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JJHMick
I presume here are some Beatles experts. I wrote this on another thread, maybe you here know the answer:

the B sides
Date: April 15, 2017 17:39

The Beatles starting at No. 37 with Strawberry Fields sounds intersting to me. I would have thought they usually went in right on No. 1 or at least Top 10 being No. 1 in week 2. But wasn't Strawberry Fields Forever something like their first non-Beat-singles?!

In the UK all their singles usually did go to number 1. Is that what you were wondering about, the UK charts? Penny Lane was the B-side, with both songs peaking at #2 on the singles chart -- the first time they missed #1 with an A-side of a new composition since the release of their debut single Love Me Do in 1962.

Thank you, Deltics and stonehearted! I didn't think about the UK charts only. I bought the Beatles' One for my children and remembered the story that neither Love Me Do and SFF/PL were actually a No. 1...

But that table of Deltics was there and I was surprised the song was that low in the first week. I expected they had a fan base then that would buy anything new to make it No. 1 immediately. That's why I suggested it was the end of the Beat-Beatles and puzzled most fans - though, today, one might hail both songs as masterpieces even outstanding in the Beatles' singles career.

That double a-side thing is still a mystery to me: They didn't print two different covers, one with (Stones example) Let's Spend in bold face and another with Ruby Tuesday to create a difference in charting?!

Preview: With a Little Help From my Friends (Take 1 - False Start And Take 2 – Instrumental)

[wcsx.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2017-05-02 13:10 by Cristiano Radtke.

First ever Beatles-backed radio channel to feature exclusive programming, spanning the songs, stories, influences and legacy of The Fab Four

- The Beatles Channel launch to be celebrated with SiriusXM's free listening preview program, offering 24/7 listening on inactive satellite radios

NEW YORK, May 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- SiriusXM is pleased to announce The Beatles Channel, launching May 18 at 9:09 am ET exclusively on SiriusXM channel 18. Celebrating popular music's most legendary and influential band, The Beatles Channel has been created by SiriusXM to present unique and exclusive programming in collaboration with and fully authorized by The Beatles' Apple Corps Ltd. The Beatles Channel will also be available online and through the SiriusXM app.
The Beatles Channel – Coming May 18 – Exclusively on SiriusXM
The Beatles Channel – Coming May 18 – Exclusively on SiriusXM

The Beatles Channel will showcase all-things-Beatles with regular and special programming spanning the history-making careers of the band and its members: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. The channel will explore The Beatles' entire career including their hits and deeper tracks, live recordings, rarities, and solo albums, while also spotlighting musicians who have inspired, and have drawn inspiration from, The Beatles.

Paul McCartney said, "I still remember the thrill of when we first heard our music on the radio, but I don't think any of us would have imagined that we'd have our very own Beatles radio channel more than 50 years later. The SiriusXM channel will have it all, 8 Days a Week."

Ringo Starr added, "Great news, The Beatles will have their own channel on SiriusXM. Now you can listen to The Beatles, Any Time at All. Peace & Love."

"We are so proud to announce the most popular band in history has joined us for their own SiriusXM channel," said Scott Greenstein, President and Chief Content Officer of SiriusXM. "We've worked with The Beatles and Apple Corps Ltd. to create a channel that is as vital today as when the band's music was first recorded. The channel will be all-things-Beatles, 24/7. The soundtrack of our world, made by John, Paul, George and Ringo."

The Beatles Channel will launch at exactly 9:09 am ET on Thursday May 18, and will be celebrated as part of SiriusXM's free listening preview program, offering 24/7 listening on inactive SiriusXM radios from May 17 to May 30.

The Beatles Channel will present a curated mix of music tailored to a wide range of Beatles fans, along with a variety of regular shows and specials, including:

Breakfast with The Beatles: A daily morning show hosted by musician and lifelong Beatles aficionado, Chris Carter, featuring music, stories and all things Beatles.
A Day in the Life: A daily feature noting milestones in the lives and career of The Beatles.
My Fab Four: A daily guest DJ session, hosted by musicians influenced by The Beatles, celebrities, and super fan listeners, each playing their four favorite Beatles songs.
Beatle Bites: A daily "name the song" quiz featuring a short snippet of a Beatles recording.
Dedicated Phone: # 844-999-BEATLES, for fans to make requests and share their Beatles stories.
The Fab Fourum: A live weekly call-in roundtable show hosted by veteran broadcaster Dennis Elsas; TV producer and author, Bill Flanagan; and panelists including authors, musicians and fans.
Peter Asher: From Me To You: He sang Beatles compositions as a member of Peter & Gordon, was part of the formation of Apple Records and went on to become a multiple Grammy-winning producer and much more. Now, his stories come to life in this exclusive weekly series.
Magical Mini Concert: A weekly fantasy concert featuring live music from The Beatles and their solo works.
Northern Songs with Bill Flanagan: A regular show from TV producer and author Flanagan, focusing on themes that tell the story of The Beatles, their music and the effect it had on generations of fans.
Get Back: The Beatles in Britain: A monthly show recorded in and around London and Liverpool that offers the UK perspective of the Beatles phenomenon, hosted by Geoff Lloyd.

On June 1, The Beatles Channel will celebrate "Pepper Day" on the 50th Anniversary of the band's acclaimed Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, playing the album's new Anniversary Edition stereo mix in its entirety. The album spotlight will be accompanied by commentary by the album's original producer, the late George Martin, and by his son, Giles Martin, who produced the album's new stereo and 5.1 surround mixes from The Beatles' session tapes, guided by his father's original, Beatles-preferred mono album mix. Apple Corps Ltd./Capitol/UMe will release 'Sgt. Pepper' in several Anniversary Edition configurations on May 26.

www.thebeatles.com

siriusxm.com/thebeatles

www.siriusxm.com

It isn't the first time an all Beatles radio station was attempted. The first was more than 30 years ago, around 1983 or so. Saw this interview on one of the entertainment programs on TV, probably Entertainment Tonight or something, where this guy, one of the station's backers actually said, "We all need the daily security of a Beatles song -- it's been psychologically proven!", which is a preposterous statement to make, especially on national television. Maybe this would have applied to some, but certainly not all.

Anyway, this all Beatles radio experiment didn't last long, which is why no one remembers it so that Sirius can make this false claim about being the first.

