BeatlesTube

1. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Lennon/McCartney)
2. With a Little Help From My Friends (Lennon/McCartney)
3. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (Lennon/McCartney)
4. Getting Better (Lennon/McCartney)
5. Fixing a Hole (Lennon/McCartney)
6. She’s Leaving Home (Lennon/McCartney)
7. Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! (Lennon/McCartney)
8. Within You Without You (George Harrison)
9. When I’m Sixty-Four (Lennon/McCartney)
10. Lovely Rita (Lennon/McCartney)
11. Good Morning, Good Morning (Lennon/McCartney)
12. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise) (Lennon/McCartney)
13. A Day in the Life (Lennon/McCartney)

Recorded over a 129-day period beginning on 6 December 1966, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released on 1 June 1967 in the United Kingdom and the following day in the United States. Sgt. Pepper is often described as The Beatles’ magnum opus and recognized as one of the most influential albums of all time by prominent critics and publications. It was ranked the greatest album of all time by Rolling Stone in 2003.

Background

The album project had originally been titled Dr. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, but after it was discovered that Dr. Pepper was a trademarked name for an American soft drink, The Beatles changed the title to Sgt. Pepper’s…

When Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was being recorded, "Beatlemania" was waning. The Beatles had grown tired of touring and had quit the road in August 1966. After one particular concert, while being driven away in the back of a small van, the four of them—even Paul McCartney, who was perhaps the most in favour of continuing to tour—decided that enough was enough. From that point on the Beatles became an entirely studio-based band. For the first time in their careers, the band had more than ample time with which to prepare their next record. As EMI’s premier act and Britain’s most successful pop group they had almost unlimited access to the state of the art technology of Abbey Road Studios. All four band members had already developed a preference for long, late night sessions, although they were still extremely efficient and highly disciplined in their studio habits.
George Harrison, the lead guitarist of the Beatles, went on a trip to India to learn to play the sitar, an Indian instrument, with Ravi Shankar, a renowned sitarist. Harrison brought back with him Indian culture and music.

Recording for the album began in late 1966 and early 1967 with two songs that were ultimately dropped from Sgt. Pepper, "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane". When Beatles manager Brian Epstein decided that a new single was needed, the two songs were issued as a double-A-sided single in February 1967. In keeping with the group’s usual practice, the single tracks were not included on the LP (a decision George Martin maintains he regrets to this day). They were released only as a single in the UK at the time, but were included as part of the American LP version of Magical Mystery Tour (which was issued as a 6-track EP in Britain). The Harrison composition "Only a Northern Song" was also recorded during the Pepper sessions but did not see release until January 1969 when the soundtrack album for the animated feature Yellow Submarine was issued.

Concept

With Sgt. Pepper, the Beatles wanted to create a record that could, in effect, tour for them — an idea they had already explored with the promotional film-clips made over the previous years, intended to promote them in the United States when they were not touring there.
McCartney decided that he should create fictitious characters for each band member and record an album that would be a performance by that fictitious band. This "alter-ego group" gave the Beatles the freedom to experiment with songs.

The Beatles’ fame motivated them to grow moustaches and beards and even longer hair, and was an inspiration for the disguise of their flamboyant Sgt. Pepper costumes. McCartney was well known for going out in public in disguise and all four had used aliases for travel bookings and hotel reservations. Thus, the album starts with the title song, which introduces Sgt. Pepper’s band itself; this song segues seamlessly into a sung introduction for bandleader "Billy Shears" (Starr), who performs "With a Little Help from My Friends". A reprise version of the title song was also recorded, and appears on side 2 of the original album (just prior to the climactic "A Day in the Life"), creating a "bookending" effect.

However, the Beatles effectively abandoned the concept after recording the first two songs and the reprise. Lennon was unequivocal in stating that the songs he wrote for the album had nothing to do with the Sgt. Pepper concept. Since the other songs on the album are actually unrelated, one might be tempted to conclude that the album does not express an overarching theme. However, the cohesive structure and careful sequencing of and transitioning between songs on the album, as well as the use of the Sgt. Pepper framing device, have led the album to be widely acknowledged as an early and ground-breaking example of the concept album.

Before beginning work on Sgt. Pepper, the Beatles had begun to work on a series of songs that were to form an album thematically linked to childhood and everyday life. The first fruits of this exercise – "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" were released as a double-A single after EMI and Epstein pressured George Martin for a released single. Once the singles were released the concept was abandoned in favour of ‘Pepper’. However, traces of this initial idea survive in the lyrics to several songs on the album ("A Day in the Life", "Lovely Rita", "Good Morning, Good Morning", "She’s Leaving Home", "Getting Better", and "When I’m Sixty-Four") and it could be argued provide more of a unifying theme for the album than that of the Pepper concept itself.

[From Wikipedia - Original page is here]