Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Article from 1967
The Messengers
The cover on a new LP album called Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is a
photomontage of a crowd gathered round a grave. And a curious crowd it is:
Marilyn Monroe is there, so are Karl Marx, Edgar Allan Poe, Albert Einstein,
Lawrence of Arabia, Mae West, Sonny Liston, and eight Beatles.
Eight? Well, four of them, standing around looking like wax dummies, are indeed
wax models of the Beatles as most people remember them: nicely brushed long
hair, dark suits, faces like sassy choirboys. The other four Beatles are very
much alive: thin, hippie-looking, mustachioed, bedecked in bright, bizarre
uniforms. Though their expressions seem subdued, their eyes glint with a new
awareness tinged with a little of the old mischief. As for the grave in the
foreground: it has THE BEATLES spelled out in flowers trimmed with marijuana
plants.
With characteristic self-mockery, the Beatles are proclaiming that they have
snuffed out their old selves to make room for the new Beatles incarnate. And
there is some truth to it. Without having lost any of the genial anarchism with
which they helped revolutionize the life style of young people in Britain,
Europe and the U.S., they have moved on to a higher artistic plateau.
Cunning Collages. Rich and secure enough to go on repeating themselves--or to do
nothing at all--they have exercised a compulsion for growth, change and
experimentation. Messengers from beyond rock 'n' roll, they are creating the
most original, expressive and musically interesting sounds being heard in pop
music. They are leading an evolution in which the best of current postrock
sounds are becoming something that pop music has never been before: an art form.
"Serious musicians" are listening to them and marking their work as a historic
departure in the progress of music--any music.
Ned Rorem, composer of some of the best of today's art songs, says: "They are
colleagues of mine, speaking the same language with different accents." In fact,
he adds, the Beatles' haunting composition, She's Leaving Home--one of twelve
songs in the Sgt. Pepper album--"is equal to any song that Schubert ever wrote."
Conductor Leonard Bernstein's appreciation is just as high; he cites Schumann.
As Musicologist Henry Pleasants says: "The Beatles are where music is right
now."
Like all good popular artists, the Beatles have a talent for distilling the
moods of their time. Gilbert and Sullivan's frolics limned the pomposities of
the Victorian British Empah; Cole Porter's urbanities were wonderful tonics for
the hungover '30s; Rodgers and Hammerstein's ballads reflected the sentiment and
seriousness of the World War II era. Today the Beatles' cunning collages piece
together scraps of tension between the generations, the loneliness of the
dislocated '60s, and the bitter sweets of young love in any age. At the same
time, their sensitivity to the absurd is sharper than ever.
Page 1
Page 1,
Page 2,
Page 3,
Page 4,
Page 5,
Page 6,
Page 7,
Page 8,
Page 9,
Page 10
The Beatles Lyrics
Page Views:
