Sgt Pepper (Beatles)
Sgt Pepper (Beatles)
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Capitol Records
1. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
2. With A Little Help From My Friends
3. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
4. Getting Better
6. She’s Leaving Home
7. Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite
8. Within You Without You
(Harrison) 
9. When I’m Sixty-Four
10. Lovely Rita
11. Good Morning Good Morning
12. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
(Reprise)
13. A Day In The Life
All songs composed by Lennon/McCartney except where indicated.
Producer: George Martin
© 1967 Original Sound Recording Made By EMI Records, Ltd.
© 1967 EMI Records Ltd
© 1987 EMI Records Ltd.
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Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club band didn’t start out life as a “concept album” but it very soon developed a life of its own. I remember it warmly, as both a tremendous challenge and a higly rewarding experience. For me, it was the most innovative, imaginative and trend-setting record of its time.
- George Martin  
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“The Beatles definitely had an eternal curiosity for doing something different,” says George Martin, producer of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Cerainly this album was entirely different to anything which had gone before, and although it has been much imitated since, it remains today a unique, epochal record one which revolutionized the entire recording industry and caused such vast repercussions that its influence will very probably be felt for as long as music is written and performed.
The Beatles’ musical ideas progressed in a most tangible way with each album they recorded. Geoff Emerick, the recording engineer who with George Martin formed the imaginative team which translated the Beatles’ requirements onto tape, once totted up the number of hours put into the making of Sgt. Pepper and came up with 700.  Please Please Me, the Beatles’ first album, was recorded in 585 minutes.
“The Beatles insisted that everything on Sgt. Pepper had to be different,” say Emerick, “so everything was either distorted, limited, heavily compressed or treated with excessive equalization. We had microphones right down 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 and vocals and we had tapes chopped to pieces and stuck together upside down and the wrong way round.”
The very end of the album typifies the advanced studio trickery applied throughout Sgt. Pepper. After the last droplets of the crashing piano chord of ‘A Day In The Life’ have evaporated, come a few second of 15 kilocycle tone, put there – especially to annoy your dog – at the request of John Lennon. Then, as the coup de grace, there is a few seconds of nonsense Beatle chatter, taped, cut into several pieces and stuck back together at random so that, as George Martin says, purchasers of the vinyl album who did not have an auto return on their record player would say “What the hell’s that?” and find the curious noise going on and on ad infinitum in the concentric run-out groove. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band must be nothing less than the most important and revealing compact disc release there can ever be.
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The recording of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band spanned 129 days, perhaps the most creative 129 days in the history of rock music. Here, in the order in which the recording were tackled, is a guide to the way the album was made.
“When I’m Sixty-Four” – Recording commenced in studio two at Abbey Road on December 6, 1966. Album version mixed from take four. Writer: Paul. Lead Vocal: Paul. Producer: George Martin. Recording Engineer: Geoff Emerick. Second Engineer: Phil McDonald.
“A Day In The Life” – Recording commenced in studio two at Abbey Road on January 19, 1967. Working title “In The Life Of…” Album version mixed from takes six and seven. Writers: John with Paul. Lead vocal: John, with Paul. Producer: George Martin. Recording Engineer: Geoff Emerick. Second Engineers: Richard Lush, Phil McDonald.
“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” – Recording commenced in studio two at Abbey Road on February 1, 1967. Album version mixed from take ten. Writer: Paul. Lead vocal: Paul. Producer: George Martin. Recording Engineer: Geoff Emerick. Second Engineers: Richard Lush.
“Good Morning, Good Morning” – Recording commenced in studio two at Abbey Road on February 8, 1967. Album version mixed from take eleven. Writer: John. Lead vocal: John. Producer: George Martin. Recording Engineer: Geoff Emerick. Second Engineers: Richard Lush.
“Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite” – Recording commenced in studio two at Abbey Road on February 17, 1967. Album version mixed from take nine. Writer: John. Lead vocal: John. Producer: George Martin. Recording Engineer: Geoff Emerick. Second Engineers: Richard Lush.
“Fixing a Hole” – Recording commenced in Regent Sound Studio, Tottemham Court Road, London, on February 21, 1967, and later completed at Abbey Road. Album version mixed from take three. Writer: Paul. Lead vocal: Paul. Producer: George Martin. Recording Engineer: Adrian Ibbetson (Regent Sound), Geoff Emerick (Abbey Road). Second Engineer: Richard Lush.
“Lovely Rita” – Recording commenced in studio two at Abbey Road on February 23, 1967. Album version mixed from take eleven. Writer: Paul. Lead vocal: Paul. Producer: George Martin. Recording Engineer: Geoff Emerick. Second Engineer: Richard Lush.
“Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” – Recording commenced in studio two at Abbey Road on March 1, 1967. Album version mixed from take eight. Writer: John. Lead vocal: John. Producer: George Martin. Recording Engineer: Geoff Emerick. Second Engineer: Richard Lush.
“Getting Better” – Recording commenced in studio two at Abbey Road on March 9, 1967. Album version mixed from take fifteen. Writer: Paul. Lead Vocal: Paul. Producer: George Martin. Recording Engineers: Malcolm Addey, Ken Townsend, Geoff Emerick, Peter Vince. Second Engineers: Graham Kirkby, Richard Lush, Keith Slaughter.
