Classic Album Discussion - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

[The Knize]

<There's more to the difference between the EMI and Capitol albums than just the number of cuts.>

Sorry. We are on the same page completely. The US Revolver was just short three cuts from the Brit version, but other Capitol versions of Beatle albums not only had fewer cuts but were switched around in other ways from the Brit versions. Pretty amazing for some American music exec to decide he knew better that the Beatles on which album "If I Needed Someone" should go.

I agree that Ringo's drumming comes through much better. I have always felt that Ringo was a really good drummer though. Kind of like Charlie Watts. Not flashy, but right on time. And he would truly be missed if he were not there.

 

[HoratioCaine]

McCartney's bass work is extraordinary.

I'm really coming to appreciate it more and more. I remember back when the '87 CDs came out, a reviewer in Playboy wrote something to the effect that on the "new" CDs, you could really hear what a good drummer Ringo was, but that Paul's bass work was mediocre. Since I was just getting into The Beatles at the time (yes, I was born after they broke up, alas...), that colored my perceptions of his performances. Of course, the CD mastering of the era didn't help much, since the bass and lower frequencies suffered the most in the transfers. While none of the band members were vituoso musicians, I think Paul and Ringo were really fine players of their instruments. Pual's contribution (as a player) on a lot of songs is indispensible. Right now I'm thinking of "Something," "Baby You're a Rich Man," and "With a Little Help From My Friends," but there are many others, too, where his work really shines.

 

[HoratioCaine]

Sorry. We are on the same page completely.

I'm sorry too - I had a feeling you were cognizant of the artistic differences, but I didn't make that clear in my post. I apologize if I came off as pedantic or condescending. As you can probably tell, this is a subject on which I have some strong opinions and a lot to say.

 

[jazzman]

...While none of the band members were vituoso musicians, I think Paul and Ringo were really fine players of their instruments. Pual's contribution (as a player) on a lot of songs is indispensible. Right now I'm thinking of "Something," "Baby You're a Rich Man," and "With a Little Help From My Friends," but there are many others, too, where his work really shines.

I've got a slightly different take on how good McCartney and Starr were. I don't think we can fairly compare Ringo to Keith Moon or some wizard who is recording today. He was THE drummer on the greatest body of recorded rock over a seven year period, when most of the band's work defined the word "innovative."

As for McCartney, he was doing innovative and interesting things on bass at a time when no one, or almost no one, was even thinking about the bass as anything more than a rhythm instrument, at least in rock. With the reissues, it's much easier to hear that he was re-inventing the role of the bass even before the band's creativity took off in 1966. The other great bassists quickly noticed, but I don't recall anyone praising McCartney for his bass work back in the day. (Alas, I was not born after they stopped recording.)

 

[johnniegold]

I am glad you mentioned "Baby, You're A Rich Man" because Paul's bass lines are great. There are so many to choose from to listen to Paul's great bass work. Check out Nowhere Man, Rain and Paperback Writer. From the movie LET IT BE, check out Paul's fretwork on Get Back during the rooftop concert.

As for Ringo, his drumming on Baby, You're A Rich Man is stellar. Hone in on Ringo's work on both the Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour album. The structure of these songs allowed him to be much more creative and his talent really comes through.

 

[The Knize]

I'm sorry too - I had a feeling you were cognizant of the artistic differences, but I didn't make that clear in my post. I apologize if I came off as pedantic or condescending. As you can probably tell, this is a subject on which I have some strong opinions and a lot to say.

I am loving this thread!

No reason for you to apologize. You are writing very articulately, obviously based on a lot of thought and knowledge. That does not seem at all pedantic to me. And as far as condescension, I'm "at your feet" on this stuff, but I do not think you are talking down to me! What I was saying sorry about was writing sloppily and in sort of short hand, and thus minimizing the differences in the EMI and Capitol albums. And thus having you go to all the trouble to write out a clarification. But in fact I really had forgotten how many differences there were between the EMI and Capitol albums. It really is shocking.

Also, I really was not aware of how different various mono and stereo, etc. versions, singles and album versions, too, of varous cuts are. I have read up a little in between time.

Re Ringo as a drummer: No he is not Keith Moon or Travis Barker, or even, say, Mitch Mitchell, but he does not have to be to be great. Wasn't Pete Best replaced with Ringo in part becuase of skill issues? Anyway, I will go back to Charlie Watts as an example. I think CW is acknowledged as one of the great drummers in rock, but he is far from a flash guy.

