Sunday, June 04, 2017

How ‘Sgt. Pepper’ Reinvented the Record Album

How ‘Sgt. Pepper’ Reinvented the Record Album: It may not be the greatest record of all time, but in changing forever the way we thought about what an album could do, it reigns supreme as the most important record of all.

2 comments:

Rick Robinson said...


There was a program on PBS last night about the making of and why it was such a big deal. When it was released in 1967 I remember being somewhat disappointed in over half of the songs, but then I liked the earlier albums Revolver and Rubber Soul a lot and that sound didn't carry over.

Don Coffin said...

I liked (and like) Sgt. Pepper quite a lot, but the commentary we're getting now is a bit over the top. Yeah, it was a big deal, but it wasn't like pop music suddenly revolved around it. Other people were doing marvelous things that were maybe, in the long run, even more influential (Lou Reed used to say that only 5000 people bought the Velvet Underground's first album, but they all started bands; in that sense, the earliest Beatles albums were more influential--I had probably a dozen friends in high school who started bands in 1962/63/64/65 because of the boys).