Chicago Tribune article on all Beatles radio, 1983: [archives.chicagotribune.com]

July 1983 radio commercial for all Beatles radio station conversion: [www.youtube.com]

Listening to Breakfast with The Beatles with Chris Carter is a Saturday morning ritual for me, or at least I try to catch it when I can!
I think it runs for two to three hours (maybe four?) which is just the right amount for a weekly Beatles dose on the radio - anything more than that might be overkill.
That being said, it would be cool to tune in any time and be guaranteed to listen to a Beatles tune or something Beatles related!

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

Breakfast With The Beatles pre-dates Chris Carter by a good many years. A DJ in Philadelphia created the concept in the mid-seventies, after which other stations picked up on it. I remember one in the early eighties where I was living at the time had their own version -- just three songs back to back to back on weekdays, and that was good enough.

Otherwise at that time I had collected all the Beatles' albums by that point. But there were also the occasional Beatles radio specials with Scott Muni, and the assorted Beatles rarities programs and those featuring the then newly uncovered BBC performances, which were a revelation at the time.

At present I have every Beatles recording, as a group and solo, along with numerous outtakes discs and unreleased live concerts, etc., within arm's reach.

I suppose one good thing that might come out of this all Beatles radio experiment, with even their solo careers being highlighted, is that at last certain underrated albums like McCartney's Londontown and Back to the Egg might finally get their due!

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Hairball
Listening to Breakfast with The Beatles with Chris Carter is a Saturday morning ritual for me, or at least I try to catch it when I can!
I think it runs for two to three hours (maybe four?) which is just the right amount for a weekly Beatles dose on the radio - anything more than that might be overkill.
That being said, it would be cool to tune in any time and be guaranteed to listen to a Beatles tune or something Beatles related!

Carter's on Sunday 9:00-noon on KLOS...been listening to the show since original host Deidre O'Donoghue was on back in the '80s (I believe it has aired on all of the local L.A. "classic rock" stations over the years, starting with KMET).

There's also Les Perry's fine "Saturday with the Beatles" on Cal State Northridge's station (KCSN) from 10:00-noon.

Between the two programs, I get my weekend fix of Beatles/solo tunes.

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Jah Paul

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Hairball
Breakfast with The Beatles with Chris Carter

original host Deidre O'Donoghue was on back in the '80s (I believe it has aired on all of the local L.A. "classic rock" stations over the years, starting with KMET).

Breakfast with the Beatles was created by a Philadelphia DJ, Helen Leicht, in 1976.

Considering that Leicht became the first Beatles-only broadcaster when she started at WIOQ, with the Sunday-morning Breakfast with the Beatles, meeting Lennon was a big deal. (She met Paul McCartney, too, in 1984: "I could hardly speak from just staring at him.")

Original all-Beatles radio broadcaster Helen Leicht meets Paul McCartney in 1984.


Article on Breakfast with the Beatles originator Helen Leicht: [www.philly.com]

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stonehearted

Quote
Jah Paul

Quote
Hairball
Breakfast with The Beatles with Chris Carter

original host Deidre O'Donoghue was on back in the '80s (I believe it has aired on all of the local L.A. "classic rock" stations over the years, starting with KMET).

Breakfast with the Beatles was created by a Philadelphia DJ, Helen Leicht, in 1976.

Considering that Leicht became the first Beatles-only broadcaster when she started at WIOQ, with the Sunday-morning Breakfast with the Beatles, meeting Lennon was a big deal. (She met Paul McCartney, too, in 1984: "I could hardly speak from just staring at him.")

Original all-Beatles radio broadcaster Helen Leicht meets Paul McCartney in 1984.

Article on Breakfast with the Beatles originator Helen Leicht: [www.philly.com]

Yeah, I get it...I was speaking of the Los Angeles version, in response to Hairball's post - in which he was referring to Chris Carter, who hosts the Los Angeles show.

The L.A. version, by the way, is the longest running at 34 years.

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Jah Paul

Quote
Hairball
Listening to Breakfast with The Beatles with Chris Carter is a Saturday morning ritual for me, or at least I try to catch it when I can!
I think it runs for two to three hours (maybe four?) which is just the right amount for a weekly Beatles dose on the radio - anything more than that might be overkill.
That being said, it would be cool to tune in any time and be guaranteed to listen to a Beatles tune or something Beatles related!

Carter's on Sunday 9:00-noon on KLOS...been listening to the show since original host Deidre O'Donoghue was on back in the '80s (I believe it has aired on all of the local L.A. "classic rock" stations over the years, starting with KMET).

There's also Les Perry's fine "Saturday with the Beatles" on Cal State Northridge's station (KCSN) from 10:00-noon.

Between the two programs, I get my weekend fix of Beatles/solo tunes.

I remember Deidre O'Donoghue! She hosted a show on Santa Monica College radio station KCRW around 1980 where my brother did an occasional weekend dj set for The Reggae Beat show around the same time (with main dj Roger Steffens whose now a renowned reggae historian/author/expert of all things reggae). Between her show and KXLU college radio (Loyola Marymount), I heard alot of punk rock and cutting edge stuff back in those days. And then Deidre became a mainstay at KMET - not only hosting Breakfast with the Beatles, but a regular dj as well. And interesting you mention Cal State University, Northridge as I earned a Masters degree there yet I don't recall their radio station- must have been too busy being a good student to listen to radio! Thanks for the head up though as I'll be sure to tune in on Saturdays (that is if I can get it up here in Ventura). As for Philadelphia DJ Helen Leicht thats been mentioned, never heard of her but hats off for starting a great program.

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2017-05-04 04:13 by Hairball.

Quote
Hairball
I remember Deidre O'Donoghue! She hosted a show on Santa Monica College radio station KCRW around 1980 where my brother did an occasional weekend dj set for The Reggae Beat show around the same time (with main dj Roger Steffens whose now a renowned reggae historian/author/expert of all things reggae). Between her show and KXLU college radio (Loyola Marymount), I heard alot of punk rock and cutting edge stuff back in those days. And then Deidre became a mainstay at KMET - not only hosting Breakfast with the Beatles, but a regular dj as well. And interesting you mention Cal State University, Northridge as I earned a Masters degree there yet I don't recall their radio station- must have been too busy being a good student to listen to radio! Thanks for the head up though as I'll be sure to tune in on Saturdays (that is if I can get it up here in Ventura). As for Philadelphia DJ Helen Leicht thats been mentioned, never heard of her but hats off for starting a great program.