Paul as a great bass player is a new found fascination to me. Keep the examples coming. The cut that actually grabbed my attention was actually Please Mr. Postman, which Paul literally there playing what I assume is the James Jamerson part. (Fasciinating song anyway. Motown's (Tamla at the time) first number 1 hit on Billboard pop chart, and first million seller. Brian Holland, before there was a Holland-Dozier and Holland was one of the song writers. It is said that Marvin Gaye, of all, things, plays drums on the Marvelettes version.) John's vocal just kills on this cut, too. Those were different times. Can any one imagine, say, The Killers, putting out a version of what ever the latest Rhianna hit is?

It is not quite completely true that no one was doing anything interesting on bass in the day, and there was about to be a lot going on. There was, of course, Jamerson, and I assume every good R&B bass player--Willie Dixon comes to mind. John Entwhistle and I suspect John Paul Jones. But then Jack Cassidy, Rick Danko, Jack Bruce, I suppose. Bill Wyman probably deserves more credi than he gets and Keith Richards actually laid done pretty good bass work on some Stones cuts, as to Jimi Hendrix on some of his releases. Interesting to me, too, that Brian WIlson, somewhat the Beatles compeititon, was a bass player. Not sure he was really doing anything so interesting on bass though!

 

[The Knize]

Sorry to highjack this thread by the way. Sgt. Pepper is sounding excellent in remaster. Is not hard to listen to after all. Also in retrospect it is not a very psychedelic album really. Amazing how little he Beatles did at any point that sounds dated.

I did not think I would could stand to listen to She's Leaving Home again, but its good, if really, really corny. Did Paul ever sing so affectingly again after that? What the heck happened to Paul after the Beatles anyway. He seem so much more versatile in the Beatles. Lovely Rita seems like a nice cut. Something of a novelty cut, but there is a massive amount of music in it. Wonder why the Beatles picked this one to put so much effort into? Here is an example of Paul really playing bass. Nice drums, too.

Re great drums and bass, She Came in Through the Bathroom Window has great of both. Seems like a simple tune really, but it is not played in a simple manner!

 

[johnniegold]

Just picked up the remastered REVOLVER. Now I have 5 of the remastered albums so far. Why didn't I just buy the box set? Oh well.

 

[SRock]

Just picked up the remastered REVOLVER. Now I have 5 of the remastered albums so far. Why didn't I just buy the box set? Oh well.

I have 4 so far. Probably should have just picked up the box set as well.

 

[ratcheer]

For me, this was the album that changed music, forever. I had dabbled with Yellow Submarine and Magical Mystery Tour, but they never really grabbed me. Sgt. Pepper's was my eye opener, the one that moved me from early 60's rock and roll to more modern music. A watershed. An epiphany.

I honestly think it is the greatest album of all time.

Tim

 

[HoratioCaine]

Well, I bit the bullet and went out and bought ALL of the stereo remasters, with the exception of Yellow Submarine. (I just didn't see the point in paying for a whole disc featuring only four songs that don't appear elsewhere in the catalog, especially considering all four songs sound superior on the Yellow Submarine Songtrack anyway.) I'm working my way through them in chronological order, including the non-album singles, meaning I'm jockeying between the albums and the Past Masters set. I'm on Beatles for Sale right now.

Bottom line, this is an excellent sounding set up to this point in the chronology. The stereo mix of the first two albums does have some pretty extreme separation, but they still sound good on a good hi-fi system in a room with fairly ambient acoustics, which helps diffuse a bit of the separation. On headphones they would no doubt be infuriating, but I'm choosing not to listen to them that way. A Hard Day's Night and Beatles for Sale sound excellent in stereo - very lifelike and detailed, with centered vocals and less extreme instrument separation.

Another interesting thing to note is that the remastering engineers fixed some technical shortcomings in the recordings themselves. For instance, a very noticeably bad edit at the beginning of "I Call Your Name" (where the cowbell starts) has been fixed to the point of seamlessness. They left the actual performances well enough alone, however. Alan Rouse, head of the remastering team at Abbey Road, explains the process: "What we did agree on was that if it was part of the Beatles' performance, we weren't going to remove it. The squeaky chair at the end of "A Day in the Life," breaths, coughs, anything that was actually really part of the performance, those stayed. Anything that we considered to be technical - clicks, sibilance, pops, bad edits, drop-outs, hum, things that were a technical problem - we would either try and improve them or, if possible, remove them or, repair them." (From the 9/3/09 issue of Rolling Stone magazine.)

I am still waiting for the mono set, but the stereo discs sound so good that it causes me to reconsider if I want to drop the cash on it. (I can cancel it up to the time they start filling the order, which won't be for another ten days, at least.) I will probably still see the order through, because without hearing them, how can I know what I'm missing? It should make for some interesting comparisons, at least. But in terms of pure enjoyability - without the spotlight of critical analysis - the stereo discs deliver the goods, at least as far as the first four albums go. And in my opinion, they do sound quite a bit better than U.S. remasters in the Capitol box sets. We'll see if my opinion changes as I continue the journey. More to follow.

