Oh gosh, I can’t think of Eleanor Rigby and She’s Leaving Home in the same vein.
SLH is just so 60’s angst, and the beginings of a feminism that permeated the 70’s. That girl in the song is just like the older sister in Almost Famous, who just could not stand how the mother suffocated her with rules, or the older wilder daughter on that 70’s show, women for the first time were breaking free on mass meeting a lover and going to San Francisco.
Parents just not understanding their daughter, that* is *the Sgt Pepper era.
For me, Eleanor Rigby is none of that, it feels almost as if the protagonist experienced mental illness, rewinding in her mind things that could have been but never were. However beautifully written, it’s a very lonesome song.
I would lose Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite. John hated the song, and I’m not a big fan. It was a filler, he said he basically swiped the lyrics off of an old circus poster. So I’d end side one with Strawberry Fields, and then insert Hello Goodbye into side 2.
I can see how both PL and SF would fit on SgtP. They both have the right sound and similar themes; John and Paul reminiscing about their version of the Liverpool of their youths with some psychedelia mixed in. And a lot of ping-ponging between the 2 4-track machines that were available to them.
Neither “Within You, Without You” or “Good Morning” did much for me. To me, “Mr Kite” adds a bit of an, I don’t know, Victorian flair that fits in with the Sgt Pepper theme. And “64” fits in also. Of course, due to internal politics, there was NO way they were going to nix Harrison’s song.
Replace “SLH” with “Eleanor Rigby”? No, it’s good on Revolver. I’ve long thought of Revolver as a warm up for SgtP and it fits in there. Though I read somewhere that George Martin thought of Rubber Soul and Revolver as just one very long album. Though he was referring to the production and post-production process, IIRC.
I didn’t say that SLH *should *be replaced by Eleanor Rigby, merely that the songs are pretty similar and *could *be exchanged. SLH is basically a clone of ER, with similar pace, same somber tone and instrumentation. I also think that the Harrison song is awesome, but hardly fits in except as a relic of the British presence in India, as a kind of Victorian touch piece. I would put it second on side 2, not first, after Penny Lane.
Eleanor Rigby would stick out like a sore thumb on Pepper. Rigby is relentlessly downbeat, both musically and lyrically, while SLH is much more nostalgic and winsome, and arguably even comic (depending on how John Lennon’s parental interjections go down for you). I think you can make a case for Penny Lane (though you’d have to ditch Getting Better; too similar) and even Strawberry Fields, but I don’t see Rigby fitting on Sgt. Pepper.
I disagree entirely. I find nothing nostalgic or winsome about SLH. It’s the most embarrassing song on the album, a forced exercise in Us (the young) vs. Them (the old) that shows nothing of the empathy for the subject in ER.
ER - I don’t remember offhand whether anybody has made a point about the Queen being ER, Elizabeth Regina - is one of the most brilliant songs of all time. My argument from above applies here as well. If you add to or replace a weak song with a terrific song you will improve an album already made up of totally disparate parts. If that’s all you had known since 1967 and SLH came out later, you could not get anyone to argue that including in would have been an improvement. Even those who don’t see the song as weak would argue that it’s completely out of sync with the rest of the tunes.
It was a name that Paul got off a tombstone while touring an old church cemetery. Another tombstone said “Father McCartney.” He later changed it to McKenzie for obvious reasons.
I’m going to disagree, in a devil’s advocate sort of way, not sure how convinced I am myself of what I’m saying here:
The one song on Sgt. Pepper (as it actually is) that really doesn’t fit* is “A Day in the Life”; and that’s partly because it is such a strong, terrific song. And they realized that, so they put it at the end, after the “Sgt Pepper’s” reprise, so that it’s not part of the Sgt. Pepper song cycle proper. And in its place, it actually does fit, and makes the album much more than it would be without it.
But aside from “A Day in the Life,” what makes the album what it is is that all the songs are—well, not throwaway tracks exactly, but not all that strong taken by themselves. None of them were released as singles; none of them would have really worked well as singles, listened to by themselves and out of context; and arguably none of them have the classic Beatles sound. And the idea of the Sgt Pepper concept was to allow the Beatles the freedom to do precisely those sorts of songs.
So that, if the album had replaced one or more of its songs with a stronger, more radio-friendly or more recognizably Beatlesy track, that would have actually weakened the album as a whole, or at least unbalanced it or made it into something other than Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
*I also think “Within You, Without You” is a misfit, but that’s largely because it goes on for too long.
In his lengthy essay on the Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request, Crawdaddy’s Paul Williams said that the closing “On with the Show” told you that you didn’t have to take the preceding album too seriously. By comparison, he observed that “Sgt Pepper (Reprise)” meant that you didn’t have to take it all too seriously *except *“A Day in the Life.”
In fact, “Sgt Pepper/With a Little Help from My Friends” was belatedly released as a single in the '70s, following in the wake of the Sgt Pepper movie. And sure enough, despite plenty of hype, it didn’t do very well, even compared to other post-split Beatles singles.
The cumulative effect of all the songs is different from other Beatles albums, but both of the long songs are ones that would not work well alone. I do think that Eleanor Rigby was the prototype for the album’s songs in some ways.
Side two is really good, but I might rearrange side one. Upthread it was mentioned how “When I’m Sixty-Four” spoils the mood created by “Within You,” but personally I like that kind of rapid change of styles - the Beatles wrote a ridiculously wide variety of songs, and shifting genres showcases that. In that spirit, I wouldn’t put “A Little Help,” “When I’m Sixty-Four,” and “Penny Lane” all one after the other - instead, I’d mix and match the textures. I think “Sixty-Four” would go well right before “Strawberry Fields” - the idea of the last bouncy note being played, then hearing the ghostly flute intro. Similarly, “Within You Without You” could be paired with “Penny Lane.” I guess my ideal listing would look like this:
“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”
“With a Little Help from My Friends”
“Within You Without You”
“Penny Lane”
“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”
“Fixing a Hole”
"She’s Leaving Home”
“Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!”
“Lovely Rita”
“Getting Better”
“Good Morning Good Morning”
“When I’m Sixty-Four”
“Strawberry Fields Forever”
“Baby You’re A Rich Man”
“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)”
This thread reminds me about another one a while ago that challenged people to cut down the White Album to a single disc (as everyone always complains it should have been). No one was able to agree even slightly about the best and worst songs. The fact that we have such different opinions on song sequence, song inclusion, etc, shows that maybe we should just trust the Beatles.
