Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released 40 years ago today spurring a change in pop music that still influence musicians today. Using brand new technology in their Abbey Road studio, The Beatles created "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" during a year-long hiatus in their constant touring schedule after the height of Beatlemania. Using technology that was specifically designed for the musicians, such as ADT (automatic double taping which increases the sound of the lead singer's vocals) and studio electronic alteratation, such as echo, mixing, reverb and reverse tape effects.
The album was the first rock album to win a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1968. In 2003, 35 years later, the album was ranked number 1 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The Cover was designed by pop artist Peter Blake and has become an immortal identifiable image unto itself. The cover shows The Beatles, as the Sgt. Pepper band, surrounded by a large group of their heroes, rendered as lifesized cut-out figures. Also included were wax-work figures of the Beatles as they appeared in the early '60s, borrowed from Madame Tussauds. The wax figures appear to be looking down on the word "Beatles" spelled out in flowers as if it were a grave.
The infamous cover features some of the band's favorite people: Marlene Dietrich, Bob Dylan, Sigmund Freud, Edgar Allan Poe, Karl Marx, Oscar Wilde, Marlon Brando, Oliver Hardy, Lenny Bruce, original Beatles bass player, the late Stuart Sutcliffe, Hitler is hidden behind The Beatles... and more. Click here to read about all about the mythology of the people & images on the cover.
Listen to the record today; forty years later and still fresh.
1 comment:
Good post.
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