 

[dog]

Love the album, love the Beatles.

If any of you ever come to Cleveland, you owe it to yourself to visit the Rock Hall once (and only once... the admission is unjustafiably steep). Preferably during a weekday. It's a rare occassion anymore I actually get goosebumps, but seeing such an iconic thing as John Lennon's Sgt. Pepper's jacket in person is incredible.

Another Clevelander! Hi.

There are a lot of great things to see in the Beatles exhibit and in almost all of the exhibits at the Rock Hall. I loved John Lennon's old report cards. There were notes scribbled in them, something along the lines of: "How do you expect to grow up and be successful with these types of grades?" lol.

 

[gotsoul82]

I love the Beatles, but feel that Sgt. Peppers is one of the most overrated albums of our time. The only song on there that I care for is "A Day In the Life". It was only a slight stumbling block, because The White Album more than made up for Sgt Peppers, Magical Mystery Tour, and Yellow Submarine, which I consider to be the nadir of their career. I'm not very psychedelic I guess.

I have been listening to Sgt Pepper's since I was 4 years old. At first it was just a fun album with funny sounds and wierd words. I grew up with that album always somewhere in the background. Whenever I return to it, I notice something new and subtly profound things. They may be in the form of musical textures, a chord change, or a lyrical passage that now makes sense.
I think that Sgt. Pepper's more than lives up to its hype. It encompasses so many timeless elements after which every musician spends his or her life chasing.
It pushed new musical territories that had not quite been discovered. All of the great composers of instrumental music are know for this. The Beatles (as well as The Beach Boys with Pet Sounds) realized that rock did not have to be a set of prescribed instruments that fit into a particular niche within the typical rock band format. They used tape loops, guitar effects, sitar, orchestral instrumentation, synthesizers, and the all new 8 track technology to create not just a rock album, but a collage of (then) disonent sounds and instruments working in musical harmony. Sgt. Pepper's is an exquisit piece of avant garde art. In this paragraph I should also include that George Harrison, the most artistically overlooked Beatle, was the first rock musician to incorporate sounds from traditional Eastern music (the sitar).
I think that lyrically, Sgt. Pepper's runs the gamut. There are ballads "She's Leaving Home", there are spiritual lyrics "Within You Witout You", there are some psychologically introspective lyrics "Fixing a Hole", and I don't know how to catagorize "A Day in the Life", but I would place that in the lyrically and instrumentally awesome category of song writing.
Many practicing musicians, including myself, always strive to achieve some kind of creative individuality with thier music making. I think Sgt. Pepper's encompasses all of the elements for which we strive to achieve.
For those shavers that have never given Sgt. Pepper's a real consideration, I recomment you give it a good listen next time you are in one of those introspective moods. Listen to the story of the lyrics. Listen to all of the subtle musical textures. Everytime you hear the album, you will notice more things. Hopefully you will think to yourself somthing profound about the music like (brace yourselves), "Wow."
Yeah, music is really swell. Gosh.

-Andrew

 

[gotsoul82]

Correction:
Sgt Pepper's was created on a four track recorder with tape bouncing, not eight tracks.

 

[The Knize]

Excellent post, Gotsoul82. Very thought provoking. Because of the remasters I have been listening to Sgt. Peppers a lot since this thread started. As I think I said early on, I cannot pretend to be objective about it. I have heard it too many times, and during much of that time it seemed really important. And I am not a musician, so I really have no grounds to speak to some of the things you mention. At the end of the day, I really have nothing to contribute as to avant garde art scale of things. I think you are probably right.

I think at this point in my life SP seems to be a really good piece of work, and, undoubtedly, a very important piece of work. To me, not something I like as much as some other of the Beatles work. I would not put it, as ClubManRob did, with Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine. Those two efforts do strike me as "the nadir of their career"!

Fun stuff to think about.

 

[johnniegold]

with Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine. Those two efforts do strike me as "the nadir of their career"!

Fun stuff to think about.

Maybe in Beatle-land an album that includes such classics as:

The Fool On The Hill
I Am The Walrus
Strawberry Fields Forever
Penny Lane
All You Need Is Love

would be considered a low point. Any other recording artist would have referred to it as the pinnacle of their career. Nadir indeed! C'mon man.

 

[HoratioCaine]

Maybe in Beatle-land an album that includes such classics as:

The Fool On The Hill
I Am The Walrus
Strawberry Fields Forever
Penny Lane
All You Need Is Love

would be considered a low point. Any other recording artist would have referred to it as the pinnacle of their career. Nadir indeed! C'mon man.