Deirdre was great - I remember her KCRW show as well. Chris Carter honors her every year on both her birthday and the anniversary of her passing by playing her favorite Beatles tunes, and even playing some of her old airchecks - he has tremendous respect for her and her history with the program.

The CSUN station improved its signal a few years back, but I don't know if it will reach Ventura, but you can always listen online. At least they have a legit station - when I worked at UCLA's station as a DJ back in the mid-'80s, it was "cable FM" (?!) and the AM signal only reached the dorms and a limited portion of Westwood...it was still fun playing music in the middle of the night, even if no one was listening!

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Jah Paul

The CSUN station improved its signal a few years back, but I don't know if it will reach Ventura, but you can always listen online. At least they have a legit station - when I worked at UCLA's station as a DJ back in the mid-'80s, it was "cable FM" (?!) and the AM signal only reached the dorms and a limited portion of Westwood...it was still fun playing music in the middle of the night, even if no one was listening!

Haha - my cousin was a student there around that time, so he might have been tuning in! Then again, he lived in Santa Monica and wouldn't be able to get reception. lol

Having been born and raised in Santa Monica myself, I have so many memories of the area. My dad used to have an office in one of the buildings across from UCLA - with Monty's restaurant at the top.
In high school and early college days c. early -mid '80's, we would sometimes make the short trek to Westwood to invade all the college kegger parties on Gayley Avenue (which was basically a synonym for college kegger party ).

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2017-05-04 05:24 by Hairball.

Quote
Hairball
Haha - my cousin was a student there around that time, so he might have been tuning in! Then again, he lived in Santa Monica and wouldn't be able to get reception. lol

Having been born and raised in Santa Monica myself, I have so many memories of the area. My dad used to have an office in one of the buildings across from UCLA - with Monty's restaurant at the top.
In high school and early college days c. early -mid '80's, we would sometimes make the short trek to Westwood to invade all the college kegger parties on Gayley Avenue (which was basically a synonym for college kegger party ).

I was born in Santa Monica, too, and grew up in Pacific Palisades, so I'm sure we have a lot of the same memories of the Westside. Spent a lot of time going to parties on Gayley during my time at UCLA (graduated in '87). Had brunch recently with some of my old college pals at a restaurant on the ground level of the Monty's building!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2017-05-04 05:48 by Jah Paul.

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Jah Paul

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Hairball
Haha - my cousin was a student there around that time, so he might have been tuning in! Then again, he lived in Santa Monica and wouldn't be able to get reception. lol

Having been born and raised in Santa Monica myself, I have so many memories of the area. My dad used to have an office in one of the buildings across from UCLA - with Monty's restaurant at the top.
In high school and early college days c. early -mid '80's, we would sometimes make the short trek to Westwood to invade all the college kegger parties on Gayley Avenue (which was basically a synonym for college kegger party ).

I was born in Santa Monica, too, and grew up in Pacific Palisades, so I'm sure we have a lot of the same memories of the Westside. Spent a lot of time going to parties on Gayley during my time at UCLA (graduated in '87). Had brunch recently with some of my old college pals at a restaurant on the ground level of the Monty's building!

Not sure if the Montys restaurant at the top still exists - I think it caught on fire some years ago? The old yellow Monty's sign at the top was landmark back in the day, but now when I drive down the 405 it's surrounded by newer buildings and can't even figure out which one is which.

I had alot of friends and connections up in the Palisades. My aunt used to work at one of the parks. When I was in 7th grade some friends and I took the bus up there to see The Song Remains The Same at the Bay Theater - I remember that like it was yesterday. In high school we would go 'hiking' up at the highlands all the time - or used that as an excuse to smoke alot of weed! On a sadder note, you may or may not remember skateboarder Paul Hackett who lived up there - he was in a couple of my classes at Santa Monica High 1980/81 and knew him from the skateboarding scene. He eventually flipped out big time making headline news - tragic story it was (similar to Jim Gordon of Derek and the Dominos).

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

stones were more diverse than the beatles, rocked harder, played the blues better, put more emotion and passion into the music, beatles probably done more catchy tunes but a lot of beatles songs are like something you would hear on a childrens tv show.

abba were better than the beatles.

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Hairball
Not sure if the Montys restaurant at the top still exists - I think it caught on fire some years ago? The old yellow Monty's sign at the top was landmark back in the day, but now when I drive down the 405 it's surrounded by newer buildings and can't even figure out which one is which.

I had alot of friends and connections up in the Palisades. My aunt used to work at one of the parks. When I was in 7th grade some friends and I took the bus up there to see The Song Remains The Same at the Bay Theater - I remember that like it was yesterday. In high school we would go 'hiking' up at the highlands all the time - or used that as an excuse to smoke alot of weed! On a sadder note, you may or may not remember skateboarder Paul Hackett who lived up there - he was in a couple of my classes at Santa Monica High 1980/81 and knew him from the skateboarding scene. He eventually flipped out big time making headline news - tragic story it was (similar to Jim Gordon of Derek and the Dominos).

Monty's is long gone...don't think anything ever replaced it; it's just office space now. Wow, the Bay Theater sure brings back memories! I remember that Paul Hackett story - really sad. The Palisades was a great place to grow up, but it's undergoing a lot of development now in the village, so it's not quite the same. I guess time marches on.

Yeah I so vividly remember hearing Happiness is a Warm Gun on that saturday morning cartoon show about shooting up heroin. It was so childish. And yeah, vivid memories about hearing Revolution on the cartoon for Planet of the Apes. But it did disturb me as the speaker sounded too distorted. I think I even sent back my single because of that distortion.

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Jah Paul

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Hairball
Not sure if the Montys restaurant at the top still exists - I think it caught on fire some years ago? The old yellow Monty's sign at the top was landmark back in the day, but now when I drive down the 405 it's surrounded by newer buildings and can't even figure out which one is which.

I had alot of friends and connections up in the Palisades. My aunt used to work at one of the parks. When I was in 7th grade some friends and I took the bus up there to see The Song Remains The Same at the Bay Theater - I remember that like it was yesterday. In high school we would go 'hiking' up at the highlands all the time - or used that as an excuse to smoke alot of weed! On a sadder note, you may or may not remember skateboarder Paul Hackett who lived up there - he was in a couple of my classes at Santa Monica High 1980/81 and knew him from the skateboarding scene. He eventually flipped out big time making headline news - tragic story it was (similar to Jim Gordon of Derek and the Dominos).

