Sargent Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band -40th Anniversary
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Beatle's magnum opus, ranking #1 on Rolling Stone's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2003, will be 40 years old in on June 1st. In The Times critic Kenneth Tynan described Sgt. Pepper as "a decisive moment in the history of Western civilization."
The album, which included for the first time the printing of lyrics on the back cover, is a global icon that transcends generations -a breathtaking, a mysterious and colorful pop art collage by Peter Blake that showed the band, in gaudy mock-military costumes, presiding over the burial of the "old" Beatles, with head images of high and low cultural icons in the background including included Marilyn Monroe, Bob Dylan, Karl Marx, WC Fields, Aldous Huxley, Marlene Dietrich, Laurel and Hardy, Oscar Wilde, Marlon Brando, Leo Gorcey, Lenny Bruce and Mae West.
The Sgt. Pepper period ushered in some important musical innovations, both from within the band and the rest of the musical industry as complex lyrical themes were explored for the first time in popular music, and songs were growing longer (such as Dylan's "Desolation Row," "Like a Rolling Stone," and "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands").
Posted by Casey Kazan.
---Sgt. Pepper as "a decisive moment in the history of Western civilization."---
the effects of LSD as "a decisive moment in the history of Western civilization"?
Hey, lighten up! Go ask Kenneth Tynan, Times of London critic who made the statement (promblem is, he's dead). I'm sure he is referring to "cultural history," in which case he might have a point. : ) Casey
Posted by: yeti | May 26, 2007 at 03:38 PM