Walking home tonight I was really
craving pizza, but when I got to the pizza joint there were only two slices
left, and I didn’t fancy either of them. For some reason I’m finding this
little disappointment really annoying. Don’t worry though, gentle reader! When
I am finished this blog I will soldier on and heat up some soup.
Disc 808 is….Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Artist: Beatles
Year of Release: 1967
What’s up with the Cover? Let’s see – art forms I don’t
enjoy depicted on this cover. Collage? Check. A bunch of flowers planted to
spell a word? Check. Ridiculously bright over the top costumes? Ch…wait a
minute. I actually like ridiculously bright over the top costumes. I would wear
Paul’s powder blue drum major outfit any day.
How I Came To Know It: Sheila (aka Lovely Sheila, Meter
Maid) is the Beatles fan in the house. This is her album – I’m just along for
the ride.
How It Stacks Up: We have seven Beatles albums. Of those “Sgt.
Pepper” is one I like more than most. I’ll put it third, just behind “The White
Album.”
Ratings: 4 stars
While not as masterful as the equally psychedelic Rolling
Stones’ album “Their Satanic Majesties Request” (also released in 1967) “Sgt.
Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” is still OK, I suppose.
Just kidding, raging Beatlemaniacs! I’m taking the
piss, as the English like to say. Actually, “Sgt. Pepper” is an innovative and
interesting record that only occasionally annoys me.
With “Sgt. Pepper” the Beatles took a hard turn
toward weird from the comparatively straightforward “Revolver.” Fortunately,
they hadn’t tipped the weird bus over yet, as they would go on to do with the
overwrought and smug “Magical Mystery Tour.”
Instead, “Sgt. Pepper” is an experimental album that
takes a lot of risks and consistently makes those risks pay off.
It helps when you have the talents of John Lennon
and Paul McCartney to write pop melodies. These songs may sound timeless now,
but lend an ear to what they’re doing and you quickly realize how even clever they
are. Even a simple sounding song like “Getting
Better” is intricately composed, with its melody rising and falling like a
wave, while a second chorus holding a complimentary tune in the background. I
don’t even like “Getting Better” that
much, but I admire its song construction.
That’s often the case for me with the Beatles. They
are kind of a pop Led Zeppelin for me (Pop Zeppelin?); I appreciate their
brilliance but don’t often feel inspired or emotionally affected by their music
the way I want to be.
The most emotional song on “Sgt. Pepper” album is
probably “With A Little Help From My
Friends” and that one is almost wrecked by Ringo Starr’s vocals (almost – I
still love this song despite Ringo). The other one that hits me is “A Day in the Life” which has the
advantage of better vocals and a feeling of disconnect and loss amid modern
society that sticks despite the sampled cries of “Never-could-be-any-other-way!” that echo through your headphones
for the final 15 seconds of the track.
Production decisions on “Sgt. Pepper” are both brave
and crazy, including canned applause, circus sounds and what I think are kazoos.
The whole record feels like it is the soundtrack for the town fair, with the
mythical “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” being the wacky act keeping
the passing crowds entertained between rides on the Tilt-A-Whirl. I’d like it
all to annoy me (and at first blush, it did) but in the end the Beatles do it
so well I just had to admire them.
There are times when this album loses me in its own
cutesy self-awareness, like on the filler that is “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” or the schmaltzy “When I’m Sixty-Four” which seems to want
to simultaneously make fun of old couples and celebrate them and accomplishes
neither. However, these moments are few and far between and for the most part
the songs work.
In fact, “Lovely
Rita” is a silly little love song about a meter maid that has lines like “When it gets dark I tow your heart away”
that should be insufferably cute. Instead, when the sweet melody is sung by
Paul it feels strangely heartfelt, kazoo flourishes and all.
“Good Morning,
Good Morning” is packed with sounds of cocks crowing, birds chirping, and
near the end cats, horses and assorted other animals. The song is suffused with
a fun-loving energy despite being about little more than moving through your
day. I’m a morning person, and this song made me think about the energy I wake
up with and greet the day (on most days, anyway). Apologies to the non-morning
people who run into me.
The album starts with the title track which doesn’t
really do it for me, but the reprise version near the end is brilliant. The
drum-beat and production had me thinking of early rap tracks, and it wouldn’t
surprise me if it has been sampled often through the years. If not, it should be.
“Sgt. Pepper” has a lot of the elements of the
Beatles that can annoy me on a bad day, but there is no denying it’s got magic
in it – enough to pull it up into a solid four stars, musical tomfoolery and
all.
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