Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Nothing about this album is what you think it is.

It was not the first concept album. It was not the first "real" rock album. It was not the first rock album with "meaningful" lyrics. It is not the greatest album of all time (as if such a thing could be determined). It is not, according to many Beatle fans and critics, even their best album.

It does deserve the reams and reams of words scholars, rockers, and theorists have attributed to it over the years. In much the same way that a child's first step is his most important, Sgt. Pepper is rock's most important album. Rock and roll -- as an art form, as folklore, as a movement, as a vehicle of expression -- would jump higher, run faster, and kick harder, but it would never recreate the feeling of possibility, the utter unity, of this beautiful piece of plastic. This album kicked off the Summer Of Love, the finest mass cultural awakening the world has ever known. And, as always, the Beatles were its vanguard, which in popular music means not the creators of styles, but their best assimilators.

That's not a backhanded compliment. The Beatles were able to take the artistic dabblings of artists across the spectrum, find their true selves in it, and broadcast it clearly enough to where we saw ourselves in the final product. That's the goal of any true artist. Had the Beatles broken up after Revolver or even Help!, they would have already achieved that goal. Sgt. Pepper was different, however. In keeping with the true spirit of self-discovery, a process which began with the Beats and climaxed with the Beatles, this album was about reflecting things in ourselves that we didn't even know we had. What's "A Day In The Life" about? I'm not sure. As a child, one without the benefit of knowing John and Paul's philosophies and the history of popular music, I was even less sure. All I knew was that the song was "scary". And it was. Is.

I used to have a recurring nightmare as a child. It didn't involve definable things or events; it was simply a feeling. Me, alone, in the darkness, falling in a circular pattern towards the earth. The worst part was that as I got closer to the ground, my speed increased; I was careening faster and further out of control. I'm guessing it had a lot do with some repressed fear and anxiety. The important thing is that when I heard "ADITL", it sounded like the reverse of that process, as if God had picked me up off of the ground and flung me violently into the air; as if I were falling up.

I didn't have the capacity to understand it at the time, but it seemed as if that musical orgasm was seducing me into another plane of existence, a world that might have something more rewarding in it than collecting bottlecaps or trying to get to different kinds of First Bases. A place where I could finally, as Tracy Chapman later said, be someone. Be Someone. Be Someone. "Eight Days A Week" had given me some of that same feeling, but only as regards Earthly pleasures (someone to hold, someone to kiss). This song, and the album it climaxed, were about the emotions behind the pleasures, the Truth buried under the action. It was about transforming oneself, as a lot of good Rock had been, but more blatant: the Beatles, like Peter Pan, were hovering outside the window, and this time they were on a mission to teach us how to fly. I was learning how to become a God, how to transcend the mundane experience of things like dragging a comb across my head, how to go into a Dream and emerge with the capacity to tear into the raw and bloody gristle of Life Itself.

With A Little Help From My Friends Original Title: Bad Finger Boogie
Absolutely Ringo's best moment, the summation of all that he is. Not because, as some cynics have stated, the other lads "carried" him musically (an untruth), but because Ringo could finally take the lovable sad-sack persona of his and make us envious of it. Written by Paul and John specifically for him. (And the working title WAS from where Paul got the band name Badfinger.)

Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds Recorded at various speeds to get that disorienting, true psychedelic feeling, this John number was the first time he was really able to use his Carrollian love of wordplay in a serious vein. The song's NOT about LSD: it was inspired by a documented drawing shown to John by his son Julian. And while John denied the acid implications, the song is dealing with a heightened state of consciousness. And note the emphasis on the word "high". (John would later state that this song was recorded to simply and point to Elton John's 1974 hit version as the way it should've sounded. Your call.)

