By 1966, The Beatles had just kicked off a more sonically experimental era with the psychedelic-tipped Revolver, and after one final tour in North America—and the band’s final concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, California on August 2—they retired as performing artists.
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Then, Sgt. Pepper came along.
The title track, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” “With a Little Help from My Friends,” helped transform a simple, militaristic concept into one of the band’s more prog-prompting releases.
An Edwardian Military Band
Flying home to London that fall, Paul McCartney had an idea about a song centered around an Edwardian military band, and the concept of Sgt. Pepper’s band was formulating.
Already induced by the more psyche-rock scope of the time, drugs, and Eastern philosophy and music—the latter already surfacing in bits of their 1965 release Rubber Soul (“Norwegian Wood”) and more during the Revolver-era—Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band would allow the four to take on a new identity, and the alter-ego of a “new” band.
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‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ Songs
After recording the title track, the Beatles worked around the loose concept of performing as a fictional band, which spilled into McCartney leading the way on opening “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club,” Ringo Starr crooning “With a Little Help from My Friends,” John Lennon on “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” and George Harrison billowing through his Indian-inspired outlier on the album “With You Without You.”
The album covered other grounds with the tenderly moved “She’s Leaving Home,” inspired by the story of a 17-year-old runaway, and through the prophetic “When I’m Sixty-Four,” and more hypnotic closer “A Day in the Life.”
Cosmic Cover
Photographed by Michael Cooper, the Beatles transformed into Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on the cover.
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Centered in vivid yellow (Lennon), pink (Starr), pale blue (McCartney), and red-orange (Harrison), the four are flanked by dozens of influential people, from Harrison’s inspirational guru Yukteswar Giri, along with comedians Lenny Bruce and W.C. Fields, actors Marlon Brando and Mae West, Bob Dylan, Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung, Edgar Allan Poe, poet Dylan Thomas, composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, who inspired the band’s more avant-garde, unreleased song “Carnival of Light,” along with younger versions of themselves.
A total of 58 individuals colored the album cover.
Top of the Pop … Charts
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band spent 15 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Top LPs (Billboard 200) chart and won four Grammy Awards: Album of the Year, Best Contemporary Album, Best Engineered Recording (Non-Classical), and Best Album Cover, Graphic Arts.
Photo: John Pratt/Keystone/Getty Images
