The Beatles - Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, review

Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band marks the peak of the Beatles’ career (Released June 1, 1967) Rating: * * * * *

By Neil McCormick
Published: 1:54PM BST 07 Sep 2009

Sgt Pepper: 'I had to play it to get my circulation going' - Rose Tremain

The contemporary view was that this was not just the peak of the Beatles’ career but the high point of recorded music to that date. Ringo remembered it less fondly as the album on which he learned to play chess.

It is where the Beatles really exploit the studio as the instrument, forgoing live playing for sonic adventure. It is impossible to overstate its impact: from a contemporary Sixties perspective it was utterly mind-blowing and original. Looking back from a point when its sonic innovations have been integrated into the mainstream, it remains a wonky, colourful and wildly improbable pop classic, although a little slighter and less cohesive than it may have seemed at the time.

Some songs, such as Lovely Rita, When I’m 64, Good Morning, Good Morning, Being For the Benefit of Mr Kite and Harrison’s dour, droning Within You Without You, seem undernourished excuses on which to hang florid ideas. But the title track is an improbable scorcher, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds a glittering gem, Fixing a Hole and She’s Leaving Home lovely chamber pieces, and the concluding A Day in the Life one of the strangest and most beautiful recordings ever, an inner-space odyssey juxtaposing Lennon’s ethereal surrealism with McCartney’s prosaic energy and wrapping it all up in an apocalyptic orchestral climax.

Album tracklist

01. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

02. With A Little Help From My Friends

03. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds

04. Getting Better

05. Fixing A Hole

06. She's Leaving Home

07. Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!

08. Within You, Without You

09. When I'm Sixty-Four

10. Lovely Rita

11. Good Morning Good Morning

12. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)

13. A Day In The Life

Source