Getting Better The absolute best example of John and Paul's synergy. Perhaps no other song in music perfectly balances optimism and pessimism in such a fashion; certainly no other song makes the combination sound so damned appealing. Everything sung by the pair is exactly as written, and the verses ping-ponged between Paul's whimsy ("Me used to be angry young man") and John's grit ("I used to be mean to my woman, I beat her"). Note George's new influence on the band in the tambourra-flavored breakdown!

Fixing A Hole A wistful little reminiscence by Paul that's not quite up to the standard of what precedes it. Still a great song, with Paul's resolution to keep a stiff uppper lip balanced by the moodiness of the chords. Musically, it's sort of like a psychedelic "Michelle", if you think about it.

She's Leaving Home A real high point of Pepper, but one that's unfortunately overlooked all too often, simply because this song's pleasures are more modest than "Lucy" or "ADITL". This could very well be Paul's best "storytelling"; it's emotionally wrenching. And it's worth remembering that while the Generation Gap was widening across the world, only the Fabs were addressing it directly. Not pedantically, but the way a good fiction writer does, finding the cataclysm in the mundane details. Paul was in a hurry and had someone else write the lovely string arrangement instead of George Martin. It suffers ever-so-slightly for it, but that's more than made up for by the lovely John and George backing vocals. Credit John for suggesting the "buy/bye bye" turn of phrase.

Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite! Pepper sags a bit in its middle and this is one of two reasons why. John wrote this to order after viewing an ancient circus poster he'd bought recently - he literally wrote the song at the piano by reading the poster aloud and fashioning rhymes around it. Fits in well with the "show" motif (which by this point was all but gone), but not one of John's better works. He himself hated it. The swirl of sound in the middle was George Martin's genius: he assembled all the calliope sounds he could find (on John's orders), cut them up into pieces, threw them all up in the air and instructed the engineer to pick them up and piece them together in a completely random way.

Within You Without You George finally gets carte blanche to explore his Indian mysticism fully, and the results are less than impressive. Dull, even. None of Harrison's Indian tracks were especially true to form; they all had some Western influence to them somewhere. This song is far inferior to "Love You To", although lyrically, it's probably his finest song to that point. Personally, I would have liked to have seen "It's All Too Much" here instead.

When I'm Sixty-Four One of Paul's earliest written songs (which gives the lie to those who think that the Beatles pulled SPLHCB out fo thin air), this dates back to at least 1957. Inspired by Paul's father, a jazz musician in the twenties, this song is still the best of Paul's music-hall tributes. ("Honey Pie" and "Your Mother Should Know" were soon to follow, as well as some solo Paul experiments in the same style.) Another great example of latent musical tendencies that the beatles were brave enough to drag into the pop mainstream.

Lovely Rita Not one of the better songs on Pepper, but still a great deal of fun. A bit of naughty, winking flirtation from Paulie, with John adding a lot of strange sounds as the song veers into yet another psychedelic vista. That great upright solo is courtesy of George Martin (and at the right speed this time).

Good Morning, Good Morning Actually not as bad as John makes it out to be. It's a weak concept, fleshed out wonderfully. John got the title from a Kellogg's commercial for Corn Flakes, believe it or not, and wrote the song from there: it's basically about the joys of just hanging out. The track is so amazingly well-produced, however, it could be studied just like "ADITL" is. Toilet Paper and comb at the beginning, a wall of shiny, muscular saxes, and the incredible breakdown into chaos at the end, achieved when John mentioned he wanted the sounds of animals played in such a succession that each animal would be capable of eating or frightening its predecessor. A walk up the food chain to the higher consciousness of "ADITL"? Who knows. (For the record the actual sequence is Rooster, Cat, Dog, Horses, Sheep, Lions, Elephants, Fox Hunt with Bloodhounds, Cow, Chicken. Oh well. It was a good idea, anyway.)

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (reprise) The concept, show, or what-have-you comes full circle, beautifully, with this reprise. It's a very exciting minute: it masterfully builds tension that seems to be released at the end, except that the epilogue is about to knock us into next week. John can be heard saying "bye" near the beginning.