Sgt Pepper 50th Anniversary (1st June)

[SpookyFrank]

Getting Better is my favourite song on it. It sounds musically simple but it's not. The ringing guitar chords and chimes create a drone effect without actually droning, and McCartney's bassline wanders between on- and off-beat seemingly at random in a way basslines really aren't supposed to.

The best Beatles songs don't have single vocal or instrumental part that defines the whole thing. There were better singers and musicians about at the time, what was unique about the Beatles was how they put things together.

 

[isvicthere?]

It was 50 years ago today!

Actually, today.

Eta: or, more specifically, "It was seventy years ago today/Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play."

 

[Crispy]

The beatles wrote some amazing songs but by christ I wish they had just a *slightly* more inventive drummer. I used to dread their tunes in Rock Band if I was on the drums cos I knew I'd be playing a non-stop backbeat for 3 minutes.

 

[gentlegreen]

((((Ringo))))

 

[Chilli.s]

A great record, undeniably.

 

[Sirena]

When I was first getting into music in the 60s, there would have been no question of me listening to music from the previous decade (older sister stuff), much less from the 40s (mum and dad stuff) and no way from pre-First World War, because that was grandma stuff.

Sergeant Pepper was phenomenally important in its time. Everyone (even the ultra-cool) was interested in it.

It's 50 years later! I did all that 50 years ago......

 

[isvicthere?]

When I was first getting into music in the 60s, there would have been no question of me listening to music from the previous decade (older sister stuff), much less from the 40s (mum and dad stuff) and no way from pre-First World War, because that was grandma stuff.

Sergeant Pepper was phenomenally important in its time. Everyone (even the ultra-cool) was interested in it.

It's 50 years later! I did all that 50 years ago......

In 2013, when the fiftieth anniversary of the Stones' formation was being commemorated, it occurred to me that, if you go back 50 years from 1963, it takes you to before WW1. Yikes!

 

[Lurdan]

I was listening to an evaluation copy of the 'new' 50th anniversary edition and suddenly realised (no idea why it hadn't occurred to me before) that "When I'm 64" had taken on a new personal significance. Also interesting to note the extent to which the suburban dream the song mocks has become, with only relatively minor cosmetic retooling, the default aspiration.

Courtesy of a post at John Coulthart's blog I think this is the 'making of' documentary referred to upthread.

 

[danny la rouge]

When I was first getting into music in the 60s, there would have been no question of me listening to music from the previous decade (older sister stuff), much less from the 40s (mum and dad stuff) and no way from pre-First World War, because that was grandma stuff.

Sergeant Pepper was phenomenally important in its time. Everyone (even the ultra-cool) was interested in it.

It's 50 years later! I did all that 50 years ago......

Yeah, but we only read about it in history books. This is our first time doing it. ( ).

 

[Magnus McGinty]

You really need to listen to it on a big dose of mushrooms (or similar) to get it.

It's not a brill album when listened to straight.

 

[hot air baboon]

It's odd to think that Sgt Pepper came out only five years after their debut single, it was their eighth album (ish, was different back then I think) and in terms of popularity they were something like ((One Direction * Justin Beiber) ^ Adele). Different times, maaaan

I car-shared for a bit with one of the legal secretaries at work, she retired a couple of years back & turned out she was an old Beatles "groupie" ( in the platonic sense ) - turns out she used to live in town and would hang around outside Jane Asher's flat in a little gang to get esp. Paul's autograph - they all knew her by sight & chatted ( "not you again - not another autograph" etc ) & she saw them play 5 times - fun to hear about it first hand

 

[D'wards]

I just found a cover album of Sgt Pepper's by The Flaming Lips

Awful

 

[danny la rouge]

I just found a cover album of Sgt Pepper's by The Flaming Lips

Awful

Can't be as bad as the Bee Gees with Peter Frampton!