“She’s Leaving Home” – Recording commenced in studio two at Abbey Road on March 17, 1967. Album version mixed from take nine. Writer: Paul. Lead vocal: Paul. Producer: George Martin. Score: Mike Leander. Recording Engineer: Geoff Emerick. Second Engineers: Richard Lush, Keith Slaughter.
“Within You Without You” – Recording commenced in studio two at Abbey Road on March 22, 1967. Album version mixed from take two. Writer: George. Lead vocal: George. Producer: George Martin. Recording Engineer: Geoff Emerick. Second Engineer: Richard Lush.
“With A Little Help From My Friends” – Recording commenced in studio two at Abbey Road on March 29, 1967. Working title “Bad Finger Boogie”. Album version mixed from take eleven. Writers: John and Paul. Lead Vocal: Ringo. Producer: George Martin. Recording Engineer: Geoff Emerick. Second Engineer: Richard Lush.
“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)” – Recording commenced in studio one at Abbey Road on April 1, 1967. Album version mixed from take nine. Writer: John. Lead vocal: John, Paul and George. Producer: George Martin. Recording Engineer: Geoff Emerick. Second Engineer: Richard Lush.
Three other songs were recorded during the session. The first were taken for release as a single, the third didn’t surface until the Yellow Submarine film soundtrack album. “Strawberry Fields Forever” – Recording commenced in studio two at Abbey Road on December 29, 1966. “Penny Lane” – Recording commenced in studio two at Abbey Road on December 29, 1966. “It’s Only A Northern Song” – Recording commenced in studio two in Abbey Road on February 13, 1967.
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The sequence of songs on Pepper is famous in itself, being – on the vinyl version – two continuous sides of music, without pauses between songs, or ‘banding’, to use recording parlance. But the lineup on side one, as first conceived, was different to how it finally evolved, and was as follows: ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”; “With A Little Help From My Friends”; “Being For the Benefit Of Mr. Kite”; “Fixing A Hole”; “Lucy In The Sky With Diamond”; “Getting Better”; “She’s Leaving Home.”
By suitably programming your compact disc hardware you’ll be able to hear the album as it was originally intended. Extracted from The Beatles at Abbey Road, to be published late-1987.
The Beatles already had a cover designed by a Dutch group called the Fool, but my gallery dealer, Robert Fraser, said to Paul, “Why don’t you use a ‘fine artist’, a professional, to do the cover instead?” Paul rather liked the idea and I was asked to do it. The concept of the album had already evolved: it would be as though the Beatles were another band, performing a concert. Paul and John said I should imagine that the band had just finished the concert, perhaps in a park. I then thought that we could have a crowd standing behind them, and this developed into the collage idea.
I asked them to make lists of people they’d most like to have in the audience at this imaginary concert. John’s was interesting because it included Jesus and Ghandi and, more cynically, Hitler. But this was just a few months after the US furor about his “Jesus” statement, so they were left out. George’s list was all gurus. Ringo said, “Whatever the others say is fine with me,” because he really didn’t want to be bothered. Robert Fraser and I also made lists. We then got all the photographs together and had life-sized cut-outs made onto headboard.
EMI realized that because many of the people we were depicting were still alive, we might be sued for not seeking their permission. So the Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, who was very wary of all the complications in the first place, had his assistant write to everyone. Mae West replied, “No, I won’t be on it. What would I be doing in a lonely hearts club?” So the Beatles wrote her a personal letter and she changed her mind.
Robert Fraser was a business partner of Michael Cooper, an excellent photographer, so he was commissioned to do the shoot. I worked in his studio for a fortnight constructing the collage, fixing the top row to the back wall and putting the next about six inches in front and so on, so that we got a tiered effect. Then we put in the palm tree and the other little objects. I wanted to have the waxworks of the Beatles because I thought that they might be looking at St. Pepper’s band too. The boy who delivered the floral display asked if he could contribute by making a guitar out of hyacinths, and the little girl wearing the ‘Welcome the Rolling Stones, Good Guys’ sweatshirt was a cloth figure of Shirley Temple, the shirt coming from Michael Cooper’s young son, Adam. The Beatles arrived during the evening of March 30. We had a drink, they got dressed and we did the session. It took about three hours in all, including the shots for the centre-fold out and back cover. I’m not sure how much it all cost. One reads exaggerated figures. I think Robert Fraser was paid 1500 pounds by EMI, and I got about 200. People say to me, “You must have made a lot of money on it,” but I didn’t because Robert signed away the copyright. But it has never mattered too much because it was such a wonderful thing to have done.
– Peter Blake    
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This album sleeve was the first to feature printed lyrics and it was one of the first to have a gatefold sleeve. It was also the first to have anything other than a plain inner bag too, the first pressing coming in a slightly psychedelic sleeve designed by Simon and Marijke of the Fool. And we also had a card with the cut-outs, which I had originally intended to be a small packed with badges and pencils and such like. That was stopped because it would have caused EMI big marketing problems.
– Peter Blake    
Recording produced by George Martin
Cover by M C Productions and The Apple
staged by Peter Blake and Jann Haworth
photographed by Michael Cooper
wax figures by Madame Tussauds
This is a stereo recording.
A splendid time is guaranteed for all.
Compact disc packaging from an original idea by Kathryn Varley
Words by Mark Lewisohn
Black and White Photography courtesy of the Michael Cooper Collection.
The Cover (see below for legend)
The Location: Chelsea Manor Studios, Flood Street, London
The Date: Thursday, March 30, 1967
The Crowd Assembled….