"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (McCartney – June 2, 1967)
Sgt. Peppers… – Side 1, Track 1 (2:02)
YouTube (McCartney live in Glastonbury)
From Wikipedia, Rolling Stone, and About.com, and Google –
"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" is a song written by Paul McCartney(credited to Lennon–McCartney), and first recorded and released in 1967, on the Beatles' album of the same name. The song appears twice on the album: as the opening track (segueing into "With a Little Help from My Friends"), and as "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)", the penultimate track (segueing into "A Day in the Life"). As the title track, the lyrics introduce the fictional band that performs in the album.
Since its original album release, the song has also been released on singles, on compilation albums, and has been performed by several other artists including Jimi Hendrix, U2, and a comic interpretation by Bill Cosby, using the opening to John Phillip Sousa's Washington Post March as the instrumental bridge.
History –
The title track to what many consider to be their magnum opus, "Sgt. Pepper" was composed by Paul well after work began on the band's latest album. Pepper, the LP, was originally envisioned as a concept album about revisiting one's childhood, which led to the single released that spring, "Strawberry Fields Forever / Penny Lane." But when McCartney came up with this song, it immediately set the tone for the rest of the work.
Several different sources served as inspiration for this track: while flying home to England from an African holiday in November 1966, longtime band associate Mal Evans innocently asked what the "S" and "P" stood for on the in-flight salt and pepper shakers. This led to the concept of a Sgt. Pepper, which was fleshed out into the unwieldy title as a parody of American psychedelic bands and their ever-trippier monikers. During recording, road manager Neil Aspinall, noting that it was Paul who used to greet the audience after the first song during their stage days and then bid them farewell before the last song, suggested that the fake "band" welcome the listeners in the first song and then say goodbye at the end -- leading directly to the creation of the minute-long "Reprise" just before "A Day In The Life."
Composed just before the recording date of February 1, 1967, "Sgt. Pepper" was a simple and relatively short song, and was therefore arranged and performed in one session. The vocal tracks were completed the following day, and in keeping with McCartney's concept of the pseudo-group as a sort of psychedelic marching band, four French horns were added on March 3 (with John Burden transcribing Paul's vocal lines into an actual chart), along with a lead guitar intro from George and a spontaneously added lead from Paul that begins during the last verse ("I don't really want to stop the show").
On March 6, work was completed with producer George Martin dubbing in crowd sounds at Paul's request: the opening crowd noise (and laughter in the bridge) were taken from a 1961 Martin recording of a London performance by Beyond The Fringe, Dudley Moore and Peter Cook's highly influential comedy duo. The orchestral tuning up noises were added from the actual rehearsals for "A Day In The Life," while the screaming when "Billy Shears" is announced was dubbed in from an actual recording of the Beatles themselves at the Hollywood Bowl in August 1965. (Remarkably, "With A Little Help From My Friends" -- the song that introduces Ringo as Billy -- had not been composed at this point.)
Authorship and recording –
In November 1966, on the flight back to England after a holiday, McCartney conceived an idea in which an entire album would be role-played, with each of the Beatles assuming an alter-ego in the "Lonely Hearts Club Band", which would then perform a concert in front of an audience. The inspiration is said to have come when roadie Mal Evans innocently asked McCartney what the letters “S” and “P” stood for on the pots on their in-flight meal trays, and McCartney explained it was for salt and pepper. This then led to the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band concept, as well as the song.
The group's road manager Neil Aspinall suggested the idea of Sgt. Pepper being the compère, as well as the reprise at the end of the album. According to his diaries, Evans may have also contributed to the song. John Lennon attributed the idea for Sgt. Pepper to McCartney, although the song is officially credited toLennon–McCartney. The song was recorded in Abbey Road's number 2 studio, with Martin producing, and Geoff Emerick engineering. Work on the song started on 1 February 1967, and after three further sessions the recording was complete on 6 March 1967.
Song structure –
On the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, the song opens to the sound of a chattering audience, and an orchestra tuning up, which was taken from the 10 February orchestra session for "A Day in the Life". The crowd sounds edited into the song were recorded in the early '60s by Martin, during a live recording of the stage show Beyond the Fringe. When the song itself begins, the band introduces its members.
The song's structure is:
Introduction (instrumental)
Verse
Bridge (instrumental)
Refrain
Bridge
Verse
Instrumental bridge and transition into "With a Little Help from My Friends".
The song is in G major, with a 4/4 meter. A horn quartet was used to fill out the instrumental sections.
Reprise –
"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)" is a somewhat modified repea tof the opening song at a faster tempo with heavier instrumentation. The track opens with McCartney's count-in (retained in the manner of "I Saw Her Standing There", the first song on their first album); between 2 and 3, Lennon jokingly interjects "Bye!". Starr starts the song proper by playing the drum part unaccompanied for four bars, at the end of which a brief bass glissando cues the full ensemble of two distorted guitars, bass, drums and overdubbed percussion. While the original track had stayed largely in the key of G major (except for transient modulation to F and perhaps C in the bridges), the reprise starts in F and features a rare example in the Beatles' output of modulation, to G. The mono and stereo mixes of the song differ slightly: the former has a fractionally different transition from the previous song, and includes crowd noise and laughter in the opening bars that are absent from the stereo mix.