Monty's is long gone...don't think anything ever replaced it; it's just office space now. Wow, the Bay Theater sure brings back memories! I remember that Paul Hackett story - really sad. The Palisades was a great place to grow up, but it's undergoing a lot of development now in the village, so it's not quite the same. I guess time marches on.

Same with Santa Monica - hardly recognize it now. Moved up here about 30 years ago, and rarely go back except to visit cousins and friends. I grew up on the north side (we were practically neighbors!), and Montana Avenue is now full of fancy boutiques and other high end crap, not to mention all the snobby people who infiltrated the city. And the tourism has exploded (which could be a good thing maybe), but along with that the crowds of people and insane traffic make it nearly impossible to navigate and feel at 'home'. As you say, time marches on and probably alot of people feel that way about the town they grew up in on some level.

But veering back to the Beatles! I had a rivalry with some other kids at the Santa Monica Boys Club when I was about 7...but it wasn't a Beatles vs. Stones. It was the Beatles vs.the Jackson 5! While I always took the Beatles side by a landslide, I also liked the Jackson 5. The first vinyl I ever bought on my own was the Jackson 5 Greatest Hits and I still have it. I also watched the Beatles cartoons and the Jackson 5 cartoons, and even in that case the Beatles were the way better of the two!

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

Beatles Documentary ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Musical Revolution’ Scheduled for Summer Debut
By Jeff Giles May 10, 2017 11:40 AM

Sgt. Pepper’s Musical Revolution

PBS will join the 50th anniversary celebration surrounding the Beatles‘ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band next month by airing a BBC documentary offering a look behind the scenes of the album’s creation and cultural legacy.

Titled Sgt. Pepper’s Musical Revolution and scheduled for a June 3 debut, the hour-long special promises “material never before accessible outside of Abbey Road Studios, including recordings of studio chat between band members and isolated instrumental and vocal tracks” while revealing “the nuts and bolts of how the album came together” and offering “insights into the choices made by the Beatles and George Martin.”

Revolution will be hosted by Howard Goodall, a composer and veteran broadcaster whose career credits include a long list of programs for the network. As he’s said since filming the show, it was an honor to take the job — and an illuminating experience digging into the history surrounding the album.

“Whatever music you like to listen to, if it was written after 1 June 1967 then more likely than not it will have been influenced, one way or another, by Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” said Goodall. “The record’s sheer ambition in its conception, composition, arrangements and ground-breaking recording techniques sets it apart from others of the time. It’s a landmark in 20th century music, and I’ve hugely enjoyed exploring the story behind the music.”

“This will be Sgt. Pepper as you’ve never heard it before,” added producer Martin R. Smith. “We’ve been granted unprecedented access to the Beatles’ own archive, photographs and multi-track studio tapes so we’ll be able to give an insider’s view into the making of this landmark album and, through Howard Goodall’s insight, just why it was so revolutionary.”

Although Sgt. Pepper’s Musical Revolution is scheduled to debut at 8PM ET, check your local PBS listings for the airtime in your area.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

BBC to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles


BBC to celebrate the 50th anniversary

To mark the 50th anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles on 1 June 1967, the BBC will celebrate with programmes across radio and TV.

Considered by critics and music lovers to be one of the greatest records ever made and a major cultural moment not only for this country but globally, the album features classic songs including , A Day In The Life, With A Little Help From My Friends, She’s Leaving Home and Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.

The range of programmes will explore the stories around the recording, release and subsequent life of this seminal album.

In early June, BBC Two presents Sgt. Pepper’s Musical Revolution, a new documentary from Huge Films directed by Francis Hanly, which will present Sgt. Pepper as you have never heard it before. The film will include extracts from material never before accessible outside of Abbey Road, studio chats between the band, out-takes, isolated instrumental and vocal tracks as well as passages from alternative takes of these world-famous songs.

The programme will be written and presented by one of Britain’s leading composers and most admired music broadcasters, Howard Goodall. He will be getting to grips with the album’s musical nuts and bolts.

Howard Goodall says: “Whatever music you like to listen to, if it was written after 1 June 1967 then more likely than not it will have been influenced, one way or another, by Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The record’s sheer ambition in its conception, composition, arrangements and ground-breaking recording techniques sets it apart from others of the time. It’s a landmark in 20th century music, and I’ve hugely enjoyed exploring the story behind the music.”

Producer Martin R. Smith says: “This will be Sgt. Pepper as you’ve never heard it before. We’ve been granted unprecedented access to The Beatles’ own archive, photographs and multi-track studio tapes so we’ll be able to give an insider’s view into the making of this landmark album and, through Howard Goodall's insight, just why it was so revolutionary.”

Jan Younghusband, Head of Music TV Commissioning, says: "So delighted to have Howard Goodall back on BBC Two with his brilliant insights into this outstanding album and how it all came about, and to celebrate this special moment in our music history."

Using visually-striking set dressing, projections and props the film will be conjuring up the multi-coloured, phantasmagorical world of Sgt. Pepper. Following on chronologically from the 2016 documentary Eight Days A Week - The Touring Years, Sgt Pepper’s Musical Revolution will show what happened when the studio took over from the stage and the screams.

To help assess the phenomenon of Sgt. Pepper the programme will find out out why the album came to be made. It will rediscover The Beatles at a pivotal moment in their career - both as a band and as four individuals, each with his own musical tastes, and ambitions. Having given up touring, they poured their energies into the studio: Sgt. Pepper, as Paul McCartney remarked, would be the performance.

BBC Radio will also commemorate the anniversary across Radio 2, Radio 4 Extra and 6 Music.

BBC Radio 2 will present two documentary series - Sgt. Pepper Forever and Paul Merton On The Beatles.

Over two programmes, broadcast on 24 May and 31 May, Martin Freeman presents Sgt. Pepper Forever, which will reveal the revolutionary studio techniques used during the remarkable sessions dating from November 1966 to April 1967 and also examine the album’s huge impact on the history of music. They will feature ‘work-in-progress' versions of Sgt. Pepper tracks - and the songs on the double A-side single Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane, which were also recorded during the sessions - to illustrate the pioneering techniques used by The Beatles and George Martin.

This two-part documentary special, written and produced by Kevin Howlett of Howlett Media Productions, features interviews with Paul, George, Ringo and George Martin, and in a new interview composer Howard Goodall talks about, and illustrates on piano, the musical innovations of the album’s songs.

