SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND

Sgt. Pepper and Piper at the Gates of Dawn are two early foundational albums for me that occupy different sides of the coin. While both are early psych they represent different moods and different approaches to me as a listener. Pepper being a sunnier and happier album at least on the surface, Piper being a darker and stranger one.

I can only imagine what it must have been like to have purchased Pepper in '67 and heard it for the first time. Today's technology may make some think "what's the big deal?" when they play this but remember we're talking about half a lifetime ago. The Beatles wanted to present the world with something totally new. Engineer Geoff Emerick remembered: "The Beatles insisted that everything on Sgt. Pepper had to be different so everything was either distorted, limited, heavily compressed or treated with excessive equalization. We had microphones right down in the bells of the brass instruments and headphones turned into microphones attached to violins. We plastered vast amounts of echo onto vocals and sent them through the circuitry of the revolving Leslie speaker inside a Hammond organ. We used giant primitive oscillators to vary the speed of instruments of vocals and we had tapes chopped to pieces and stuck together upside down and wrong way around." The album was also the first to feature printed lyrics on the inside sleeve, something else we take for granted these days.

But it's not just about mind blowing studio wizardry anyway but also one of the best products of two of the last century's best songwriters. While John was always considered the cool Beatle I've always had a soft spot for McCartney tracks like "She's Leaving Home." He somehow found the perfect mood and delivery to put you right into the home of this family going through a crisis. You can relate to the characters and feel sympathy for them. With the exception of A Day in the Life, it is John's stuff that feels uninspired to me. Mr. Kite is not what I've come to expect from Lennon.

Pepper was a natural follow-up to Revolver with the increased studio tricks and Paul coming into his own as the circus-master here. It's a less exciting spin for me than the other masterpieces of 1967 (Piper, Days of Future Passed) but the combination of Lucy, Leaving Home, and A Day in the Life insure Pepper's stature as a classic album for any rock fan. The follow-up, and similarly flavored "Magical Mystery Tour" is probably a more convincing album.

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