It Was 54 Years Ago Today

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the first record album I ever touched: sometimes my mother would bring my brother and I to spend the day at the library she worked at; there was a record player there with a single record (SPOILER ALERT - that record was Sgt Pepper...why the fuck else would I be bringing it up here?) Meanwhile, today is the 54th anniversary of its release:

When McCartney played a test pressing of “A Day in the Life” for Brian Wilson in L.A. prior to its release, Wilson was so shaken and outright intimidated that he abandoned work on what he hoped would become his musical masterpiece, the legendary and tragic Smile.  

The most astonishing thing about Sgt. Pepper isn’t simply its breadth of accomplishment, but rather the fact that it only took five years for John, Paul, George and Ringo to evolve from the simplicity of “Love Me Do” to a dramatic definition of “A Day in the Life.” It was an astonishing artistic evolution by any measure, one that’s yet to be equaled in terms of growth or maturity...Pepper redefined the notion of an album as a unified body of work, an artistic accomplishment as daunting as any artistic endeavor in mankind’s collective canon. Indeed, in the full spectrum of the world’s creative achievements, Sgt. Pepper retains its place in that pantheon.

SUPER SLICES: title track, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Getting Better, She’s Leaving Home, Lovely Rita, Good Morning, Good Morning, Day in the Life

YOU GOTTA LOVE IT EVEN THO YOU’RE SICK OF HEARING IT: With a Little Help from My Friends

I NEVER LISTEN BUT AT LEAST THEY’RE WILDLY INNOVATIVE/AMBITIOUS: Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!, Within You, Without You

NOT A SLICE: Fixing a Hole, When I’m 64

SEVEN superslices! Not just slices, but super slices. And don’t get me started re: how off the charts it would be if they hadn’t given away Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields. They of course were the first two songs recorded for the album, and when a new single was requested by Brian Epstein, George Martin told him that the band had recorded Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever, which he considered to be the band's best songs up to that point. Epstein suggested to release them as a double A-side single, so The Beatles didn't ever issue a version of Sgt Pepper with Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields included because their singles did not appear on new albums. Sgt. Pepper is generally debated as the greatest album of all time (the most important without a doubt), and including those two mega-classics would've made it beyond untouchable.