing the date ... I choked up when Paul sang, "It was 20 years ago today Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play," and I realized it was 20 years ago that ground-breaking album came out.


Wow ... 20 more years have gone by since then?!?! WTF??!



I listened to Sgt. Pepper just a couple of weeks ago. Its strength and its weakness is its very particular sound ... inimitable and completely unique. It's brilliant for that quality, but you can't exactly be "in the mood" for that sound - - - since there's nothing else like it. As such, I listen to it less than many other Beatles albums (which I don't listen to very often ... but am due for a MAJORASS and extensive review ... and the O.P. knows what I mean - aka, yeah, I still haven't had time to listen to those 25 CDs, Jesse ... but I will make time when life slows down a bit, er, in late summer perhaps.)



And whether it stays on Very Best playlists or not ... its place in history as the first of its kind will never change ... and its place as one of the best of its kind is, I believe, pretty much assured for a long, long, long time. Wake me when it's the 20th anniversary of the 20th anniversary of the 20th anniversary, and we'll revisit the matter.

[Gemini Cricket]

Great album!
:)

[blueerica]

While I could say that most Beatles albums are my favorite, this is the one that I know almost all the words to.

[Kevy Baby]

The Beatles?

Isn't that the band that Paul McCartney was in before the Wings?
______________________


Seriously though, Sgt. Pepper is one of those records that I need to listen to in its entirety. I cannot just pull a track or two out - it just doesn't work for me.

Being able to listen to it with a good pair of headphones (alas, my Sennheiser's finally died after 20+ years of abuse) while lying down comfortably with your eyes close - that is the perfect way to experience this album!

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Yeah, incessantly in high school. I adore it and could listen to it most any time. Each song is a gem on its own as well. However, I think my favorite Beatles album is still Rubber Soul, but that's by a very small margin.

[innerSpaceman]

Revolver, Rubber Soul, Abbey Road and then Sgt. Peppers (imho), but I acknowledge the supreme greatness and genius of Sgt. Peppers.

[Tref]

One of my earliest memories is looking through my dad's records. It was probably was around 1968. The two albums that stood out were Janis Joplins Cheap Thrills (because of the cartoon cover) and, of course, Sgt. Pepper. A short time later my folks to me to see the movie Yellow Submarine and I fell in love with Beatles music. I can still remember my father coming home from a business trip and handing me the Corgi Yellow Submarine toy. He told me whilst on the plane he saw it flying outside the window, and he reached out and grabbed it. A silly story, perhaps, but it made the toy (and the Beatles) that much more special.

[Prudence]

While "A Day in the Life" is one of my favorite Beatles songs, I'm sure you can guess what my favorite album is. I know this makes me odd.

[Mousey Girl]

That was the first album to ever include the lyrics.

[CoasterMatt]

I didn't know about the original album until after seeing the wonderful piece of cinema that the Robert Stigwood Organisation dumped on us...

but the first Beatles album I owned was "Sgt. Peppers" and I still have at least a couple tracks on my mp3 player at all times.

[Tref]

Being able to listen to it with a good pair of headphones ... while lying down comfortably with your eyes close - that is the perfect way to experience this album!

Right on.

[Boss Radio]

Best album cover to play "Where's Waldo with major historical and pop cultural figures" ever. And the vinyl record came with cool cut-out toys.
And Paul was OPD, according to his patch on the interior gatefold.

Countless hours of fun.

[lindyhop]

I was trying to listen to the NPR piece about this last night but there was so much static because I was waiting to get past the pay station in the Mickey & Friends parking structure. But there is no static in my memories.

I remember my best friend and I going to Al Kalie's Music in Downey to buy this album the first day it came out. The poor clerk was just pulling it out of the box when we got there. We took it home and listened to it over and over and over again that summer, usually with one ear up against a speaker so we could hear George counting before starting to sing or the footsteps (we thought) in another song. The Beatles layered all that sound so we could take it apart, right? Really we were just obsessed and since it was the first Beatles album in what seemed like forever we had to absorb every molecule.

I haven't listened to the album as a whole in ages but the opening notes of Sgt. Pepper and the whole of A Day in The Life are still as transcendent as ever. (I had to pull out my iPod so I could listen to A Day in The Life again right now.) Abbey Road is probably my favorite album but Sgt. Pepper was transforming and still has power.

Forty years ago? Holy crap.

[Bornieo: Fully Loaded]

Besides "1" its the only Beatles CD I have - and yes I too was introduced to it by a wonderfully, underrated film by the same name.

It's great music even if George Burns is singing it.

[Kevy Baby]

Chris Carter is playing the mono version of Sgt. Peppers this morning on Breakfast with the Beatles (http://www.955klos.com/showdj.asp?DJID=34863&PT=BreakfastWithTheBeatles)

[eeyore19]

Best album cover to play "Where's Waldo with major historical and pop cultural figures" ever. And the vinyl record came with cool cut-out toys.
And Paul was OPD, according to his patch on the interior gatefold.

Countless hours of fun.


Actually, Paul's patch says "OPP". It's the official insignia for the Ontario Provincial Police.

Here's what the Wikipedia says:

The 1967 Beatles Album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, contains cover art with Paul McCartney wearing an OPP patch on his fictional uniform (more easily seen in the gatefold picture). The patch was given to John Lennon the day after their 1966 concert in Toronto, by a summer student working in the garage of the OPP Headquarters; when the Beatles were being transferred to a police van for the trip to the airport.

Many "Paul Is Dead" enthusiasts have misread the patch as "OPD" (the way the patch was slightly bent on McCartney's sleeve in the gatefold picture, the bottom of the "P" was not visible) and took it to mean "Officially Pronounced Dead."

[flippyshark]

I just bought this album for my Mum. I have it on my iPod and listen to it (in toto) at least two or three times a year.

There is hardly a week goes by without listening to some or all of Abbey Road, by now pretty obviously my favorite album.

[Ghoulish Delight]

I heard two seemingly conflicting perspectives from NPR on this, though if one thinks about it they probably are less conflicting than simply geographically determined.

In the first, which was simply the musings of David Dye, host of NPR's "All Songs Considered", he mentioned that he's been asked how amazing it must have been to have heard Sgt. Pepper's on the radio when it was new. His take was that he didn't really hear it on the radio. FM barely existed, and no one really knew what to do with this whole "album" concept thing. The Beatles didn't release any of the tracks as singles. So stations weren't playing it. For him, it was all about the actual album, hearing at a friend's house for the first time.

The second, a broader piece aired on All Things Considered (yes, those are 2 separate NPR programs), was from the New York perspective. Mr. Dye didn't mention where he was in the US in 1967, but judging from his experience, probably not in a major city. While FM was indeed new and undeveloped, it was starting to take hold. With the FCC mandating that media companies no longer simply simulcast their AM programming on whatever FM band they owned, they were at kind of a loss as to what to do with the frequencies. They didn't see much profit in it, so a lot of them just kinda stuck a DJ on there and said, "Do what you want." These were the DJs that played it, often the whole album. So from the perspective of this story, it was all about the influence of radio and the influence of the album on radio.

Neither story was particularly insightful, but taken together I thought they made for an interesting study.

[lindyhop]

The AM station here in LA played it, in fact our favorite DJ supposedly was fired for playing A Day in The Life before the album was officially released. We all protested and he was reinstated, I don't know if it was a stunt or not. But listening to the album was the right way to do it, so you could play it all the way through.