Forty Years Ago Today, Sgt. Pepper Taught the Band to Play

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

And what a long strange trip its been.

Maybe they weren’t all that cool, the Stones were cooler, the Who were heavier, and Eric Clapton was…well, you know. But we craved to see change so desperately, trapped between a world that wouldn’t die and one still waiting to be born… We didn’t consider the Beatles to lead us, but that we might lead them. And the rumors swirled and whirled, the next album was really far out, they were doing totally different shit, there weren’t going to be any singles released, no tours, just an album…like, a single thing!, a discrete entity meant to be absorbed as a unity. Oh, wow.

We planned it with precision timing. Ralph knew a chick worked in the record store, SP would be available at precisely 2:30 in the afternoon (anybody got a watch? anybody borrow one? Who’s not gonna get stoned and forget. Oh, right, Ralph. Mike has a car that runs, plates up to date, street legal, licensed. Can put his hair up under his hat…( You know, maybe he should cut his hair, better the odds of not getting hassled, maybe you should shove it up yer ass, Bob, hey, these aren’t Oakland cops, they’re Minneapolis cops, I got a cousin, he doesn’t turn on or anything, but he’s kinda cool…Hey! Mike has a car, that runs, plates up to date, street legal and licensed! Anybody else here got one of those?..OK, so Ralph arrives at precisely 2:25, carrying a minimum of $5.00 cash (the cash! we got the cash? No, she’s groovy, but not that damn groovy!..2, ok, three, three seventy five…seventy-eight, right…I got $1.54, you got a quarter…thats uh, um…enough.)

Mike circles the block (wait! Does Mike have enough gas? Yeah, sure, its a Ford Falcon, but still…OK, OK, I’m sorry, just…OK.) Mike circles the block until Ralph exterminates…right, Ralph exfiltrates, that’s what I mean, he splits with the record. It takes 11 minutes to drive from Dinkytown to Bob’s house. Bob has a stereo, Jeff is bringing the big ass speakers his brother sent him from overseas. (Yeah, Viet Nam, look don’t start, OK? Won’t last more than a couple years anyway, even Lyndon ain’t that damn stupid…)

I’m gonna cut this short. Anyone with actual reminiscences, however distant, however tangential, however remote the echo, pick it up from there. You got it in your hands, and then what happened?

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Actually, they were all that cool. The Stones may have been more rebellious - more dangerous, in the way a high school sophmore is more dangerous, in his wanton recklessness, than a college senior - but the Stones plied art which was derivative of the Beatles’, and they were less sophisticated by half. Not that that’s a knock: everybody was behind the Beatles, and the Stones led the rest of the pack. But the Beatles were the arbiters of what was cool, and if they were to create an album of kazoo and harpsichord music, everybody else would have followed suit.

With the release of Sgt. Pepper’s, the lads from Liverpool pulled the curtain on the future, and spawned not just a musical trend, but an entire zeitgeist. Music and popular culture would never be the same.

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Sgt. Pepper, though not the first album I bought, is the first album I bought that I still own. (With one of my sister’s initials scrawled on the center from when she tried to snipe it. Hah! Fat chance, Nancy!)