It Was 50 Years Ago Today!

It Was 50 Years Ago Today!

By: Ghost Writer

Rock N Roll Animal

After the initial razor blade guitar lines (inspired by the legendary barbed wire guitar played by Frank Zappa on his all-time classic Freak Out!, a big influence on McCartney) and the grungy vibe on the title track I was completely into it, I guess the same happened to Jimi Hendrix who immediately learned play it and debuted it live a few days after Sgt. Pepper´s arrived to the stores stores of London in 1967 (it would arrive to America in June), The Beatles, some of them in the audience were audience truly impressed, Hendrix, a radical innovator understood quickly the big importance of such record, and it was 50 years today!, the idea of creating a fictional band in order to free the band from its conventions would prove to be a successful gimmick not only for the Beatles but for a lot of bands after that and using the long silly names commonly acquired by bands in the psychedelic San Francisco.  

The thing about Sgt. Pepper´s was its expanding power, it was the condensation of too many things the Beatles started trying on records like Rubber Soul and Revolver, lyrically and musically, their ambition grew beyond the realm of rock as they certainly reflected on every track and on every lyric on the record, touches of soul music and McCartney 's thunderous bass playing of With a Little Help from my Friends, the immaculate psychedelia of Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds with Lennon' reference to Pet Sounds on the lyric "cellophane flowers of yellow and green " showed that Peppers was part of the ruthless transatlantic race between The Beatles and the Beach Boys for Avant Garde pop supremacy, both wanted to make astonish records in order to transcend popular music, the Beatles set the bar high with Revolver, but Beach Boys' leader Brian Wilson answered with Pet Sounds (a mix of Phil Spector experiments with the Wall of Sound and the Beatles´ own Rubber Soul (inspired by Bob Dylan mature style of personal) songwriting, and was about to throw the next punch called SMILE but his dream was shattered by Pepper´s, Wilson felt heartbroken, defeated and surpassed so he stopped working on SMILE for four decades, the resound Getting Better is a definite star of the art track thanks to its vibrating production capturing sounds previously unheard in rock music, drug inspired perhaps, with Lennon razor sharp sarcasm on perfect shape, McCartney was freed to deliver his vaudeville instincts on tracks like Fixing a Hole and When I'm Sixty Four, with the band experimenting with strings and multiple tracking on dreamy tracks like She's Leaving Home, it was obvious that also the Beatles were going too far thematically with this conceptual album and even playing better on tracks like this with the rules set before by Wilson, incorporating even circus atmosphere that would prove influential to bands from Alice Cooper to the Flaming Lips, and let's not forget Harrison stellar use of a sitar along more Hindu instrumentation on the great Within You Without You that would be imitated on albums like Superunknown by Soundgarden.

Lovely Rita is another wonderful track with McCartney at the top of the pop music game and almost becoming a prophet of his own future career, and then you have the powerfully horn section of Good Morning, Good Morning, as some say both inspired by the marching sound of free jazz legend Albert Ayler and the enormous Wall of Sound of producer Phil Spector, but perhaps Sgt. Pepper´s biggest achievement is A Day in Life, a various part suite-like recording that a lot of bands were using at the times believing it to be the future of pop music, with Lennon and McCartney doing a wonderful work and the music definitely exuding complexity (latter taken even farther by prog rock) and a musical vision rarely seen in those days, also exceptionally are the classical crescendos played by an orchestra that although were familiar to the nature of Pet Sound, sometimes sounded more violent and experimental, ending with the final piano enormous note that gave a mixed meaning, either a big joke on the listener or the grand finale of a classic master piece.

The monumental achievement of Sgt. Pepper´s is undeniable, is an impressive piece of music, perhaps not as groundbreaking as Rubber Soul or Revolver, or as Freak Out! Or Pet Sounds, or as cohesive as Abbey Road latter on would be, but anyway is a shattering recording that was both experimental and commercial, exuding the charisma only the Beatles could create to carry on with such a risky album, that bands like the Beach Boys or Frank Zappa couldn’t throw successfully at the mainstream, a revolution made music although not exactly an original one, perhaps it helps the young reader to remember how Nevermind by Nirvana was such an enormous success despite the totally forgotten and ignored bands that influenced Nirvana (Sonic Youth, The Meat Puppets, Black Flag, Bad Brains, R.E.M., Mudhoney, Pixies, Husker Du, The Repalcements) on the way to creating that album.