When I Get Older Losing My Hair, Dept.

(Is this to blame for the vibrance slider?)

Just thought I'd mention, before today is over, on the off chance you haven't heard: today is the 50th anniversary of the release of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." And to think—of the original Beatles, only one is left alive*. And his name is Richard, which wasn't even one of the Beatles' names.

I'm not usually too sentimental about such pop culture things, but I listened to the whole album today**. The streaming version of the anniversary remix sounds amazing, gotta say. The music has reached such iconic status and is so familiar that every note, sound, harmony and segue sounds utterly perfect.

Mike

*As everyone knows, Paul McCartney passed away in 1969.

**UPDATE 12 midnight: ...twice.

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Speed: "'It was fifty years ago today Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play'...."

emptyspaces: "The new stereo mix is incredible...everyone who hasn't should Google Giles Martin [George Martin's son —Ed.] and read about how they did it.

"I am lucky that at my office there was a demo set up with Sennheiser HD800 headphones, a Pro-Ject headphone amp, and the Marantz SA8005 (which has a great DAC).

"The Beatles were before my time, but I sure hope more of these stereo re-mixes are in the works."

Mike replies: It really is amazing. I had just listened to the old stereo version (MP4) when I wrote the post and linked to the Amazon page. Since it's free to me to stream, I started listening to the new version—a much more immediate and immersive experience, with a lot more to listen to. As you say, incredible; the writer at the following link called it 'truly stunning.' The story of how it was done is very interesting too.

(...Why, however, have they put that horrible little glitch at the very end of the record, after the end of "A Day In the Life"? The famous sustained chord that concludes that song is one of the great endings in all of music—and all of art, never mind just to the song. The blip that's been stuck on the end seems not only artistically totally wrong to me, but a desecration, like taking a magic marker to a great Renaissance painting. Just an aside.)

Thanks for the tip.

Isaac replies to Mike: "That 'glitch' at the end has always been there! It was originally an infinite run-out groove that you would hear if you didn't have one of those fancy auto return record players. Paul said he thought it would be a laugh."

Mike replies: I might go dig out the album and listen for it, but I'm pretty sure it's not there on the US LP because I would have remembered it.

It's an absolutely terrible idea, like putting fart noises in Bach's "Art of Fugue." Paul McCartney, like my fave Neil Young, is a genius who has no taste. He can't tell the difference between a good idea and a wretched one, a beautiful song and an atrocious one. It's hard to believe that the same guy who wrote and sang "Yesterday," "She's Leaving Home," and "You Never Give Me Your Money" also thought the alarmingly horrid "Rocky Raccoon" was worthy of anything but being buried with a shovel. As Mark Kemp wrote at pastemagazine.com, "'With the Beatles' revealed a weakness that would follow the band throughout its career: Paul McCartney’s taste for schmaltzy Tin Pan Alley pop. His acoustic-based cover of 'Till There Was You,' from [the] Broadway play 'The Music Man,' remains one of the most egregious songs in the Beatles’ catalog." Amen. People think Macca jumped the shark with "Silly Love Songs," but that strain of tastelessness—kept mostly in check by John and George Martin during the Beatles years—was there from the start.

Tom Burke: "Actually, the original Beatle who's still surviving is named Peter—Pete Best. I worked with him for a year or so in Liverpool in the mid-1970s. This was in a employment office, part of the (government) Department of Employment. I was a newcomer to the Department, the job, and the city. Pete was the same grade as me, but was the senior in that grade in our section, and I was given to understand that if I had any problems, Pete would help me. And he did—always friendly, always helpful. This included the time I had to sidle up to him and report that I didn't understand what the jobseeker I was interviewing meant when he said that the reason for being dismissed from his previous job was because he was 'doing a foreigner....' (Answer: using his employer's tools, equipment, etc., while working on his own account.)

"One other thing—after I'd been there for a week or so and was getting to know people, one of Pete's close colleagues came up to me and checked that I knew who Pete was, and of course I said I did. This other person then gently advised me not to ask Pete about the Beatles. He wouldn't talk about it, I was told; he'd already said everything he was going to say."

Jon Orchard: "For anyone interested here is the story behind the name of the album and the reference to my neck of the woods (Ontario, Canada), just a few hundred miles from TOP World Headquarters."

