It was forty years ago today...

Actually, it was forty years ago yesterday when the Beatles' classic album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was released. I was 10 years old at the time and, though I had gotten caught up in the first wave of Beatlemania at the tender age of 7, by 1967 my musical tastes were more along the lines of movie soundtracks like "Bye Bye Birdie" and "The Music Man," or cast albums for shows like "Man of La Mancha" and "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown," so June 1, 1967 passed by unremarkably for me, as did most of that Summer of Love, though I do remember reading feature stories in Time and Life about drugs, hippies, and protest. I didn't discover Sgt. Pepper until the spring of '68, after I had become interested again in current pop music and had started catching up with the Beatles after buying"Magical Mystery Tour," a fabulous album even if it does get downgraded by most critics because it's mostly a compilation of previously released singles.


I remember being home sick from school one day that spring and listening to Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour over and over, all day long. As a middle-class suburban kid, I had certainly never done any illegal drugs at that point, but I was sure that the experience could be no better than losing myself in these two Beatles albums. Sgt Pepper is such a part of my personal and cultural baggage by now that I can't really approach in a critical fashion, but I had to revisit it yesterday, listening to it in the car on the way to work and back home. (As it turns out, a co-worker had the same impulse and she brought the album in to listen to while working.)

Not all albums of the 60's and 70's still hold up for me, but this one does. I think it's still my favorite album of all time. It was the first "concept album" and because the concept is a loose one, a concert by the title band, it's not hemmed in by an artificial narrative, even as it does feel like all the songs work together to create an atmosphere by turns playful, serious, and profound. Everyone agrees that there are great individual songs here, like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "With a Little Help from My Friends," though just as great for me are "Lovely Rita" (an ode to sexual frustration?) and "Good Morning Good Morning" (an ode to daily middle-class frustration?). Actually, many of the songs seem to be about frustration ("Getting Better," "She's Leaving Home"). The one song that many agree is the clunker, George Harrison's "Within You Without You" is the weakest song, but the interplay of the Indian instruments in the middle section still sounds fresh. The climactic "A Day In the Life" always gives me chills, and the fact that I'm still not sure what the song is about only heightens that feeling as the closing four-piano chord echoes into infinity. I'm pleased to rediscover that this is an album that still sounds alive and bursting with creativity (great use of keyboards and orchestration), and not just a relic for nostalgic baby boomers.