Having worked with the original four-track tapes to create a new stereo mix of Sgt. Pepper for its 50th anniversary, producer Giles Martin (son of Sir George Martin) describes the innovative recording techniques used at the time and how he approached making his new version.

There will also be interview material with the album cover’s co-designer Peter Blake, Beatles press officer Derek Taylor, Tony King (George Martin’s assistant in 1967), Mike Leander (the arranger of She’s Leaving Home), poet Adrian Mitchell, DJ John Peel and some of the producers and musicians who were influenced by the achievements of the album, including T Bone Burnett, Dave Grohl, Tom Petty, Jimmy Webb and Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys.

Martin Freeman says: “Sgt. Pepper is the most celebrated album by my favourite band. These documentaries will shed light on how The Beatles, with George Martin, created a piece of work that marked a watershed for what a long playing record could be. It’s my absolute pleasure to help tell you about it."

Paul Merton on The Beatles is a four-part series, produced by Radio 2’s Mark Hagen, which airs weekly from Monday 29 May.

The four programmes allow Paul to take a quirkily individual look at The Beatles’ career and legacy. In his world, The Beatles didn’t break up at the end of the 60s but instead went on creating albums and returning to the concert stage - and these four programmes all attempt to answer the 'what if' question.

In the opening show, remembering the covers that the band performed on their early albums, Paul looks at the way this trend continued in their individual solo careers, with John, Paul George and Ringo playing songs originally recorded by the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins and more.

The second and third programmes imagine the band’s return to live performance with two idealised concerts including songs like Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, What Goes On, Let It Be and Here Comes The Sun.

And in a special final show Paul Merton attempts to answer that most beloved Beatle fanatic question: what album would the band have made after Let It Be and Abbey Road if they hadn’t broken up?

Paul Merton says: “I’ve had great fun selecting tracks from John, Paul, George and Ringo’s solo careers to firstly create a magical live ‘Beatles’ concert, and secondly a new ‘Beatles’ double album. I am immensely looking forward to sharing my choices with the Radio 2 listeners.”

BBC Radio 4 Extra will delve deep in to the iconic album artwork to bring listeners a special day of programmes from 9am-10pm, inspired by the famous faces that are featured on the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover.

On Saturday 3 June, Samira Ahmed will introduce a diverse 13 hour mix of documentaries, dramas and comedies that all focus on this celebrated crowd, from Marlene Dietrich to Albert Einstein, Marlon Brando to Oscar Wilde. Programmes will include Alan Bennett reading Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland, Joan Bakewell interviewing Jonny Weissmuller for Start The Week in 1975, a drama about the classic comedy duo Laurel & Hardy starring John Sessions and Robbie Coltrane, and a look at the life of William Burroughs from the musician Laurie Anderson.

In between, brand new interviews will reveal more about the members of this Lonely Hearts Club Band, discover why these people were chosen for the cover, and explore what it was like to be there on the actual day this art work was created.

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Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

I'm looking forward to getting the 50th Anniversary deluxe set, especially with the '92 documentary. It'll be a perfect touch to have, something lift my spirits.

the critics have at it:

Why Some Critics Initially Hated the Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’
By Nick DeRiso May
[ultimateclassicrock.com]
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Critic Richard Goldstein infamously called the Beatles‘ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band “an undistinguished collection of work” – but he wasn’t alone in criticizing the project.

Writing for The New York Times in 1967, just weeks after the album’s arrival on June 1, Goldstein actually praised the Beatles’ closing epic “A Day in the Life,” calling it “one of the most important [John] Lennon–[Paul] McCartney compositions” and “a historic pop event.” The rest of Sgt. Pepper, however, left him cold.
“The sound is a pastiche of dissonance and lushness,” Goldstein said back then. “The mood is mellow, even nostalgic. But, like the cover, the overall effect is busy, hip and cluttered. Like an over-attended child, Sgt. Pepper is spoiled.”

As critical momentum definitively swung the other way, Goldstein’s broad side became one of the most notorious in all of rock criticism – an example, it has long seemed, of one guy getting it all wrong. But there were also others – including Nik Cohn. “It wasn’t fast, flash, sexual, loud, vulgar, monstrous or violent,” he wrote in a contemporary piece for Pop From the Beginning. “It made no myths.”
Even some critics who praised it, like Rolling Stone‘s Greil Marcus, were apt to add backhanded compliment along the way. “Sgt. Pepper, as the most brilliantly orchestrated manipulation of a cultural audience in pop history, was nothing less than a small pop explosion in and of itself. The music was not great art; the event, in its intensification of the ability to respond, was.”

Other outliers include Jim DeRogatis, pop music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times: “The Beatles [had] given us 39 minutes and 52 seconds of rather unremarkable, uninspired music,” he wrote in 2004, “with a central theme that’s conservative, reactionary and retrogressive.” The Guardian‘s Richard Smith says Sgt. Pepper is “an excruciating lesson in orientalism, why music hall died out, why making records on drugs isn’t always a good idea, and why you shouldn’t let Ringo [Starr] sing a number.” Keith Richards, both a contemporary and longtime Beatles rival, memorably called it a “mishmash of rubbish.”

Yet Goldstein’s review remains the most cited pan of an otherwise broadly celebrated album. Given an opportunity to recant in the pages of the The Village Voice a few weeks later in 1967, Goldstein held his ground.
“When the slicks and tricks of production on this album no longer seem unusual, and the compositions are stripped to their musical and lyrical essentials, Sgt. Pepper will be Beatles baroque – an elaboration without improvement,” he said. “In Revolver, I found a complexity that was staggering in its poignancy, its innovation and its empathy. I called it a complicated masterpiece. But in Sgt. Pepper, I sense a new distance, a sarcasm masqueraded as hip.”

Robert Christgau, in a December 1967 piece for Esquire, came to his fellow critic’s defense – and he too offered some reservations about the album.
“Goldstein was disappointed with Sgt. Pepper,” Christgau said. “After an initial moment of panic, I wasn’t. In fact, I was exalted by it, although a little of that has worn off. Which is just the point. Goldstein may have been wrong, but he wasn’t that wrong. Sgt. Pepper is not the world’s most perfect work of art. But that is what the Beatles’ fans have come to assume their idols must produce.”

Robert Hilburn, looking back at the album in the Los Angeles Times in 1987, stood by Goldstein’s 20-year-old review. “Sgt. Pepper was a monumental moment in pop culture, the zenith of a generation’s absorption with the realigning of the social order,” he wrote. “As such, it remains a landmark work that is an essential part of any rock library. On a strictly musical level, however, most of the songs in Sgt. Pepper are just what Goldstein said: ‘undistinguished.'”