Gaspar Heurtley: "'Sgt. Peppers' was the first 'adult' album I had when I was a kid. My totally uncool uncle Juan (he was old too, he must have been almost 30 at the time, yuck) gave it to me for my seventh birthday. I remember his smile while I opened the small box with the beautiful orange cassette. Still have it today; it's one of my priciest possessions. And my uncle is now of course one of the coolest persons alive."

Comments

[Tim Auger]

No record transports me so instantly back to my university days as Sergeant Pepper. Still sounds fresh 50 years on. It was a dreamy summer!

[Edward Taylor]

Clues and evidence of Paul's death were out well before 1969. In fact the funeral scene on Sgt. Pepper's was not even the first clue, and that came out in 1967. As you said, it was 50 years ago today!

Here are just a few of the audio clues from Beatles albums: "He blew his mind out in a car." "Paul is dead. Miss him, miss him, miss him." "I bury Paul." "Here's another clue for you all, the walrus was Paul." "Turn me on dead man."

[Ken Tanaka]

Yes, probably like most people my age who heard this fun fact today my mind cycled through the following thoughts.

1. Has it REALLY been that long? (Start counting...). Yup, sure 'nuff, it has.
2. Damn, no wonder my skin doesn't look so great any more. I miss my hair, too.
3. It's nearing my nap time.

[FrasSmith]

Eee, I remember buying the first CD release when it was "only twenty years ago today"

[Steve Higgins]

I felt plenty old enough on 24th March, 2013 - the 40th anniversary of the release of Dark Side of the Moon!

[John Tonai]

Ringo wasn't an original Beatle. Pete Best was the first drummer

[Peter Croft]

I was born in February 1947, Mike, which means my high school years were 1960-64. Can you imagine what it was like? Portable transistor radios were just coming into use then (lovely big Japanese ones, National, now Panasonic) in leather cases, all knobs and dials. I was at a boarding school and all the rich farmers sons' parents brought them back from Singapore and Port Said.

In 1962,63,64, it used to be that we could listen to a Beatles song on one radio station, then when it finished, tune along the dial and there'd be another one, and another and so on. And this was out in the country in a relatively small town. Radio was big then.

We loved those early LPs. They cost more than I could afford, £2/12/6d in pre-dollar currency ($5.25), but I used to say that they were great value because every track was a winner, not like other artists where only one or two were hits. Anyway, who owned a gramophone? There was not even stereo then.

I can remember where I was when Sgt Pepper came out. I bought it (I was working by then, and building hi-fi amps), but for some reason I sold it again. No matter, I've got every Beatles album on CDs now. Hundreds of hits!

[TBannor]

Pete Best would disagree on the living original beatle. 😉

[Jim Wikowski]

Um - It's disputable whether Paul has died, but Pete Best is still kicking these days.

[Mike plews]

If I pull out Sgt Pepper it's just going to lead to Revolver and that means Rubber Soul is going to land on the wheel of steel and before you know it the weekend is gone.
You know how this ends. It always plays out like this.

[Joe B]

Yes, 50 years. A good part of a lifetime ago.Times good when your having flies.
jb

[Ken]

"Paul is dead" -> the original "fake news"!

[Steve Rosenblum]

I am pretty sure that the first copy of Sgt. Peppers that I bought was monaural (HiFi!) and I wore it out playing it on a simple record player that used something resembling a nail as a "stylus". I was playing in a rock band back then (Junior High) playing songs like Paperback Writer. Realizing that it was 50 years ago sure makes me feel old!

The only other album that I remember having the same impact on me back then was "Are You Experienced" by Jimi Hendrix. Both records were "disruptive" in their own way when they came out. It's hard for people who weren't around back then to appreciate how radical these records sounded to us back then. Now bands can do the kind of tricks that were incorporated into Sgt. Peppers by torturing a 4 track tape recorder, by clicking a mouse on computer.

[Speed]

I don't remember ever hearing the "glitch" after the end of A Day In The Life but there it is on the original (via Amazon). How did I miss it?

I do remember that there was no gap between Good Morning Good Morning and A Day In The Life.