The idea for a reprise was Aspinall's, who thought that as there was a "welcome song", there should be a "goodbye song". The song contains broadly the same melody as the opening version, but with different lyrics and omitting the "It's wonderful to be here" section. At 1:18, it is one of the Beatles' shorter songs (the shortest is "Her Majesty" at 0:23). The reprise was recorded on 1 April 1967, two months after the version that opens the album. At the end of the track, Martin's pre-recorded applause sample segues into the final track of the album, "A Day in the Life".
The original recording of the song is included on the following Beatles compilation albums: 1967-1970 (1973), Yellow Submarine Songtrack (1999). A run-through of the reprise is included on the outtakes album Anthology 2 (1996). In 2006, the reprise was re-released on the album Love, which was a theatrical production by Cirque du Soleil. The updated version is a remix featuring samples of other Beatles' songs.
The notebook used by McCartney containing the lyrics for "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and other songs was put up for sale in 1998.
Recording –
Takes: 9
Personnel
John Lennon – Harmony vocal
Paul McCartney – Lead vocal, lead guitar (1965 Epiphone E230TD(V) Casino), bass guitar (1964 Rickenbacker 400IS)
George Harrison – Lead and rhythm guitar (1965 Epiphone E230TD(V) Casino)
Ringo Starr – Drums (Ludwig)
James W. Buck, Neil Sanders, Tony Randall, John Burden – French horns
Live performances –
In 1967, Jimi Hendrix played the song live at the Saville Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue, which was leased by Brian Epstein, only three days after it had been released on record, with McCartney and George Harrison in the audience. Another live version by Hendrix recorded at the Isle of Wight Festival was included on a posthumous live album, Blue Wild Angel: Live at the Isle of Wight.
"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was never performed live by the Beatles. It was performed by three of The Beatles (McCartney, Harrison, and Starr) plus Eric Clapton on 19 May 1979, at Clapton's wedding party. Paul McCartney played it live on the 1989/1990 Paul McCartney World Tour. On subsequent tours he would play the reprise version and use that as a segue into "The End". When the performance is released, it usually is listed as "Sgt. Pepper's/The End," shortening the name of the song. When Paul performs it, he usually adds the count-in after the drum part begins, as opposed to Paul's count-in preceding the drum opening.
McCartney and U2 played the song at the start of the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park, London on 2 July 2005. The song, starting with "It was twenty years ago" was chosen amongst others to commemorate that Live 8 took place approximately twenty years after Live Aid. The single was released for charity on iTunes, and set a world record for the fastest-selling online song of all time.
In 2007, Bryan Adams and Stereophonics recorded the album's two versions of the song for It Was 40 Years Ago Today, a television film with contemporary acts recording the album's songs using the same studio, technicians and recording techniques as the original.
On 4 April 2009, McCartney performed the song during a benefit concert at New York's Radio City Music Hall and segued it into "With A Little Help From My Friends", sung by Ringo.
In 2009, Cheap Trick released a live album and DVD called Sgt. Pepper Live, which is a live performance of the entire original album, including the title song and reprise.
In 2011, Robbie Williams performed the song on Take That's Progress tour, replacing "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" with "Robbie Williams and the Take That Band", and "Mr Martin told the Band to play", a reference to Take That's manager in the 90's Nigel Martin-Smith.
Trivia –
Always up on new trends, the Beatles rocked harder than ever on this song, in part due to the influence of Jimi Hendrix, who had taken London by storm in late 1966. Three days after the Pepper album had been officially released in Britain, Paul and George ventured to London's Saville Theatre to watch Hendrix in action and were pleasantly surprised when he opened with a cover of "Pepper," rehearsed just moments before taking the stage! (Jimi included the song in many later setlists, and a recorded version exists from the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival.)
In 1971, fresh from the Beatles' acrimonious breakup, John recorded a scathing attack on Paul called "How Do You Sleep?" The song, which can be found on Lennon's Imagine album, opens with the line "So Sgt. Pepper took you by surprise / You better see right through that mother's eyes." This can be seen as John's resentment of Paul taking creative control of the band during 1967, which more or less started with this track.
The mono mix of this song features louder crowd and lead guitar noises than the stereo mix.
Paul, George and Ringo performed this song at Eric Clapton's wedding to Pattie "Layla" Harrison in May 1979.
This song was released as a US single in 1978, along with "A Little Help" on the a-side and "A Day In The Life" on the b-side.
Today in Beatles History (From The Internet Beatles Album) February 9 –
1963 – "Please Please Me" number 39 (UK Melody Market chart). Concert at the Odeon, Sutherland (Helen Shapiro tour).
1964 – 20.00. 1st live US performance: CBS's Ed Sullivan Show. US rating record (72.7%).
– Pre-recording of an additional performance for the Ed Sullivan Show.
1966 – "We Can Work It Out", 10th and last week in the Top 30 (UK New Musical Express chart).
– Rubber Soul number 1, 10th week (UK New Musical Express chart).
1967 – Regent Sound Studio. Time unknown. Recording: "Fixing A Hole" (takes 1-3).
– Producer: George Martin; Engineer: Adrian Ibbetson; 2nd Engineer: unknown. – Recording of rhythm track, vocals, harpsichord for "Fixing A Hole". First session for EMI recorded at an studio other than Abbey Road.
– Transmission of "Penny Lane"/"Strawberry Fields Forever" clips on BBC-TV's "Top Of The Pops".
1972 – Wings start a British tour.
1974 – John's live performance.
1990 – Paul's concert in Worcester ("Get Back Tour").
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