I was there when Sgt.Pepper's was released,I was a drop-out.All this record said and what made us so happy was that The beatles were dropping acid too.If you have never tripped on LSD you don't know what this album is about.Acid was the biggest revolution this country has known and the 60's early 70's where acid times.I bet the writers of this article don't know that Lucy in The Sky with Diamonds stands for LSD and it describes an acid trip.I have listened to this album tripping on acid and it is a masterpiece.Thank you.Roberto Vazquez,Puertorican living in New Mexico.

When asked about Sgt. Pepper on its 25th anniversry Lou Reed said, "Its nothing. I was singing Heroin in 1966. Its absolutely nothing, nothing with molassess on top."

I love Lou.

Everytime I read an article like this, I think of this line:

"....Cause we're the greatest ROCK-band in the world..." From Lars (of Metallica) in some kind of parody cartoon

How can you down an album with "It's Getting Better All The Time" and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"...which, incidentally, is NOT about LSD guys, the song was written based on some drawing his Julian Lennon had done. But that's the whole point of the album...it isn't suppose to be some rock-opera production or whatever, just a collection of songs about MANY different things, under the Sgt. Pepper banner.

And if you want to talk about groundbreaking 60's albums, my understanding is that this came out BEFORE Jimi's "Electric Ladyland" and Floyd's "Dark Side of The Moon," and a whole bunch of other "storyline" albums.

So, who's the greatest ROCK-band of them all now, eh?

"....Cause we're the greatest ROCK-band in the world..." Lars (from Metallica) in some kind of parody cartoon

Hard for me to imagine that anyone who has any sense of the history of rock and roll would have this "conversation."

So Sgt. Pepper is dated. Well guess what? So is just about everything 40 years after it was made. Hell, Nirvana sounds completely dated 13 years after Kurt Cobain died, but this doesn't mean he wasn't a giant. Just that his time has past.

But as llkraus said on the first page of the letters, the issue isn't what came after the album, it's what came before. To this point, it's funny that the Stones are even in your so-called conversation as a cultual touchpoint. The Stones recognized that Sgt. Pepper changed everything and they were freaked out by it. (Ulitmately they released "Their Satanic Magesties Request" as their answer to Sgt. Pepper. It was a poor comparison.)

I have to tell you that it's hard to believe that you didn;t know what you were doing here. You knew better than to seriously believe what you were saying. You simply printed this piece simply to get a reaction. So congrats ... I guess.

ilkraus noted: "It was the first 'theme album' (the Beach Boys later stated that 'Sgt. Pepper' influenced 'Pet Sounds')."

Actually, 'Pet Sounds' was released in May of '66.

From the Wikipedia entry (maybe not the definitive source, though an easy one to access):

"The real catalyst for Pet Sounds was The Beatles' new LP Rubber Soul (the US version, not the UK version), which was released in December 1965. Wilson later recalled his first impressions of the groundbreaking album:

“ I really wasn't quite ready for the unity. It felt like it all belonged together. Rubber Soul was a collection of songs ... that somehow went together like no album ever made before, and I was very impressed. I said, "That's it. I really am challenged to do a great album."

"The Beatles (. . .) have said that Pet Sounds was a major influence on their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Paul McCartney has repeatedly named it as one of his favorite albums (with "God Only Knows" as his favorite song)"

The music and lyrics all hit themes that had not been done successfully before. It introduced new instrumentation and different scores for rock. It took technology to the limit of what was (then) possible.

"Most importantly, it freed a bunch of other musicians to break loose from boundaries and go in new directions."

This is a sound insight.

...I hope I'm the first one to mention this, but I'm probably not. The novelty group Big Daddy did a song-for-song cover version of the Sergeant Pepper album 15 years ago; their gimmick is that they covered each song in the style of a different 1950s artist ("Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" as Jerry Lee Lewis; "Within You Without You" as beat poetry; "Lovely Rita" by the young Elvis, etc.) and it's an astonishing reinterpretation. You get to see where the Beatles were coming from based on who their influences were. It's been out of print forever, but if you can scare up a used copy it's WELL worth listening to. I like the Beatles version, but I liked it more after listening to the Big Daddy one (which sounded so faithful to the 50s that a friend of mine thought their cover of "A Day in the Life" was actually a Buddy Holly song he'd never heard).

Please note that there was music before rock and roll. Gordon Jenkins' "Manhattan Tower" and Mel Torme's "California Suite" are just two concept albums that were released years before Sgt. Pepper.

...but the Kinks beat it to rock-concept-album-land with "Face to Face." You could look it up (but probably won't).

It isn't overhyped. It was the most important pop album up to that point in history, and is still more than interesting today.

Paul McCartney tells a wonderful story of attending a party with some of the Stones on the Friday night the Beatles' received their acetates of the album. Paul put it on the stereo, and the party went sort of silent as everyone, in particular Jaggers and Richards, were just in awe of how interesting it was.

The Stones "won" the non-existent contest between the two? That's ludicrous. How many Jagger/Richards' tunes did the Beatles cover? Which band made an unlistenable imitation of Sgt. Pepper? For goodness sake, Jimi Hendrix opened his next show in London the day after the album was released with the title track. Yes, the Stones, have been around longer, though for all intents and purposes touring as an oldies act for the last twenty years. But they were never as innovative and produced few solid albums. They were essentially a singles band.

Lots of aurally interesting albums have followed Sgt. Pepper (notably the Geoff Emerick produced Dark Side of the Moon), and I agree with lots of folks that either Revolver or Rubber Soul are more interesting today than Sgt. Pepper. Personally, I rank Sgt. Pepper with Rubber Soul for the third best album after Revolver and Abbey Road.

Also, one must remember that Sgt. Pepper sounded so remarkable to Americans in part because the idiots at Capital Records were still fucking around with the completed albums received from EMI until 1967. Lacking all their tracks, notably "Doctor Robert" and "Your Bird Can Sing", the legacies of Rubber Soul and Revolver suffered by comparison in the U.S. for about 20 years unless you had purchased imported copies of the albums.

Only someone who stopped listening to pop music after 1967 would think that Sgt. Pepper was the greatest album of all time. But only an idiot would think that it didn't deserve the hype then or the respect today.