 

[danny la rouge]

I car-shared for a bit with one of the legal secretaries at work, she retired a couple of years back & turned out she was an old Beatles "groupie" ( in the platonic sense ) - turns out she used to live in town and would hang around outside Jane Asher's flat in a little gang to get esp. Paul's autograph - they all knew her by sight & chatted ( "not you again - not another autograph" etc ) & she saw them play 5 times - fun to hear about it first hand

It's oral history, isn't it? It was a social phenomenon, and if we get the chance to hear it first hand we should.

When I was a young I knew people who fought in WWI and II as well as the Spanish Civil War. Now, of course, I wish I'd gone to them with a tape recorder and asked them about it, but I didn't. OK, being a Beatlemanic isn't like being at war, but it was a part of social history in a time when things were different. Unless we only want authorised versions of what went on when things weren't like they are now, we should speak to people who were there.

Soppy speech over.

 

[bi0boy]

Yes they've vandalised the crossing so it is no longer compliant with the relevant specifications, rendering it useless. Judging by the live feeds I've seen of the thing, twats are trying to get run over there on a pretty much continuous basis so hopefully no one dies today.

 

[Crispy]

I just found a cover album of Sgt Pepper's by The Flaming Lips

Awful

Is it as bad or worse than the Easy All Stars reggae version?

Brace yourself:

 

[Fozzie Bear]

There was a various artists covers comp called "Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father" done by the NME in the 80s too. It had Wet Wet Wet on it.

But also quite a good cover of one of the sitary ones by Sonic Youth.
Various - Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father

 

[Fozzie Bear]

It was one of the few vaguely weird LPs my parents owned on cassette (along with Tubular Bells) so I did listen to it a lot as youth whilst doing the washing up.

The Beatles are just victims of being completely overplayed everywhere, I think, a bit like all the Motown hits. And Bob Marley.

 

[danny la rouge]

There was a various artists covers comp called "Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father" done by the NME in the 80s too. It had Wet Wet Wet on it.

But also quite a good cover of one of the sitary ones by Sonic Youth.
Various - Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father

I remember that: my sister had it.

 

[Dr. Furface]

You really need to listen to it on a big dose of mushrooms (or similar) to get it.

It's not a brill album when listened to straight.

That reminds me of many years ago when I was on acid once and some dude I was with at the time said something similar about Pink Floyd's Ummagumma, and before I could escape he went and put it on. I thought it was shit when I was straight, but it sucked a thousand times worse when I was tripping!

 

[killer b]

Danny, I dunno if you're a fan of django bates (I am), but he's done a cover album of Sgt peppers that they played some tracks from this afternoon on radio 3.

I couldn't get past my dislike of the title track or me kite to say how good they Were, but the version of within you without you they played was great...

 

[Idris2002]

Getting Better is my favourite song on it. It sounds musically simple but it's not. The ringing guitar chords and chimes create a drone effect without actually droning, and McCartney's bassline wanders between on- and off-beat seemingly at random in a way basslines really aren't supposed to.

The best Beatles songs don't have single vocal or instrumental part that defines the whole thing. There were better singers and musicians about at the time, what was unique about the Beatles was how they put things together.

Exactly. I think that as a songwriter, Ray Davies was better than either L. or Mc., but when those two got together with S, H, and GM, there was no one to touch them.

 

[Idris2002]

I'm listening to it again, thanks to this thread. There's just so much in it!
I have more to say, but it'll have to wait until I get to a proper keyboard.

 

[danny la rouge]

Danny, I dunno if you're a fan of django bates (I am), but he's done a cover album of Sgt peppers that they played some tracks from this afternoon on radio 3.

I couldn't get past my dislike of the title track or me kite to say how good they Were, but the version of within you without you they played was great...

Don't know a lot about him. I've heard Loose Tubes and didn't take to what they were doing. I'll see if I can find it on listen again.

 

[rutabowa]

I don't care what anyone says, I love the sgt pepper album... I know that is a controversial opinion

 

[gentlegreen]

I hadn't realised how many awful French "versions" there were of Beatles songs - they keep playing bits on France Info - often completely changing the meaning of the song.

