Steven Jay

My Two Cents Worth of Sgt. Peppers lonely Hearts Club Band L.P. Man, has it been 40 years already!? I hope I am still around for the 75th anniversary! Probably not. I never thought I would actually see Paul McCartney turning 64! And now, he's about to turn 65! On the Pepper L.P, Paul penned a song called, "When I'm 64." He was 28 years old at the time. I thought Paul was a spoilsport when he refused to perform the song on his 64th. Too bad. But, I understand the "I'm getting old!" blues. I get that, too. In 1967, I was only a mixed up kid who was trying to make sense of a complex world. What did make sense to me was pop music, baseball, Hollywood movies, comic books and television. For my birthday that year, I got a Sears record player that played only in mono. Prior to that, circa 1964, I started to buy records and borrowed my sister's record player for my listening pleasure. I had a meager allowance at the time, so I'd buy the occasional 45. My very first purchase was a birthday gift for my sister. It was the Beatles, "I Feel Fine" which I got from Morties Record Shop on Fairfax Avenue, in December 1964. I remember it had a color picture sleave of them in concert. After that, I lost track of the hundreds of records I bought. In the year of our Lord 1967, I got my first job selling newspapers, which furthered my record buying habits significantly. I only bought 45's with picture sleeves, which I would tape to my bedroom wall. I had a virtual rock and roll hall of fame on my wall! At first, I didn't like the Fab Four. They were a teenybopper band for teenage girls! Then came Rubber Soul and I was sold. Following that, the Beatles last great 45 was in September 1966, "Eleanor Rigby," from the album, Revolver. Then, they were quiet. Six months was an eternity for our generation. Critics speculated: the Beatles were done for, it was over. In August in 1966, they played their last concert in San Francisco and announced they would tour no more. The Beatle break-up rumors didn't bother me, though--there were tons of bands out there. Then, in March of `67, something happened... The Beatles released the double-sided 45 called "Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever." The photo on the record jacket was a portrait of them with facial hair! This shocked Beatles fans. The once clean-shaven, mop tops had mustaches! What did this mean? I thought it was a gag. The word "psychedelic" was introduced in 1966 by a New York garage band called, The Blues Magoos. The name of their album was "Psychedelic Lollipop." Their sound was garage/punk rock. Their image was your standard Beatles / Dutch-boy hair style with tight pants, polka dot shirts and Beatle boots. There was no psychedelic music on the record! However, in San Francisco, there were these strange bands with strange names making weird music: that was psychedelic! The first San Francisco band to have a psychedelic hit song on the charts was the Jefferson Airplane. That was "White Rabbit," was released in July. When Beatle George Harrison played tapes of these bands to his bandmates, they loved it! The last song on their 1966 LP, Revolver, was a John Lennon tune called, "Tomorrow Never Knows." This was the warning shot of the Beatles' psychedelic period. The only other news of the Beatles in `66 was a rumor that the British pop group, "The Bee Gees," was actually the Beatles sped up on tape! Then came June 3, 1967. I remember hearing a song a week earlier called, "Friday on My Mind." I thought it was a new Beatles song~but, it wasn't...it was by an Aussie band, "The Easybeats." Hey! A group from New Jersey, The Knickerbockers, fooled me with their song "Lies." They sounded just like the Beatles! Then I heard, "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" on KRLA AM. The announcer said it was off the new album by the Beatles. Album? Top 40 station never played album cuts. Well, as it turned out--it was the Beatles after all! That was the first time a song from an album was played on the radio! There were many other firsts on this innovative album. For years, the biggest complaint about rock & roll, from America's older generation, was that they couldn't understand what the singer was singing. So, the lads compromised by printing the lyrics on the back of the album sleeve. This was the first time it was done! Rock & roll albums in the mid 60's were always rushed and recorded quickly with standard rock songs from the 50's or 60's. It was the Hit 45 that was promoted. Albums were ignored like the B‑sides of 45's. Then along came this album and the bar was raised by 100 feet! After Pepper was released, there was no going back! Overnight, folk-rock, garage-rock and British invasion, cute pop bands were wiped out! Poor Herman Hermits! Even Motown was affected! The Temptations and the Supremes each put out songs with weird sound effects. Album covers changed because of Pepper. It wasn't just headshots of band members anymore--it became artistic. Paintings and drawings appeared on rock albums! With the Pepper album, you could lay it down and stare at the collage of people on the cover and try to place them with their names. Even the album jacket itself was a first! It was like a giant book, which you could open and close. Conventional album covers were merely double sided, with a slot for inserting the record disc. The sound effects of the music was novel. The group used flanging and backward masking. Plus, they used Echo-Plexing, which is when the echo sustained for a short time. Their producer George Martin was a significant part of this great album. Their recording equipment had only 4 tracks, so Mr.