Only later, as part of his 2015 memoir Another Little Piece of My Heart, did Goldstein reveal that the stereo used for that long-ago review had a busted left speaker. “That’s f—ed up,” Christgau shot back in a 2017 talk with the Washington Post. “You don’t review a record on a stereo that isn’t working, certainly not a record of that consequence.”
Goldstein refused, however, to blame the equipment for his negative reaction to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. “I didn’t get it because the record wasn’t really rock. It didn’t belong in any genre that I could think of, so I didn’t know how to receive it. I think I was quite a puritan when I reviewed that album. I’m much less puritanical about music now, and I think so are most music listeners,” Goldstein told Rolling Stone in 2015. “It felt chaotic and cluttered, too showy and all of that. There are people who think I was right, and maybe I was. I don’t know. There’s no right and wrong about a piece of music. All there is, is the consensus.”
The consensus is that Sgt. Pepper is the greatest rock album ever made. Still, Hilburn isn’t so sure in the decades that have passed.
“Where the album once seemed to define a culture, it now stands as a curio from a past age,” he said. “Equally important, the innovation – which inspired hundreds of other bands to think in more artful terms (a mixed blessing indeed considering the pretentiousness of the early-’70s progressive rock movement) – no longer camouflages the weakness in material.”

He feels the album is bookended with strong material, but is particularly critical of the seven tracks between Fixing a Hole” and “Good Morning Good Morning,” writing that they “easily represent the longest stretch of mediocre material that the Beatles committed to vinyl.”

Hilburn then drills deeper into one of the project’s most controversial legacies. “Sgt. Pepper, for all its spectacle, sounds too artificial and forced, where the best of the Beatles’ brilliant earlier work had seemed so spontaneous and alive,” he added. “Except in the highlights cited, there’s too little sense of real people and real feelings, too much preoccupation with technique – which may explain why so much of the progressive rock movement that was influenced by this album was itself so sterile.”____________
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Evidently Graham's a big fan!

"The Beatles were the best band in the world, there's absolutely no question about it"!

Graham Nash On The Beatles




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Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

I really love The Beatles 64-66 particularly. There's ten albums there...I'd have to pick and choose but there are great songs to choose from...
...not so much a pepper fan. I spent more time with Disraeli Gears by Cream that year, and also Jimi's debut album, a lot of soul music too but of the rock pop acts pepper, tho i admit being totally into the fashion statement and the circus concept and all the hype. i went for it but i got over it. I'm curious about the anniversay release from an audio standpoint, I like Paul's bass playing anytime...but Are You Experience, Disraeli Gears, Surrealistic Pillow by the Airplane, The Who Sell Out, the first Velvets LP, The Kinks had Waterloo Sunset, Something Else was good but not in the class of the other 67 releases, except for that single imo, and i love The Kinks especially, I'd be more likely to put them in on a higher level that year but can't considering the competition, (except for waterloo sunset, it transcends most anything it is so partiularly brilliant, haunting and beautiful),...Van Morrison and Lenoard Cohen had debut albums...as did Velvets mentioned...The Doors first album was mind blowing and more....a lot of stuff from '67 had much more mileage for me as years, then decades went by....i played Between The Buttons as much as Pepper, even in it's psychedlic heights that year...I was still playing Hums from the Lovin' Spoonful from '66 a lot...and would still today; i guess i would not listen all the way thru Pepper, except as a novelty or curiousity maybe...68 would make Pepper past tense and fast, the White album was revelatory in comparison, and that could be cut down to one amazing album if they did it 'right' which is to say, my way. haha...
...for all the pageantry and press, Sgt. Peppers hasn't really stayed with me over the years. it was quite the aural movie at the time, as disparate as it was, certainly tons of clever and all that. They'd do better on forward from there and they had done better in the past up until then. imo.

here's some footage I enjoy live '65, they'd soon stop all this and be a recording band only. The Stones set earlier in the show is one also one of my favorite live Stones shows...it leaves me speechless how magical that is...but it's the Beatles thread so hope this is fun for fans. haha check out the fans with the big Stones posters, making their stand in the midst of all this.
I don't usually dive into the US Vs THEM thing with these two bands but there is such a stark difference in these two groups, the Stones take the deeper darker, more soulful ride; it's really something the command they have at this show...the natural poise, it's soulful; no charming smiles or lookie look at the cameras as Paul cannot help but do...there is a grace and solemnity to The Stones way beyond their years at this point.
but here's The Beatles closing their sets ala Little Richard, or in that direction...it's no rip this joint, but that would be 7 years up the road, and The Beatles would be long gone...
i got such the kick out of those Stones fans with those posters standing proud and determined in the midst of the crowd hysteria as The Beatles close their show with this....now that's loyalty.

[youtu.be]



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 2017-05-15 08:07 by hopkins.

My favorite Beatles album has always been Revolver. And as of today, next would be the White album, then Abby Road, back to Rubber Soul, and then a grab bag toss up between Sgt Peppers., HELP, and the rest, but this could all change tomorrow (except for Revolver at #1 and White album at #2). I do have a soft spot for A Hard Days Night as I remember my dad singing the title track when he'd get home from work - possibly my very first memories. He bought my brother and I every single Beatles album as they were released, so to say the Beatles are a huge part of my life would not be an exaggeration.

*Also Yesterday and Today - even though a compilation, might be a contender for one of my favorites.
I have vivid memories of playing that constantly while building Universal monster models down in our basement c.'66.

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Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2017-05-15 08:43 by Hairball.

A simple question for the experts I hope.
Which Beatles album features the song "Twist And Shout"?
One of my favorite early Beatles songs, but can't find it in my arsenal.

Quote
Phil Good
A simple question for the experts I hope.
Which Beatles album features the song "Twist And Shout"?
One of my favorite early Beatles songs, but can't find it in my arsenal.

Please Please Me.

Twist and Shout was a great concert opener. Wonder if McCartney would consider doing it again. Come to think of it there wasn't any new surprises in his Tokyo setlist. Thought he might throw in a world premiere like he always does.

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Phil Good
Which Beatles album features the song "Twist And Shout"?(

And if you're looking for the U.S. Capitol album, it's The Early Beatles.

