Letters to the Editor
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Pepper Ruined Rock
I've always thought Pepper doesn't really rate because it doesn't rock. It's more like show tunes. Because of it, we've since had to endure a lot of schlock and lounge music that people have mistaken for rock. And I love the Beatles. But give me "I Saw Her Standing There" or "Taxman" any day.
It made an impression at the time because it sounded so different. (I'm old enough to remember.) But I'd rather listen to any other album of theirs except Abbey Road and Let It Be. Of the later albums only Revolver and the White Album rate for me.
(And the Rolling Stones were great up through Beggar's Banquet--almost nothing after that except Sticky Fingers and Get Yer Ya Ya's Out! Exile on Main Street, like Pepper, was way over-praised. Brian Jones was the one!)
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40 years later, we're still arguing over the same music and names.
Music criticism aside (or what passes for it in Salon) there must be something in the album to make everyone go ballistic on every point-whether it was bad, good, better than the Stones, or whatever.
For 40 years, we've been having this argument; isn't it time to just shut up and let the music speak for itself? It was a different time, different place and for those who lived through it, epochal. For others who came later, it wasn't.
So friggin' what? I liked it then (and I was young enough to have the album when it first came out) and I still like it now.
Sure, parts of it are dated, some are just down right corny, and couldn't hold up the space on liner notes. It was an album that kinda spoke to the time and place.
People remember it from where they were. We don't need music critics to tell us what we know in our minds and hearts.
Salon, get music critics who actually know what the hell they're talking about next time, ok?
It would save a lot of hot air from everyone.
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Just one question...
Have these two reviewers graduated from elementary school yet?
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The Authors don't have a clue about Sergeant Pepper
It's not surprising to me that some people, especially those too young to have been contemporaneous (or shortly thereafter) following the Beatles, would be a little puzzled by Sergeant Pepper, or not totally “get it”. Abbey Road and some of the other albums might sound better to such folks.
But to those of us who lived it, Pepper was amazing. It broke new ground. It was great for all the reasons mentioned by llkraus above, and on many other levels as well. Take a look at what the Beatles’ rock and roll peers thought about it. They were amazed and inspired.
I had to laugh at the one of the authors’ cracks about the girl who left home (presumable, She's Leaving Home). That shows you totally don’t get the album. It’s too much to explain here.
But, to each her own.
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Beatles v. Rolling Stones --
At the end of their first visit to the US, after their first two appearances on "The Ed Sullivan Show," John Lennon told Ed Sullivan: "Bring over The Rolling Stones". And Ed Sullivan did.
That's all that need be said. But I'll add this bit more:
The Beatles (about wom a few of us learned in October, 1963, and December, 1963) came in to the US on a #1 and onto the #1 entertainment show on TV. From that point the "booked it" -- and everyone elese, ever after, cahsed them. And never caught them.
John Lennon was correct when he said The Rolling Stones copied everything The Beatles did. The next Rolling Stones' LP after "Sgt. Pepper." was the out-of-character "Their Stantic Majesties Request". (And who are among the photographs on the cover? The individual Beatles.)
And The Beatles continue to outsell The Rolling Stones.
Most of those who comment here who grew up during those years have it right, from their various points of view.
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This Guy Just Doesn't Get It
Whatever, dude. Not impressed with your analysis at all.
Pet Sounds. lolololololololol
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There is one thing just about *all* of us can agree on...
...and that is that the reviewers who wrote this article basically suck. No matter how you feel about the question, they really sucked at trying to answer it.
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David Marchese, when did you stop beating your wife?
Maybe if these two critics actually did some research and wrote about 'Why is "Sgt. Pepper" so overhyped?' it might have actually been an interesting article, but probably not. Starting with the assumption that the album sucked and then having these two nattering nabobs of negativism chat about it was a waste of your space.
There was a lot of interesting music made in 1967, "Da Capo" and "Forever Changes" by Love, "Strange Days" by the Doors, those Sam and Dave singles. But "Peppers" was centerstage. Why was this album the defining music for the generation of Mario Savio and Huey Newton? Because Lennon and McCartney could write melodies. By the way, I marched with the Panthers in 1968 and I liked the Beatles. The disconnection that Arnold presumes today wasn't presumed back then.
There have been some wonderful letters here about the album. Much more enjoyable and insightful than the column.
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"When your everywhere . . ." --
"stoprobbers" writes --
"When the Beatles released "Sgt. Pepper," Brian Epstein told radio stations that they would be allowed to play the album a full week before it could be bought (following several leaks of unfinished tracks), he tacked on a brilliant caveat: it would be released at midnight, and any station playing it even one second beore midnight would lose the right to play it at all."
This is true but not new at the time. From the beginning, in the US, AM stations played every track of every Beatels' album. If became the norm, at least with Boston AM stations WBZ, WMEX, and WRKO, that The Beatles LPs were simultaneously #1 on both singles and LP charts. There was even a point at which "Rubber Soul" and "Michelle" (which was not released as a single in the US) were #1 at the same time on LP and singles charts.
Thus when "Sgt. Pepper" was released, we heard it all on the radio before it was available in record stores. And shortly thereafter, on a trip to Boston with a girlfriend "hipper" than I, during which she introduced me to Beacon Hill (home both to the "Old Boston" wealthy, and to the avant-gardish, similar to Greenwich Village). No matter where one walked on the Hill, "Sgt. Pepper" was heard coming out of open windows everywhere.
That is how much of an explosion, how pervasive, "Sgt. Pepper" was when released. And the critics -- including those with a formal education in music -- loved it (thi not actually a new fact).
Give it a close listen -- not only to what's immediately up front; notice the attention to detail, even in the changes in background singing from one verse to another. The only thing missing from it are "Strawberry Fields Forever" (one of the greatest recordings in history) and "Penny Lane," which were to be on it, but the recording took longer than anticipated.
I think the two "rock" "critics" here can be dispensed with as irrelevant -- especially if all their critiques are uninformed as to fact and context as this one.