10 Things That Made ‘Sgt. Pepper’ Possible
History can be divided as pre-Pepper and post Pepper.
Sgt. Pepper occupies a unique space in The Beatles’ catalogue and people’s collective memory. No matter your musical inclinations, there’s no denying the album’s towering influence both on music and the culture at large. History can be divided as pre-Pepper and post-Pepper.
For those who weren’t there to experience it first-hand during its release, Sgt. Pepper is reduced to the familiar. What was once considered wildy experimental and profoundly new is categorized as “classic rock.” And yet, Sgt. Pepper is what made rock a “respectable” form of art and its repercussions can be heard in the decades that followed. Sgt. Pepper could have only been birthed in 1967, and to understand why, one must recognize the important symbiotic relationship between culture and music. As we celebrate the anniversary of its release, here are just a few of the circumstances that led to The Beatles’ most lauded achievement.
1: The 60s Counterculture
The spirit of the counterculture was already afoot long before Sgt. Pepper came into the picture. Dylan had delivered his epic double-album Blonde On Blonde, while Brian Wilson was cooking up Pet Sounds with The Beach Boys.
Seemingly every artist was creatively firing on all engines and the tremendous pace of releases was remarkable in just the span of a year. Both stateside and in the UK, there seemed to be an open cultural exchange, as artists would inspire one another and, in turn, create something entirely new. As John Lennon pointed out, The Beatles didn’t create the counterculture, but they were certainly its most visible symbol. “That bit about we changed everybody’s hairstyles? But something influenced us… whatever’s in the air,” said Lennon. “We were part of whatever the 60s was.
It was happening itself. We were the ones chosen to represent what was going on in the street.” While Sgt. Pepper may not have captured the anti-establishment nature of 60s culture, it certainly defined its openness, both in terms of music, visual art, and lyrical imagery. From the vaudevillian “Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!” to the spoken word on “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and a full orchestra on “A Day In The Life,” they blurred the line between avant-garde art and pop music.
2. California Psychedelic Band Names
Enamored by what was happening in the West Coast scene, specifically San Francisco, Paul McCartney had noticed that the latest wave of band names were getting progressively longer and more imaginative. No longer was it The Beatles, The Byrds, or The Kinks, it was suddenly Lothar And The Hand People, Big Brother And The Holding Company, or Lennon’s suggestion, “Fred And His Incredible Shrinking Grateful Airplanes.” As the band bandied about parody aliases, it also gave birth to the idea of leaving the “The Beatles” behind and carving out a new identity for themselves.
3: Adoption Of Alter Egos
By this point, the Beatles had reached stratospheric levels of popularity and Beatlemania had overshadowed the band’s actual music. The band wanted to freedom to grow beyond their mop-topped image, and this led to an exploration of alter egos. As McCartney later remembered, “I thought it would be nice to lose our identities, to submerge ourselves in the persona of a fake group,” and thus Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was born. This idea of fluid identity is one that strongly resonated with the youth of the counterculture. No longer did their background have to determine their whole future, one could simply reinvent themselves.
4: The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds
Both George Martin and Paul McCartney have gone on record singing the praises The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and what an influential force it was for Sgt. Pepper. Martin said if Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys had not created their classic album, “Sgt. Pepper never would have happened,” while McCartney said, “The music invention on that album was, like, ‘Wow!’ That was the big thing for me. I just thought, Oh dear me, this is the album of all time. What the hell are we going to do?” While Pet Sounds was in permanent rotation during the recording sessions, it also wouldn’t have ever existed without Brian Wilson being inspired by The Beatles’ Rubber Soul. And so the cycle continued.
5: Frank Zappa And The Mothers of Invention’s Freak Out!
If Brian Wilson helped steer the pop side of things, Frank Zappa would push The Beatles to become more experimental. Frank Zappa’s And The Mothers of Invention’s 1966 debut album, Freak Out!, was also the first of its kind, incorporating neoclassical orchestration with improvisational jazz and countercultural politics, and aiming to turn the LP format into a conceptual statement. Both Pet Sounds and Freak Out! had proven that rock could be a studio producer’s medium as well as performance art. If Freak Out! was the manifesto for the freak culture in LA, then Sgt. Pepper would be the highbrow endorsement of San Francisco’s hippie subculture.
6: Stop Being A Touring Band
Before they decided to adopt an alter ego, The Beatles decided they were done with touring altogether. Forget inconvenience, touring had become physically dangerous for the band, both due to zealous fans and some not-so favorable audiences who didn’t take kindly to John Lennon’s seemingly blasphemous comments on Christianity. Their performance at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, on August 29, 1966, would be the last concert they would ever play, bar a famous Apple rooftop performance in 1969.
Each member escaped in his own way, and when they reconvened in November 1966, they decided to make the shift from working band to a more conceptual “idea.” If their songs didn’t require vocal and instrumental parts to be democratically divvied up among them, then the group were free to play to each other’s strengths and tinker in the studio until they could achieve something close to perfection. Ringo summed up the band’s thinking in the Anthology book, saying, “After deciding not to tour I don’t think we cared a damn. We’d been having more fun in the studio, as you can hear from Revolver and Rubber Soul. Instead of being pulled out of the studio to go on the road, we could now spend time there and relax.”
7: Studio Experimentation And George Martin
During their sessions at Abbey Road, The Beatles were closing the Beatlemania chapter of their career and beginning a new chapter: the “studio years.” For years, most of rock and pop music was written in a way that it could be performed live. As for the recording process, the rule of thumb was to recreate and capture a “live performance” on record as well. But Martin and the boys wanted to flip that conceit on its head. As Martin said, “We were putting something down on tape that could only be done on tape.” He was more than just a producer; he was the architect of The Beatles’ sound and exposed the group to the more avant-garde type recordings and ideas that expanded their field of vision.
8: Technical Limitations
It’s remarkable how much Martin and the band were able to accomplish using the studio technology of the times – that’s partly what makes Sgt. Pepper so impressive. Like all great ideas, with adversity comes ingenuity. While multi-track recording was industry standard by 1967, eight-track tape recorders were more commonplace in the US and were not widely available in the UK until late 1967. Much of the album’s psychedelic sound effects were created through inventive splicing and attaching microphones to nearly every object in the room, as well as repurposing headphones as microphones and other tricks of ingenuity.
9: India
The Beatles, like the rest of the Western world, had become infatuated with Indian musical traditions, spirituality, and culture. Its influence was felt since “Norwegian Wood,” on Rubber Soul, and especially on Revolver, with George Harrison’s “Love You To.” Harrison’s interest in Indian music would blossom into a lifelong passion. Before the Sgt. Pepper sessions began, Harrison flew to Bombay to take sitar lessons from Ravi Shankar, culminating in his Eastern-tinged, “Within You Without You” and the timbral backgrounds of “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.”
10: Ignored Industry Trends
By 1966, The Beatles had already amassed an enormous string of hits, with Revolver selling 1,187,869 copies by December 31, 1966, in the US alone. Their success had put them in the unique position to experiment with new approaches to songwriting and instrumentation. With each record, they had expanded what the acceptable definition of “rock music” was, and their ability to reach fans across all genres allowed them to play with different styles and instruments while retaining mainstream appeal. Without having to answer to the passing whims of popular music, The Beatles could eschew making dance music or radio-friendly singles. Instead, they raised rock to a higher standard, paving the way for the soon-to-emerge progressive rock and art-rock of the future.