The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ at 50: Why It's Still Worth Celebrating
By Tim de Lisle On 5/14/17 at 12:00 PM

Sgt. Peppers at 50

The summer of love began on Thursday, June 1, 1967, a day that now lies closer to World War I than to our time. As London sweltered and swung, two LPs landed in the record stores—one each from the two acts now rated the greatest in the history of British pop music.

The first was the debut album by David Bowie, which was a resounding flop: “I didn’t know,” Bowie said later, “whether to be Max Miller or Elvis Presley.” (Miller was a British music hall comedian of the 1930s, known as the Cheeky Chappie.) If you’d asked for Bowie’s record that day in 1967, the shop assistant might have scratched her head. And you would have had to fight your way through the throng trying to buy the other new release. Bowie, later celebrated for his sense of theater, had chosen a terrible moment to make an entrance.

That other album was Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles, which had aroused feverish expectations and lived up to all of them. For 50 years now, it has been more than a record. It is the high-water mark of hippiedom and a landmark in the history of music. It was the first rock record to capture album of the year at the Grammys, a bastion long held by the forces of easy listening. Its engineer, Geoff Emerick—the sixth Beatle—won a Grammy too. Its producer, George Martin—the fifth—ended up with a knighthood, as did its driving force, Paul McCartney. (It’s not clear what the band’s drummer and other surviving member has to do to arise to Sir Ringo.)

Sgt. Pepper runs on superlatives. It’s the best-selling studio album by the best-selling band of all, with sales estimated at 32 million. In Britain it’s the best-selling studio album by anyone (trailing only two compilations, Queen’s Greatest Hits and Abba Gold) and has gone platinum 17 times over, which is eight more than the Beatles’ other studio albums have managed between them. It last re-entered the British album chart as recently as April 7, at No. 62. It is the last album standing, and the global best-seller, from pop’s greatest era—the deep-purple patch when Bob Dylan and Smokey Robinson, the Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones, Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin, Simon and Garfunkel and the Velvet Underground were all making records that were both immediate and indestructible.

As well as bests, Pepper collected firsts: the first so-called concept album, the first LP recorded on eight-track, the first cover to include the lyrics. It vies with The Velvet Underground & Nico, released three months earlier, for the title of the most influential album made by anybody. In 2012, Rolling Stone magazine, also born in 1967, declared it the winner: “Sgt. Pepper...is the most important rock & roll album ever made, an unsurpassed adventure in concept, sound, songwriting, cover art and studio technology by the greatest rock & roll group of all time.”

George Harrison once paid tribute to a band he loved by saying, “No Shadows, no Beatles.” When Sgt. Pepper was complete, one of the first people invited to Abbey Road Studios to hear it was Pete Townshend of the Who, who went on to write the world’s first rock opera. No Pepper, no Tommy. Among the visitors during the recording were some earnest young wannabes who called themselves Pink Floyd. No Pepper, no The Dark Side of the Moon. When Bowie finally made the grade in 1972, it was by slipping into an alter ego, as the Beatles had in 1967. No Pepper, no Ziggy Stardust. When Freddie Mercury was an art student in London in 1968 and 1969, his friend Chris Smith said they used to “write little bits of songs which we linked together, like ‘A Day in the Life.’” No Pepper, no “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

The golden jubilee will unfold as if the sergeant were a monarch. Liverpool, where all the Beatles grew up, is staging an arts festival, Sgt. Pepper at 50, featuring 13 new pieces (one for each track) in various art forms, from names as big as American choreographer Mark Morris and Turner Prize-winning British artist Jeremy Deller. In cinemas, there will be a feature-length documentary, It Was Fifty Years Ago Today, which, unlike last year’s Eight Days a Week, is unofficial, so it may be Hamlet without the soliloquies. At the Royal Albert Hall in London and on tour, the Bootleg Beatles, the world’s best-known Beatles tribute band, will play Sgt. Pepper in full, backed by the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. They may be Bootlegs, but they are used to playing the Pepper songs live, something the real Beatles never did.

The album itself will reappear on May 26 in several guises. The Beatles’ company, Apple Corps, calls them “a suite of lavishly presented Sgt. Pepper Anniversary Edition packages,” giving them all the allure of a time-share in Tampa. One package appears to consist entirely of statistics. It runs to six discs, rounds up 33 outtakes, contains a 144-page book and has a recommended price of £140 ($180). The most palatable version may be the plainest—a single-disc Sgt. Pepper, costing £10 in British supermarkets (record stores having largely died out). It’s a fresh mix by Sam Okell, a young engineer, and Giles Martin, George’s son and successor, as the pair of hired hands the surviving Beatles trust.

Emerick, still making records at 70, is no longer a member of the court, which allows him to speak his mind. “All that reissue stuff,” he says, from his home in Los Angeles’s Laurel Canyon, “it’s just the record company, and the Beatles, trying to make money out of it. As far as I’m concerned, you just don’t touch it—it’s like the Sistine Chapel. Well, why would you? It can only be for the money.”

The new Pepper may be motivated less by money than by something else Emerick mentions: McCartney’s perfectionism. “Paul was like the musician’s musician,” he says. “Whereas John would accept 95 percent and say, ‘That’ll do,’ Paul would want 110 percent. There’d be one error somewhere, he’d hear it, and we’d do it again until we got it right.”

The first stereo mix of Pepper was rushed, done in “maybe three days,” Emerick once said, while the mono mix took three weeks. The case for the new mix is that it tries to correct that—fixing a whole host of tiny infidelities. “It’s like archaeology,” Giles Martin says.

At Abbey Road today, it’s all about the Beatles. On the zebra crossing, a family of four tourists poses for the inevitable picture, led by a girl of about 10. In the front yard, the Beatles stand like a receiving line, life-size cutouts in their Pepper uniforms—a neat twist on pop artist Peter Blake’s much-imitated cover shoot, at which every famous face was a cutout, except the four of them.

Inside, black-and-white photos line the walls, showing the stars that have shone here: Amy Winehouse, Queen, Kate Bush—but mostly the Beatles. In the canteen, they’re on the wall again, in their suits and ties, having tea at two melamine tables pushed together—Ringo, George and Paul on the far side, with John at one end and George Martin at the other. The layout hints at “Leonardo: The Last Cuppa.”

