Letters to the Editor
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somebody spoke and i went into a dream
All this effort just to trash Sgt. Pepper? Geez...
I got this album for my 13th birthday back in the late NINETIES. I had never heard anything like it. I must have listened to it 15 times over and over just that day. It literally changed my life, prompting me to learn more about the Beatles, then the 60's and radical politics to the point where I eventually broke free of the staunchly conservative ideals I was raised to hold. The course of my life could have been totally different if I hadn't heard Sgt. Pepper.
For people who aren't jaded music critics, Sgt. Pepper is still earth-shaking. It is a psychedelic album in the drug sense and in the sense of mental liberation through new sounds, images and ideas. Look at the the cover--the Beatles pose as military men in dayglo epaulets, leading a squadron of geniuses and freaks. You don't think that's iconic of the Summer of Love/Vietnam War era?