Post by erik on Mar 30, 2024 18:22:41 GMT -5
The Fab Four are in this week's Pop Music Album Spotlight with what is arguably the high watermark album of rock music as we know it.
SERGEANT PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND—The Beatles (Parlophone; 1967)
When they first invaded America in the winter of 1964, those four lovable “mop tops” who called themselves The Beatles totally upended what everyone once thought of rock and roll, primarily because America was in something of a mournful funk in the wake of the assassination of President Kennedy. But even the whirlwind success they had for all of 1964, 1965, and part of 1966 had so worn them down that, after a 1966 performance at Shea Stadium in New York, they quit touring and retreated to the safe confines of Abbey Road Studios in London. And then, as the Summer of Love dawned in the late spring of 1967, the quartet of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, together with the connivance of their producer Sir George Martin, created what is arguably rock’s first (and arguably finest, hands down) “concept album”, in Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band.
Utilizing all the studio techniques at their disposable, as well as mass orchestrations for the extreme walls of dissonance that make up the album’s closing (and still somewhat controversial) track “A Day In The Life”, the Fab Four, more than any group of the time, embodied what the peace-and-love movement was all about in what was an otherwise very turbulent time in the late 1960’s. Such tracks as “With A Little Help From My Friends”, “Getting Better”, “Fixing A Hole”, “She’s Leaving Home” and “Within You, Without You” (which featured Indian sitar and tables, the former played by Harrison) became staples of FM album rock radio well into the 21st century. “With A Little Help”, which had Ringo on lead vocals, became the first UK hit for British soul rocker Joe Cocker; and “A Day In The Life” would be covered in short order by legendary jazz guitar virtuoso as the title track of his 1967 album.
Needless to say, Sergeant Pepper became a massive-selling album, selling over eight million copies in its first six months of existence, and staying at #1 on Billboard’s Top 200 Album Chart for fifteen straight weeks, into the fall of 1967. In other ways, however, the album was a peak that at some level the Fab Four realize they could probably never top. And before the summer of 1967 was even over, their manager Brian Epstein would die of an accidental overdose, while the Beatles were studying transcendental meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India. Epstein’s passing would mark the beginning of the end of the band, as tensions would begin to surface among them, paramountly John and Paul.
SERGEANT PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND—The Beatles (Parlophone; 1967)
When they first invaded America in the winter of 1964, those four lovable “mop tops” who called themselves The Beatles totally upended what everyone once thought of rock and roll, primarily because America was in something of a mournful funk in the wake of the assassination of President Kennedy. But even the whirlwind success they had for all of 1964, 1965, and part of 1966 had so worn them down that, after a 1966 performance at Shea Stadium in New York, they quit touring and retreated to the safe confines of Abbey Road Studios in London. And then, as the Summer of Love dawned in the late spring of 1967, the quartet of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, together with the connivance of their producer Sir George Martin, created what is arguably rock’s first (and arguably finest, hands down) “concept album”, in Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band.
Utilizing all the studio techniques at their disposable, as well as mass orchestrations for the extreme walls of dissonance that make up the album’s closing (and still somewhat controversial) track “A Day In The Life”, the Fab Four, more than any group of the time, embodied what the peace-and-love movement was all about in what was an otherwise very turbulent time in the late 1960’s. Such tracks as “With A Little Help From My Friends”, “Getting Better”, “Fixing A Hole”, “She’s Leaving Home” and “Within You, Without You” (which featured Indian sitar and tables, the former played by Harrison) became staples of FM album rock radio well into the 21st century. “With A Little Help”, which had Ringo on lead vocals, became the first UK hit for British soul rocker Joe Cocker; and “A Day In The Life” would be covered in short order by legendary jazz guitar virtuoso as the title track of his 1967 album.
Needless to say, Sergeant Pepper became a massive-selling album, selling over eight million copies in its first six months of existence, and staying at #1 on Billboard’s Top 200 Album Chart for fifteen straight weeks, into the fall of 1967. In other ways, however, the album was a peak that at some level the Fab Four realize they could probably never top. And before the summer of 1967 was even over, their manager Brian Epstein would die of an accidental overdose, while the Beatles were studying transcendental meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India. Epstein’s passing would mark the beginning of the end of the band, as tensions would begin to surface among them, paramountly John and Paul.