In 1967, the press launch was a buffet given by the Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, at his house in Belgravia, the grandest part of London, with nobody suspecting that Epstein would be dead within three months. (Among the guests was an American photographer, Linda Eastman, who had just met McCartney at a nightclub called the Bag o’ Nails. She later married him.) This time, the media are bidden to Studio Two, Abbey Road, where the Beatles made nearly all their music. Recording studios tend to be luxury bunkers, but this one is big and airy, a white cube with mustard stripes. There are a hundred chairs, and still it’s standing room only.

The Beatles’ talents always included a gift for PR, and it’s a touch of class to present the revised Pepper in the room where the original was created. Giles Martin—modest, gentlemanly, youthful, yet six years older than his dad was in 1967—gives an interview, cueing up some curios on his laptop, among them “A Day in the Life” (take eight), when the ending was not an orchestral apocalypse but a group hum. And then it’s time for Sgt. Pepper to play.

Everyone in the room knows it like the back of their phone, yet it’s still an event. It booms out of two speakers built like bodyguards and strikes you afresh. The backing vocals, those Beatle harmonies, are a sorrowful joy. The drums are big and boxy (they “had to be better than Revolver,” Emerick says). The basslines are brighter. Sgt. Pepper is almost funky, and formidably snappy—the title track is over in two minutes, the whole thing in 38. It took four months to make—no time at all by today’s standards, but to Emerick it felt as if “we had the luxury of time.” The Sistine Chapel stands restored, not traduced.

There’s more invention in each track here than in the collected works of Adele. Sgt. Pepper is the sound of four men, or six, who refused to know their place (the mantra of midcentury Britain) or stick to their genre (the norm in American music). The title track is a rocker, heavy enough for Jimi Hendrix to open his show with it, but also a lyrical piece for French horn. “When I’m Sixty-Four” is a music hall ditty but also a lament for the cozy retirement Paul’s parents were denied when his mother, Mary, died in 1956. “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” is music hall but also Dada—the harmonium goes haywire because George Martin told Emerick to chop up the tape and reassemble it at random. The whole thing is “a drugs album,” as Sir Paul later informed a rather peeved Sir George, but it encompasses mending a fuse, making the bus in seconds flat and sitting on the sofa with a sister or two. For a pharmaceutical experiment, it’s phenomenally down-to-earth—but then the Beatles had been introduced to LSD by their dentist.

You can see Sgt. Pepper as “a mishmash of rubbish,” as Keith Richards called it in 2015; a splendid time is never guaranteed for all. Or you can enjoy it as pop with a richer palette—tambura on “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” harpsichord on “Fixing a Hole,” and finally, climatically, 41 classical instruments, crowning the desolate beauty of “A Day in the Life.” Or you can enjoy it as social commentary and admire its inclusiveness. Mr. Kite's boss, the paternalistic Pablo Fanque, was Britain's first black circus proprietor. Harrison’s “Within You Without You”—“a rather dreary song,” George Martin felt—is a heartfelt plunge into Indian ideas and instruments. “She’s Leaving Home” is a small miracle of empathy, both pinpointing the generation gap and bridging it.

Sgt. Pepper arose partly because the Beatles had just decided, bravely, to stop touring. By stepping off a treadmill, they freed their minds; by not having to worry about re-creating the songs onstage (which had already proved impossible with Revolver), they could be bolder in the studio. And yet the first thing they did, on starting anew as a studio band, was to find an alter ego as a bunch of touring performers. It’s not really a concept album: As John Lennon caustically noted, only the title track and “With a Little Help From My Friends” stick to the plan. But it’s a magnificent MacGuffin.


When Sgt. Pepper was 25, I interviewed George Harrison—gentle, mustachioed, still in his 40s. The album, I told him, was back in the top 10. “Well, that's good,” he said. “There's always room for something like that, something historical. I don't particularly think that Sgt. Pepper was the best Beatle record. Personally, I preferred Rubber Soul and Revolver and Abbey Road. But I liked the cover, and I did like a couple of the tracks.” How much had he had to do with it? “I can't remember, really. I can't remember doing much. I was there, though, sitting in Abbey Road Studios for most of my life.”

Interviewing Harrison was both a thrill and a disappointment, because half his answers ended up in the same place—the importance of meditation (he hadn’t changed his tune and has now proved ahead of his time). But he packed a lot into that answer, drily combining ruefulness, resentment and auto-iconoclasm.

The eternal question is whether Sgt. Pepper is the Beatles’ best album. The critics’ polls, which once said yes, now say no—they agree with Harrison, it’s Rubber Soul or Revolver. But it’s time to question the question. The Beatles’ supremacy, like Shakespeare’s, lies in the whole oeuvre. Among their LPs, Pepper is not the most moving (only two tearjerkers) or the most consistent (at least two space-fillers). But it’s the Beatles at their most popular, their most playful, their most liberated and their most album-ish. Where some of their gems can be hard to place, it’s never hard to remember that a song is on Sgt. Pepper. It has character and charm and, at a time when television was still largely in black and white, blazing color. It may not be more influential than The Velvet Underground & Nico, but it’s far more fun.

“It's about the music,” Giles Martin tells the invited audience back at Abbey Road, “and how it makes you feel.” Sgt. Pepper can make you feel your age. But it can also make you feel a teenager's isolation (“She's leaving home after living alone for so many years”) and her parents’ baffled pain. It can make you feel Lennon's angst as he sat in his gilded cage in Weybridge, still married to Cynthia, thinking of Yoko. It can make you feel two things at once: optimism and ennui in “Getting Better,” solitude and solidarity in “With a Little Help From My Friends.” That’s not a mishmash; that’s a masterpiece.

Some of the highest praise has come from beyond the walls of pop. Theater critic Kenneth Tynan called Sgt. Pepper “a decisive moment in Western civilization.” Joe Orton, the playwright, so loved “A Day in the Life” that it was played at his funeral, only two months after its release. Novelist Kurt Vonnegut used to say in speeches that the artist’s mission was “to make people appreciate being alive, at least a little bit.” He would then wait to be asked which artists had achieved that. And he would reply, “The Beatles did.”

To be fair, the Beatles’ decision-makers—currently McCartney, Starr and their bandmates’ widows, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison—have often taken the road less lucrative. There has been only one compilation, the 30 million-selling 1, since 1973. They resisted the blandishments of iTunes for a decade. And Sgt. Pepper itself ran on the altruistic notion that including an existing single on an album would be unfair to the fans, because they’d be paying for the same song twice—which meant leaving out “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane,” two of the band’s very greatest hits.

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Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......