Bob Dylan’s instant reaction to the recently completed album Paul McCartney brought by his London hotel room for a quick listen in the spring of 1967 may not sound like the most thoughtful analysis ever offered, but it still to hit the nail on the head. “Oh I get it,” Dylan said to Paul on hearing Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band for the first time, “you don’t want to be cute anymore.” In time, the Beatles’ eighth studio album would come to be regarded by many as the greatest in the history of rock and roll, and oceans of ink would be spilt in praising and analyzing its revolutionary qualities. But what Bob Dylan picked up on immediately was its meaning to the Beatles themselves, who turned a critical corner in their career with the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on this day in 1967.
Writing in The Times of London in 1967, the critic Kenneth Tynan called the release of Sgt. Pepper “a decisive moment in the history of Western civilization,” but 30 years later, Paul McCartney called it a decisive moment of a more personal nature. “We were not boys, we were men,” is how he summed up the Beatles’ mindset as they gave up live performance and set about defining themselves purely as a studio band. “All that boy [stuff], all that screaming, we didn’t want any more,” McCartney said. “There was now more to it.” With Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Beatles announced their intention to be seen “as artists rather than just performers.”
Sgt. Pepper is often cited as the first “concept album,” and as the inspiration for other great pop stars of the 60s, from the Stones and the Beach Boys to Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, to reach for new heights of creativity. For the Beatles themselves, 1967 marked not just a new creative peak, but also the beginning of a three-year period in which the group recorded and released an astonishing five original studio albums, including two—1968’s The Beatles (a.k.a. “The White Album”) and 1969’s Abbey Road—that occupy the 10th and 14th spots, respectively, on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the Greatest Albums of All Time. Also in the top 15 on that list are Rubber Soul (1965) at #5, Revolver (1966) at #3 and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band at #1.
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Roky Erickson Of The 13th Floor Elevators Dies At 71
Roky Erickson, the psychedelic lodestar who helmed The 13th Floor Elevators and wrote one of garage rock’s original anthems, “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” died on Friday at the age of 71.
https://www.npr.org/2019/05/31/728821278/roky-erickson-of-the-13th-floor-elevators-dies-at-71
It was all downhill after they got rid of Pete Best.
She makes very good points in her video. The Beatles weren’t “drum” people. They wanted a drummer to keep the beat for them and that was pretty much it. They said in an interview that they didn’t like long drum solos. But Ringo did break out with some really good drumming, especially in later albums.
The day the Beatles introduced to you…the one and only Billy Shears. Quite the gifted musician in his own right. A bit campy perhaps in his song writing.
Watch this video of “A Day In The Life”, from the Sgt. Pepper’s era, the only happy face is Billy Shears.
George, Ringo, and John look as if they knew something that might kill them.
It still amazes me that the Beatles in America came and went in the space of just 6 years.
This verse from the song contains the roots of the real change that Bob Dylan spoke of saying to ‘Paul’ (or Faul as George Harrison referred to him from thence on) “Oh I get it you don’t want to be cute anymore.’ Actually it ran much deeper than that. From this album forth the Beatles were trying to tell us something and the change in the tone and style of their music was a major part of the message less the more obvious clues that they seeded their lyrics and their album covers with.
“I don’t really want to stop the show
But I thought that you might like to know
That the singer’s going to sing a song
And he wants you all to sing along
So let me introduce to you
The one and only Billy Shears
And Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, yeah”
Ahhh, there couldn’t be a bigger more obvious clue.
George was always dropping hints. He called Paul “Beatle Bill” in a video I watched.