—now "Sir"-- Martin bounced tracks using the new Dolby sound. The album's initial release--my copy--was in mono, but it sounded great! Phil Spector had his "wall of sound," but George Martin created the "psychedelic" sound! The album's format was a first! Like a medley, the tracks would segue into another track. This drove radio deejays nuts! They couldn't play just one song; they had to tape the record and edit it in order to get one song! But that wasn't the idea. You couldn't just listen to one song, you had to listen to the entire album! Pepper was the birth of the rock album. The Doors first hit song, "Light My Fire," totaled 6 minutes and 50 seconds on their first album. It was the most popular song on the album. AM radio refused to play it because it was too long, so the record company released an edited version on 45 and that became their hit in 1967. The last song on Pepper was, "A Day in the Life." It totaled 5 minutes. AM Radio didn't play it either because of its length. It was played on underground rock stations on FM. Underground stations were rare, so the only way you hear the album was to buy it. Millions of people did just that! This was also the first "headphone" record! Fans wanted to hear the album's every nuance and sound. It was even claimed that you could get high listening to it on headphones! Well…not really-- but it did put you in a metaphysical state of mind. The album opened up the mind's theater like a great novel! This album was not teenage dance music;it was pure art! Sergeant Pepper's was omnipresent. It was playing everywhere you went! Passing cars, apartments & houses, stores' sound systems, pool parties, portable radios on the beach, even in the backwoods! Sergeant Pepper wasn't just an album release, it was a major event! It was like the second coming of Christ! So, at that point in history, the Beatles were bigger than Jesus! People played that album so much that they wore it out and buy new copies! The album was on the Billboard charts for 10 years! There was even a movie made, based on the album--but it bombed. Pepper was critically acclaimed. Rock journalism was in its infancy that year; Rock critics were very few. However, conventional music critics were many and were on the staffs of most newspapers and magazines. Mostly, they reviewed orchestras and opera singers. Some music critics liked jazz, folk and pop music. Music saw critics of Rock music as a product of trash culture—a lower form of music not worth reviewing. They started to pay attention to Bob Dylan, but eventually wrote him off as a poet who sang like a hillbilly. Then came Sergeant Pepper and they all got a collective cosmic slap! Maybe this Rock stuff was not just for pimple-faced, white teens? These critics wrote glorification pieces about the album. They analyzed the lyrics the same way they later did Dylan's. They put the Beatles in the same category as Brahms, List, Bach, and even Miles Davis, if you could believe that! My father, who hated Rock, read these reviews and asked me if he could have a listen! It was the only time my dad and I would sit in the same room and indulge in music appreciation focused on a rock band. He never told me whether he liked it or not. The Beatles were taken seriously as artists and weren't considered just a teeny-bopper band. After Pepper, they were scrutinized by serious critics, but as rock journalism grew, they were lionized as rock Gods--just like Elvis, Dylan and the Rolling Stones! The 20th anniversary of Pepper was more celebrated than this, the 40th. I wonder why? It is still my all time, favorite album! Psychedelic music only lasted for five or six years. Progressive rock replaced it. Progressive rock became too complicated. Kids just wanted to dance. Enter Disco and Punk. And that was it. I still have my beat-up copy of Pepper. It's now just a memento. I bought the CD. Every June, I listen to it and lament how music is nowadays just a corporate commodity and unimaginative. Green Day came close to a great album with their American Idiot CD. Aaah--nothing will ever match Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band! 6/7/2007 Check out my video http://www.neilyoung.com/lwwtoday/songslin...glink_1396.html