I’m not a musician, but this is what the Wikipedia article has to say about the recording:
The Beatles had been “bouncing” tracks from one four-track reel to another for around a year before making Pepper. I don’t know the first Beatles song to be recorded this way, but whosever it was, I’ve never heard it said it was Lennon’s idea to do it. He was not very technical (in fact, George Martin and the Abbey Road techs occasionally used to gently bullshit him about that stuff). The “idea” would have come from George Martin, or his engineers Norman Smith or Geoff Emerick.
Ack, I meant “bouncing” there, as Nonsuch reminded me.
It sounds like you are conflating two things:
- “Bouncing Tracks Down” - to increase the reach of 4-track recorders. Something the Beatles did but weren’t the only. Record 4 tracks of stuff. Make sure you like all of them, their relative levels, etc. Then, take a second 4 track, play the first set and record onto a single track of the second 4 track, leaving 3 tracks open for new stuff. Keep going until you get all the tracks you need or the recording are degraded from recopying.
- John and Strawberry Fields and the magic of George Martin’s production team. They recorded a couple of different approaches to SF - one was mellow and one featured a complex polyrhythm. John told GM to use the first bit of the mellow version then swiftly to the bigger version. They were in diff keys, speeds, etc, but GM and crew sync’d the up. It’s about a minute in that the change happens.
ETA: by the way, it was recorded mono. (Actually Wiki says it the stereo mix was created at production time, but The Beatles focused on the mono mix only.)
Just out of curiosity, how many posters in this thread have actually sat down and listened to Sgt Pepper all the way through? (Putting the album on as background music while doing housework or whatever doesn’t count).
I’ve put on headphones and immersed myself in the album at least a dozen times over the years and it has always been a pleasurable experience.
I don’t think it’s been mentioned here yet —there is a whiz-bang 50th anniversary Sgt. Pepper box set coming out, and the marquee feature is a brand-new, true stereo mix created by Giles Martin.
I pretty much taught myself to play guitar and sing by playing and singing along with Beatles albums. I’d start with Track 1 and go straight through the whole album in order.
Post #17.
When it came out it, the whole thing was being played on radio and by everyone with a record player. It was an event. “Day” got enough attention to be banned on the BBC I think.
Lots and lots and lots of times.
it was mostly this. as mentioned upthread the Beatles had “decided” to stop touring (the hordes of SCREAMING fans made that decision easy) so they were able to create more and more complex arrangements. they werent the first to “overdub” or “layer” tracks, but Sgt Pepper’s was the first album that was not meant to at least appear as if it was just the band playing. it was meant as a stand alone piece of art. and it was the popularity and sucess of that album that freed up their contemporaries to think of their albums differently, many of whom, as listed here, were able to take that philosophy to newer and better places. first isnt always the best, but it can never be “overrated”
mc
Wouldn’t this also apply to Pet Sounds?
It would, and also to all those even earlier Phil Spector recordings, who of course was a big influence on Brian Wilson.
kinda. it definitely inspired the Beatles to push the boundaries of recording. but Wilson’s goal was to create “the greatest rock album ever made”, but it was still a Beach Boys album. that is to say, the listener could imagine going to the concert and listening to them play the songs live. Sgt Pepper’s had no such pretense; there would never be a live version of the album.
mc
I was born in 1966. Got into the Beatles in June 1978 when an ex-hippie Social Studies teacher decided to run out the last week of school by endlessly looping a 16mm print of “Yellow Submarine” in her classroom. By that time Sgt. Pepper was already enshrined as the “GREATEST ROCK AND ROLL ALBUM OF ALL TIME!!” in popular culture, a point that was endlessly reiterated in the wake of the Bee Gees/Peter Frampton monstrosity released later that summer. (As in “how dare Stigwood and company taint the legacy of the G RnR A OAT!!!”)