 

[hash tag]

Despite the website saying it's available on 9th June, I watched this last night. As good as it was, I can't help thinking
that Howard Goodall over analyised things Sgt Pepper's Musical Revolution with Howard Goodall

 

[danny la rouge]

Despite the website saying it's available on 9th June, I watched this last night. As good as it was, I can't help thinking
that Howard Goodall over analyised things Sgt Pepper's Musical Revolution with Howard Goodall

That's interesting, because I thought he under-analysed it. For example, he told us about modal melodies but didn't mention the Beatles had been doing that for years. (Norwegian Wood, for example, goes back and forth between two different "folk modes", as Goodall calls them).

Given that the main claim was that the album was groundbreaking, I wanted to hear more contrasting it with the band's earlier work; showing how they had developed. How had they progressed?

And where he did attempt to show progression, I think he missed the point: Little Richard did simplify the 50s style triplets in rock and roll songs, but Goodall's suggestion that Penny Lane is a further simplification of that is a bit of a stretch: I don't think McCartney was writing a rock and roll song here. The piano part sounds more like the sort of thing a bass player might do to harmonise a chord progression if he was used to playing walking bass. Which McCartney was.

Far more interesting was the was McCartney's bass destabilised the harmonic centres of Lennon's Lucy in the Sky. I'd like to have heard more of that sort of analysis. Because that was about synthesis: the result of one musician's work on the other's composition.

 

[Idris2002]

It's not just that the Beatles were overplayed, it was that they genuinely did define an era, in a way that not even Elvis did for his time. That summer of 1967 was the period when the post-war boom reached its apogee, and after that it was downhill all the way. But for a brief period, it did seem like that things were going to be OK, and the Beatles seemed to provide a soundtrack to that.

I was thinking about my Mum and the Beatles, actually. The last time she came to see me here in the former GDR, I took her to our local Beatles' museum. I know, right? This place had no historical connection with the Fab Four (though there was an official release of one Beatles' album by the GDR record label). She was initially derisive - she claims she only ever listened to classical music - but I reminded her of her story of how she had all the Beatles' records, until she lent them to a friend who left them on top of a radiator. . . and her only exposure to the 60s drug culture was the time in a Worthing A&E when she and the nurses had to tie down a young lad who was having a bad LSD trip (he kept shouting "I'm a grammar school boy, I'm a grammar school boy", until the lysergic acid wore off - the English class system at its finest).

But by the time we'd worked our way through the three floors of memorabilia, she had to concede there was something worth being nostalgic about in this case.

 

[danny la rouge]

It's not just that the Beatles were overplayed

I do think that's part of our problem in seeing their music the way it was seen at the time, though.

Take Yesterday, for example. To us now, it's too familiar. It just sounds like a run-of-the-mill ballad. More of a ditty, really, and a bit bland. But what the Beatles were good at was giving their audience something that was understandable enough that it would be given a hearing, but with unexpected elements so that it sounded in some way surprising, catching the listener off guard.

It's difficult for us to hear the unusual in it now, but, actually, Yesterday, despite the melodic, unthreatening tune, would have sounded a bit odd at the time. Take just the verse-length. The verse melody resolves after 7 bars, instead of one of the more usual even divisions (8, 12, 16, 32). It would have caught the listener off-guard. People would have instinctively been waiting for another bar, but none arrived. This is the kind of thing that would have made them memorable and exciting at the time. (The song also has some strange asymmetric phrasing, and though it starts in a major key, veers off into a minor feel very quickly).

It's not that McCartney was "untutored" and didn't know the rules for a ballad. He knew them perfectly well: he'd followed them enough. He knew you "didn't" write 7-bar verses. But he also knew when the rules could be broken to good effect.

Now, of course, this is nothing new. Once the Beatles established you could break those rule, people did it for the next 50 years. A 7-bar verse doesn't strike us as that odd now. But it was then.