It just shows how prolific The Beatles were that the latter part of one year (in this case 1967) should be considered a "period." While the MMT album as it is currently known does feature the songs listed above, in reality the MMT project only featured the first six songs on the LP:

Magical Mystery Tour
The Fool on the Hill
Flying
Blue Jay Way
Your Mother Should Know
I Am the Walrus

In England, these were released on a double EP. In the U.S., they were released on one side of the MMT LP, with all the remaining non-album singles from 1967 comprising the second side of the album. Thus, technically speaking, side two of the album featured songs from other Beatles "periods": Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane were recorded during the Sgt. Pepper sessions, and were released as a double-A sided single prior to release of Sgt. Pepper to appease EMI. The other songs were all singles or b-sides released between Sgt. Pepper and MMT, but were not a part of the MMT project.

So yeah, the MMT project itself was a bit of a misstep, but 1967 as a whole was still a very prolific year for The Beatles, wherein they produced some of their best music.

As far as Yellow Submarine goes, I don't even really consider that a "period." The actual period was the lull between the White Album and Abbey Road, when they were working on the sessions for the ill-fated Get Back album, which eventually became the Let It Be album and film. The Yellow Submarine film was conceived of and executed by others, and The Beatles hardly had anything to do with it. It's not even their voices in the film. The band didn't even record new songs for the album; they just took four unreleased songs that had been lying around and donated them to the project. "Hey Bulldog" was recorded around the same time as "Lady Madonna," in early '68. The other songs dated to 1967: "Only a Northern Song" was a leftover from the Sgt. Pepper sessions, and "All Together Now" and "It's All Too Much" come from the period of singles between the Sgt. Pepper and MMT albums. I agree that as an album, Yellow Submarine is quite weak, but it barely warrants being considered a Beatles "effort." Why it continues to be offered as a separate disc is beyond me. In my opinion, fans and the catalog itself would be better served if the four unique songs had been put in the Past Masters collection - which, in the mono set, is where they now reside.

 

[The Knize]

Maybe in Beatle-land an album that includes such classics as:

The Fool On The Hill
I Am The Walrus
Strawberry Fields Forever
Penny Lane
All You Need Is Love

would be considered a low point. Any other recording artist would have referred to it as the pinnacle of their career. Nadir indeed! C'mon man.

I will give you Strawberry Fields and probably Penny Lane, both were released on a single before Sgt. P. They were intended to be part of SP and George Martin has said that he regrets leaving them off. I think SP would have been better off by far having those cuts on it. SF was my favorite Beatles cut for a long time and may still be.

I am not sure how I feel about Walrus. It seemed really good then. In retrospect it seems a little too psychedelic!?

I never was wild about Fool on the Hill or All You Need is Love, but I will give you that the latter was popular for sure.

I am being overly dramatic for effect, I guess!

Magical Mystery Tour is probably not a good example of anything. It was a full album in the US but only 6 tracks in the UK. Not fair to compare it to the full-on project that Sgt. P.

I do agree that the Beatles worst, their nadir if you would, if still pretty good, and a lot better than most groups achieve.

 

[johnniegold]

In England, these were released on a double EP. In the U.S., they were released on one side of the MMT LP, with all the remaining non-album singles from 1967 comprising the second side of the album. Thus, technically speaking, side two of the album featured songs from other Beatles "periods": Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane were recorded during the Sgt. Pepper sessions, and were released as a double-A sided single prior to release of Sgt. Pepper to appease EMI. The other songs were all singles or b-sides released between Sgt. Pepper and MMT, but were not a part of the MMT project.

I will give you Strawberry Fields and probably Penny Lane, both were released on a single before Sgt. P. They were intended to be part of SP and George Martin has said that he regrets leaving them off. I think SP would have been better off by far having those cuts on it. SF was my favorite Beatles cut for a long time and may still be.


Magical Mystery Tour is probably not a good example of anything. It was a full album in the US but only 6 tracks in the UK. Not fair to compare it to the full-on project that Sgt. P.

I do agree that the Beatles worst, their nadir if you would, if still pretty good, and a lot better than most groups achieve.

Where on earth did they ever get the idea to take songs from other recording periods and put another album together?

HENCE:

Spoiler

 

[jazzman]

Just saw a short news story in the inter tubes: all of the Beatles remasters were in the Billboard top 50 within 5 days of their release--all separate stereo CDs, the stereo set, and the mono set--selling 2.25 million copies in the U.S., Japan, and the U.K. We could probably get together and write a book about what we think this means about the quality of the music they stopped making in 1969 and the quality of everything else the biz has put out since then.