I’d been working my way through the Beatles catalog in random order - just whatever LPs the library had available. Abbey Road -awesome. Magical Mystery Tour - hell yeah, but who’s the asshole library patron that tore out the 24 page book from the gatefold? Rubber Soul - wow. Revolver - wait, this one is on Parlophone, not Capitol, what’s that all about? - mind blown. I drove my sister nuts repeating “Tomorrow Never Knows” at full volume for the entire hour or so whenever my parents were out grocery shopping. And “Sgt. Pepper” is supposed to be better than this?!?!? I can’t wait!!
But the elusive *Pepper *was always checked out. So I took the plunge and committed a whole dime to place a hold on it. (The fee was to cover the stamp on the postcard they sent to tell you your hold was available.) When I got it home sometime in the Fall of 1979, I waited for my parents to leave (this was my music, to be explored on my own, at my own pace, not with parental types in the same room, even if they did approve) and put it on the living room stereo turntable. The first three tracks were familiar from radio, and then, came the new-to-me stuff… and … huh. That’s it? Flip it over. That’s… nice. OK, “Day in the Life” is still great. No really bad songs, but nothing that rocked my world either. Which still made it better than “Let It Be”, but I’m underwhemed to say the least. “I don’t get it. How can it be the GREATEST RnR ALBUM OF ALL TIME when it’s not even the best Beatles album?”
A few years later in 1981 I felt a little vindicated when a local album rock station had a listener poll for the greatest 200 rock albums of all time in honor of Los Angeles’ 200th birthday. I expected “Sgt. Pepper” to be the automatic #1 choice, just like “Stairway to Heaven” always was picked the #1 song. But, to my surprise, it came in at #10. “Abbey Road” beat it by coming in at #7. (#1 was “Who’s Next” - The Who, huh? I like “You Better, You Bet” and “Who Are You?” I should listen to the playback of this album - Believe me, hearing "Behind Blue Eyes for the first time as an angst-filled blue-eyed 15-year-old is life changing.)
When the 20th anniversary first-time-on-CD reissue came out in 1987, LA Times music critic Robert Hilburn wrote a piece saying the album was due for a reappraisal. He felt that while it was revolutionary in 1967, it hadn’t aged as well as many of their other albums, and was thus overrated. He was ripped to shreds for months in the letters column. I think he was just a bit ahead of his time, as I noticed by the mid-1990s, critical consensus had shifted to *Revolver *or Pet Sounds.
TL;DR - I think Sgt. Pepper is really good, but overrated. But I wasn’t there at the time. It’s probably the same conversation I have with my kids trying in vain to explain why Toy Story or Jurassic Park were such big deals, when to them that’s just how movies are.
Anyone who was a music fan when it came out, I should say.
The problem with Revolver, is that the harsh differences between Paul, John, and George songs really stand out… there is no integration at all. Paul’s art songs. John’s nascent psychedelic and Rubber Soul throw-backs. George’s nouveau-Indian period grate against each other and refuse to mix. That’s ok, it’s all good, but not an album experience.
Pepper, on the other hand, seems to blend like a well-mixed daiquiri.
We’ll agree to disagree.
I suppose you could say that for all of the Beatles’ albums…but Cheap Trick did perform Sgt Pepper live with fairly decent results. Beatles tribute bands will play the whole album too. Sure, it ain’t the real thing, but it’s a chance to hear a classic album in a live setting.
I think Brian Wilson did a whole tour performing Pet Sounds, so that is as close to the hearing the Beach Boys do it as you’re going to get.
and my mom could whistle dixie thru her shorts! i think youre missing my point. previous to Sgt Pepper’s, artists, music producers, and the audience all viewed records as an extension of the band’s live performance, that what they were playing, producing and hearing on the record was more or less what you would hear live. even tho many artist of the time were using the new recording tech and making songs that were substantially more than just the artists playing into microphones, the mindset of all was still the same.
SP changed that way of thinking. the band was never gonna tour with it. they were never gonna go out with the string section of the London philharmonic, several effects synthesizers, 3 more guitarists and a couple of extra drummers. the album was its own thing. that had never been done before, and if they werent THE BEATLES, they never would have gotten away with it, and if it wasnt a success there probably would never be anything like it again. it is probably the most important album of the rock and roll era. you may not think its any good or you may love it, but its importance cannot be overrated.
mc