Well, of course, Sgt Pepper would have to be about America. Isn't everything? How anyone could think this quintessentially British album could have anything to do with JFK is a magical mystery tour to me. What you have to remember is the startling originality of this album at the time. No one had ever done anything like it. It pushed the boundaries of what could be done in a recording studio by a talented band. It was the pop version of what happened when the impressionists first exhibited their paintings.The difference was the reaction: the times were adventurous and people wanted to listen and be taken somewhere new. To understand Sgt Pepper watch 'A Hard Days Night' and the scene where the Beatles erupt out of a building into a field where they run and horse around like joyous children to the best soundtrack in the world. Only someone who grew up in the fifties knows what it felt like to take that journey from greyness, monoculture, conformity and the dead hand of religion into fresh air and freedom.If you don't get that you can't possibly get Sgt Pepper. It wasn't just an album it was a statement that imagination and creativity could do anything. Call me irresponsible but I still believe that. And the world needs that belief now more than ever as we face the same old grey men in grey suits with the same old answers in the 21st century.

On the surface, Sgt. Pepper was groundbreaking in the way it married the sounds of psychedelica with so many types of old-school theatrics. "Mr. Kite," with its carnival sounds, the orchestral touches throughout, the gentle music hall lilt of "When I'm 64," the symphonic reach of "Day in the Life", and the simulated concert of the title track and reprise -- the entire album opened up the allowable palette for this kind of music.

Underneath, however, the songs told a story of a struggle between suburban middle class life and self-exploration through drugs and art. "When I'm 64" was a fearful picture about a lonely old age: "yours sincerely, wasting away...". "Good Morning," "Fixing a hole", "Getting Better" were all about a dissatisfying, unfulfilling way of life in the suburbs.

On the other side of the struggle are the 'tangerine trees and marmalade skies" of escape, whether the physical escape of "She's Leaving Home," or inner escape through drugs ("Lucy"), meditation ("Within You and Without You,") or entertainment ("Mr. Kite.")

However, the reprise of Sgt. Pepper gets to the bottom of this world, like his disaffected audience, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely..." The Beatles' retreat from touring to the studio opened them up creatively, but their increasing fame, travel, and experimentation with spirituality and drugs took them forever away from their audience. "She's leaving home" on the surface sounds like a song of liberation, but one with a heavy price: "meeting a man from the motor trade." Escape comes with a price.

And the album's ending is devastating -- A Day in the Life shows the casualties of those who don't escape, but can't return, who lose the struggle to find themselves ( "He blew his mind out in a car") or ignore it altogether and resign themselves to an empty life ("Now we know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall").

While the Sixties bloomed that summer of '67, Sgt. Pepper bringing to the masses sounds that had before been marginalized to London and San Francisco, the Beatles had already ridden that wave and were on their way to their inevitable dissolution. In many ways, Day In the Life predicted the crash of the psychedelic culture at Altamont.

If you can find a copy of the long-out-of-print book "The Age of Rock," edited by Jonathan Eisen, you can find some of the best rock critics of the era weighing in on the album. Even then, there were people who saw this record in a historical context. Sadly, 40 years later, what passes for music criticism at Salon hasn't "made the grade."

The fact that 22 pages of comments are already up for an article published over the weekend on Salon indicates that just about everyone reading Salon gets the album better than Gina Arnold.

There has never been an album to unify, astonish, and touch an entire generation as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band did for those of us coming of age (say, mid teens to mid twenties) on June 1, 1967. "In this way, Mr. K will challenge the world", indeed. Yes, the revolution was naive and short lived, but it did, for a brief while, change America. The cultural lines drawn in the mid sixties are very close parallels to the red/blue (formerly blue/gray) dichotomy that divides our country. If I have to chose between Sgt. Pepper and General Petraus or Colonoscopy Powell, I'm going with the band that's been going in and out of style since that explosive February 9, 1964 evening on Ed Sullivan. Yeah, the Stones can rock, but so could the Who, the Allman Bros., Skynard, the Doobies, and a long list of derivative bands. John, Paul, George, and Ringo were, and are, the voice of the sixties. Our children, two in their thirties and two in their late twenties, listen to the boys from Liverpool as much or more than my wife and I do. We got married in the Ozarks in 1970, and had "In My Life" and "Here, There, and Everywhere" played during the ceremony. The congregation was scandalized a little, but it was our time, our music, and our lives. Still true today, every last word. Thank you, Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starkey, for what you gave to the world, and to me.

Thanks gooddognigel!

It's nice to hear from someone who agrees. I didn't know that about George Martin and the time limit on recordings, but it makes sense. I think a lot of time musically, especially in rock and roll and pop music, the best music is done on the fly. A lot of great songs, from "What'd I Say" to "Stand by your Man" were written in 5 minutes.