Just stuff

I am pretty sure that nearly all people listening to Sgt Pepper these days were not born or were very young when it was released in 1967. I was 13, and had been following The Beatles for some time. I had (and still have) original albums and singles and I played them then and do now. Including the mono Sgt Pepper.

We heard stuff about it before it came out. No gaps between tracks. Lyrics on the cover. Cut outs and badges. Some kind of a concept (not really what we called it then, but whatever). It sounded odd, scary, different.

And it was something very special, and still is though that is often forgotten.

Yes, some tracks do run together, and it would have been great if they all had. You have to play the whole album, not cherry pick tracks. It should flow. It’s a concert. You don’t judge the individual tracks, you judge the whole.

The cover and stuff are fantastic, even by today’s standards. A good cover is a lost art these days. The inside picture always says to us, “we are proud of this record”, and so they should be.

Yes, there was a concept, at least at one point, partly because it is a concert by another band, partly because of the reflections of their early lives. You can see that Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever, recorded at a similar time, fit that, as do With A Little Help From My Friends, Lovely Rita, When I’m 64, Good Morning Good Morning, She’s Leaving Home and others.

Maybe the concept is just a whole piece of work, a piece of art, rather than a collection of disconnected songs.

It’s easy now to say poor production, some weak songs (we may disagree), cliches and gimmicks… And the lack of Harrison, though his one song is perhaps the most complex on the album.

Grab an original mono copy in good condition and listen to it on a good system, not any remixed digital or even stereo copy.

It will surprise you.

And no, sorry, mine is not for sale.

The original follow up to Sgt Pepper came in a plain white double cover. It had a glossy finish, numbered with the title embossed on the front.

Inside was a track listing and four separate mini pictures of the boys.

The two discs, in black paper sleeves, were reachable from the top slots. There were also the four semi-glossy pictures, this time in colour, and a poster, a scrap book kind of thing, with all the lyrics in tiny writing on the back. But who reads those?

It was a classy affair, and minimalist. It was also the first Beatles’ album to be on the Apple label, though it still had a regulation Parlophone number, PMC 7067 and 7068.

On the face of it, it seemed quite a difference from the complexities and artiness of Sgt Pepper. But the band had been to India, and had a wealth of material and were looking for a less complicated way of getting it out.

Many people have said it should have just been a single album. You can certainly go through and create a list of tracks to be removed: Wild Honey Pie, Julia, I Will, Long Long Long, Revolution 9, Don’t Pass Me By, Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?… and so on.

It’s also very easy to pick on individual tracks from the 93ish minutes and say they are weak or just plain bad, but this misses the point of the whole set.

Like Sgt Pepper, the gaps between the tracks were unclear. Some tracks do run together. This was never an album to be cherry picking tracks. It had to be heard as a whole. Without the ‘poorer’ tracks it would not be the same (well ok, obviously) but it’s the shear wealth and variety of material that makes this special.

There’s a symmetry between sides one and three that end with a thump sound.

Harrison gets one track per side, and we love Piggies, which many people really hate. The brass on Savoy Truffle is as crisp as you like, but While My Guitar Gently Weeps is Harrison at his very best. If you see a tribute band performing it live, it really takes off, especially if an orchestra is brought in.

As a whole, it’s such a disjointed set of original ideas. It keeps you entertained throughout. You don’t want to skip tracks, or you shouldn’t.

If you watch The Analogues performing the album live, it really works, especially Revolution 9 followed by Goodnight (1 hour 26 minutes in).

Rubber Soul marked the end of an era. Revolver heralded something quite new. The music became mature. Gone were the covers of other songs, gone were the imitations of others.

It was a momentous time for the band. Touring had become boring and was soon to be stopped, so music recorded in the studio did not have to be performable on stage.

It was a new start, the chance to produce some of the very best songs ever before moving on to high art.

Everything about it says ‘revolution’. We love the monochrome album cover, though wish the writing etc had been left off the front. The back cover just shows the lads together having a chat and being cool. No silly notes from Tony Barrow, no hype, the information and that’s it.

Harrison gets three tracks: Taxman, Love You To and I Want To Tell You. Lennon is starting to be experimental.

Included is one of their best singles, a double A side, Eleanor Rigby and Yellow Submarine, Ringo’s turn to sing.

Both John and Paul bring some great songs to the table: Here There and Everywhere, And Your Bird Can Sing, For No-one, Got To Get You Into My Life… There is not a duff track here.

It started a pattern that was fully realised on their next album, of course.