Sgt. Pepper Taught Who to Do What?

They had decided to stop touring.

Instead, they would make music that couldn’t be played live. They’d create something completely new, make sounds no one had heard before.

Such was the impetus for the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, according to a recent article by Christopher Ave. The album, which celebrated its 40th anniversary on June 1, is considered a landmark achievement by many fans and critics.

I’ll ruin this right away by saying that I don’t find Sgt. Pepper’s to hold up as well as some of the band’s other material. There are fantastic individual moments — “Getting Better,” “She’s Leaving Home,” and “A Day in the Life” are among the finest pieces ever penned and pressed by the fab four, while “Within You and Without You” may be my favorite George tune (that or “Savoy Truffle,” depending on mood) — but overall, the record is a bit uneven for my taste.

Give me Revolver or Abbey Road any day of the week. Give me the 2 1/2 minute pop ditties from their early albums. There’s no denying the technical genius displayed by producer George Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick, and their efforts here certainly paved the way for future generations in ways that, say, A Hard Day’s Night never could.

That said, significance and endearment are not the same thing. I appreciate Sgt. Pepper’s for what it is and what it represents. I even enjoy it every now and then. But it’s almost never at the top of my list of Beatles’ albums I need to hear.

On this day…

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