Rainard Jalen

[NB FIRSTLY let me just say, particularly in response to a boo boo comment, Sgt Pepper is definitely not a rip-off album in any sense at all, just as Revolver is not. Neither sounded like anything coming out in Rock music at the same time, and for good reason: they were not really Rock albums in the first place! I will clarify this further in the coming "case for". Rip off territory only really begins with The White Album and its relentless onslaught of parody; but that's another discussion entirely]



Ok, so here we go. The case, yes, for:



You can question its impact, you can debate its significance, you can debate its influence, you can debate its innovation; well, here's something you cannot debate: 12 good songs and true. Not only 12 good songs, but 12 songs that totally redefined what could be done in the studio context. The production of this record is absolutely immaculate. George Martin's arrangements are simply outstanding when placed in the context of the other records that were coming out in 1966 and 1967. Now, one may opt to point out that there were scarcely any other bands in the whole world who had access to not only the level of equipment and technical expertise but above all the unrestricted hours (rumour has it that it took in excess of 700 hours to record!): what could other contemporary bands have done with the same sort of resources at their desposal? But this is largely beyond the point. It doesn't matter what other bands could have done - it's what the Bealtes and George Martin DID do. And sonically the results are truly in all senses groundbreaking and awesome - in the correct context!

But even removed from context, just listen to the polyphony interweaved throughout this album. The counterpoint between the vocal melodies and the simultaneous instrumental melodies (on songs like the title track for example) simply displays a brilliant and incredibly sophisticated level of composition light years in front of absolutely everything and anything that had ever been in the mainstream. Even though I personally credit Martin with such strokes of genius, it doesn't matter who was responsible: we're talking about the album here, and not how it came to be.

Next: the breadth of styles covered. The Beatles had always shown (an often bizarrely) wide and diverse range of influences even from their very first album. On Revolver they totally took this to the next level going far beyond wherever they'd been before in terms of eclecticism. Sgt Pepper continues along these lines but pushes even further. The Beatles possess such a startling diversity of both styles and moods on this record: the funky hard rock guitar of the title track, the upbeat cheery singalong pop of With A Little Help From My Friends, the trippy psychedelia of Lucy In The Sky, the haunting whimsy of Fixing A Whole, Harrison's Indian-influenced Within You Without You, Lennon's circus song For The Benefit Of Mr Kite, the music hall of When I'm Sixty Four, the apparently Kinks influenced Lovely Rita, the fractured pop of A Day In The Life, the classical-tinged melodrama and Greek chorus of She's Leaving Home...

Oscillating between hard rock here, vaudeville there, a bit of chamber interspersed, the extent of what is covered here really is phenomenal, but it's not in the range where the genius lies: it's the point that, most importantly of all, it all sounds as if it belongs perfectly together. There's quite distinctly a red thread running through the whole thing. Somebody else on the boards once referred to it as the Sgt Pepper beat, and I agree with that notion, namely that there's a certain tempo and drumming style mostly consistent throughout the record that makes the tracks feel distinctly representative of this album as a unified statement.

The ambition... the important question is, who actually WERE the Beatles? This point ties in with something boo boo wrote: smartarses will take shots at the album and a lot of the Beatles' other material for not really being in the spirit of pure rock. They will point out, probably correctly, that the tradition of rock music that was being created in the era was one in which the notion of melody and tuneful vocals were to take a back seat. No longer were these things to lie at the centre of a song, but rather high technical proficiency, a harder more rugged sound and the riff were to replace them. But slating the Beatles for keeping the focus on melody as the heart and centre of their music is a ridiculous criticism to level at them. This is forgetting who the Beatles were. They were NOT some radical ultra-political hippie underground rock phenomenon. They were a pop band from Liverpool who started off as a beat group. They were in the grand tradition of melody and the vocal groups - the tradition of 40s and 50s popular music. Their vision WAS pop and melody, not brutal and rugged rock'n'roll. Attacking them for not really being "Rock" is like attacking Beethoven for not being Jazz. It wasn't the aim, and they never pretended that it was.

But as it turns out, the aim was in many ways very much more commendable than merely trying to be a rock band. The Beatles stuck to their own musical vision, but decided to go beyond being just plain pop. They got sophisticated instead, and tried to be interesting, artistic, clever, vital. And, without being composers or truly virtuosic instrumentalists (in the sense of the Blues players), they managed to pull off all four and in spectacular fashion no less. That they could transform themselves from mere jaunty Merseybeat pop to the heights of musical sophistication and wild adventurous experimentalism that they attained is really nothing short of remarkable. Again, it may not really be "rock" in the same vein as the other music of the period, but it wasn't supposed to be --- and then ends up being an awful lot more in the same breath.

The Beatles stuck to their fundamental underlying vision of pop music and came up with the most ambitious, eclectic, adventurous and sophisticated pop album that there had ever been. And it is timeless, sounding just as much at home on an MP3 player in 2008 as it did on a Vinyl in 1967.