I also remember the time, location and car I was driving when I first heard A Day In the Life and it's long sustained ending. First I laughed because it obviously (to me) had something to do with being high. Then I laughed again because every top 40 radio station was going to have to decide what to do with it -- play the whole thing or truncate it and make some public excuse for doing so. AOR (Album Oriented Rock) was still in its infancy.

[Henning Wulff]

1967 was a very good year. I knew a Beatles album was going to be released/was released for a while, but I was hitchhiking. June 1 I was in Ouarrzazate, Morocco after coming through Spain and Portugal. The previous winter I had worked in Munich, so I could ski the Alps each weekend, so I had been in Europe about a year. Between June 1 and about August 20, when I heard the album for the first time on a beach in Denmark, I travelled through Algeria during the 6 Day War, then Tunisia, Italy, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and West Germany. In youth hostels and cheap hotels I heard about the album and once even saw it, but nobody had the means to play it within my hearing. Then, near Nyborg, some Danish girls I met had brought a record player to the beach and played it. Once, twice, I don't know how many times. For hours. It was a good time.

I took a number of my favourite photos that year. My creativity, while hardly on a level near that of the Beatles, was also getting a workout.

[Tim Bradshaw]

By 'the blip on the end of A day in the life' do you mean the extremely famous thing in the run-out groove? Because that was very definitely there on the original record. I'm not sure if I have heard the new mix -- there is something called the 'deluxe' version on Spotify which may be it, and both it and the other version there have the run-out groove.

If that is it then either you (Mike) never heard the original LP, which I think can't be true, or US pressings didn't have the sound in the run-out groove.

(Also, if the Spotify 'deluxe' version is the new mix, yuk: the old everything-hard-left-or-hard-right-and-obviously-made-on-about-three-tracks mixes of Beatles albums were things of beauty, purity and minimalism when compared to modern mixes, in the same way a Nikon F1 is when compared to a moden DSLR with its vast encrustations of knobs and menus.)

[If I find the album I'll pull it out and see, but I'm fairly certain it's not on the US version of the LP because I would have remembered it. --Mike]

[Robin]

Wow, did you just use "She's Leaving Home" as an example of a good McCartney song?

And, yes, the run-out groove was always there on the original UK record. The USA desecrated Beatles albums and so cannot be used as a standard by which to judge them.

Personally, I like the effect on vinyl, deflating the pomposity of "A Day in the Life". Like "Her Majesty".

[David Comdico]

The end of Day in the Life is brilliant. The groove on the lp circles in on itself creating a loop and the album literally does not end. You can't do that with digital media. McCartney in particular was interested in Stockhausen and musique concrete - the influence for this idea. This is a good reminder for those who chastise him for Rockey Raccoon, which is intended to be as authentic as a Warhol soup can.

[Rob]

"She's Leaving Home" is arguably the worst song on "Sgt Pepper." OTOH, I have always felt that both the intro and reprise of "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" are amongst the best and most original songs on the album. Such wonderfully dissonant chords.

On the subject of Paul, he was responsible for some of the Beatles' greatest and worst songs. Such is genius. It's worth noting that not everything written by Bach and Beethoven is great either. Paul's post-Beatles career has been dismissed by some as pure drivel. Well amongst the drivel are some absolute gems, the sort of stuff that no other pop composer could ever touch.

[Christopher Lause]

I'm not sure how many people will recall, but the original Sgt. Peppers was recorded, mixed and released in glorious mono (as were all Beatles albums). When the remastered mono vinyl box set was released a few years ago, numerous critics praised it as being superior to the stereo version because it was true to the Beatles' and Martin's original vision. I won't jump into that debate - all I can say is that my copy of that mono box set, and Sgt. Peppers in particular, sounds glorious.

[Paul G]

The mono vinyl reissue has the closed groove at the end, and I'm given to understand that it's a fairly faithful reproduction of the original UK Parlophone release, without the low end roll off they had to use on the original to accommodate less than wonderful playback equipment.

Apparently there is a low frequency tone in there too. Not that I would notice that!

The mid-1990s UK stereo CD version I have, IIRC, just tacks the run out on the end of the last track.

The original US release may not have had that though. Don't have one to compare to.