It Was 40 Years Ago Today|PARADE Magazine: "This week marks the 40th anniversary of the Beatles’ completion of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a tour de force that elevated the rock album to art form and taught generations of bands to play.
The 13 tracks on Sgt. Pepper’s were conceived in a magical span of 700 hours over five months. The Beatles began recording on Dec. 6, 1966, and finished the album on April 21, 1967, when they created the final track, an avant-garde seconds-long pastiche of sounds—including a high-pitched tone inaudible to humans put there solely to annoy your dog—that was later dubbed “Inner Groove” for its bizarre placement within the concentric circles of the LP."
2 comments:
I have to wonder if SGT. PEPPER was the first rock album with printed lyrics...and if it was, it certainly wasn't the first album to so...Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, among other jazz composers, had had albums thus. And I'm one of those who likes REVOLVER (and, for that matter, the UK version of HELP!) better. Golly, though, there sure was a lot of cultural ferment then, even as now, but then it seemed so handily concentrated in several centers. Nowadays, of course, one needn't (even as much as one ever Really did) Go to the Big City nor the Artist's Colony to make a splash, but it probably still helps to get smashed with the right people.
For whatever reason, I still remember where I was when I first heard the Sgt. Pepper album. It was quite the cultural event at the time, but it's not my favorite album by the Beatles.
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