The album that was infuenced by "Pepper" was "Smile", not Pet Sounds. Brian was in the midst of a drug induced meltdown from which he's never completely recovered. A friend of mine, Van Dyke Parks, wrote the lyrics for "Smile", which was finally released in the last couple years. Van Dyke also wrote the words for "Heroes and Villians", and has done so much mind boggling stuff the only thing you can do is google and check out the list of hall of fame people he's worked with. Just an amazing man. And "God Only Knows", along with "Wouln't It Be Nice" are my favorite Beach Boys songs of all time.

I'm a thirty-something who wasn't around for the release of Sgt. Pepper, or any of the Beatles albums, or the 60s for that matter.

However, from the time when I was about four years old and my big sister played that greatest hits album for me (the one with the red cover that came out in the 70s), I've been hooked on the Beatles, though it took me some time to learn to appreciate their later music.

Now, at least one Beatles record is always present in my car's CD player, but not usually Sgt. Pepper.

I can appreciate Sgt. Pepper, but I like Revolver better, not just because it is more appealing musically, but because I hear in that album the sound of an already brilliant group's nascent efforts to reach beyond their boy band beginnings toward something far greater. It is the sound of the Beatles in transition that I find so endearing.

Actually, I'd have to say I even like Rubber Soul better than Sgt. Pepper. And few albums in pop history can match Abbey Road, IMO.

From the letters that have been written, you would think that it is obvious that the critics took on the 500 lb gorilla in the room.

Actually, they did. By telling everyone that one of the more important (notice the "more", not "most") influential albums ever produced is over-hyped, everyone felt the need to defend it.

In all truth,what the critics are saying in real words read between the lines that the Beatles were in essence over-hyped, and that is why everyone is putting in their two cents worth.

That would be the real point of this article. By putting down one of their major albums in terms of faux music phrasing or context, they have in essence drawn the wrath of people who truly care about the music of one of the most famous bands in history.

Next time, pick a less controversial and beloved group-it saves wear and tear on the server.

Well, it's true that Abbey Road is better than Sgt. Pepper's as music, and Revolver is much better. Gina got that right. Also that Hendrix, the Doors, etc is less dated. Peppers was indeed a period piece, and anyone with ears can hear that is not very emotionally connected or passionate.

But for those of you old enough to remember with me.... didn't popular critics tell us- in advance of release-that Pepper's was an the ultimate album, the very epicenter of whatever it was that was "happening" in the "new" world of hipness that was 1967? And if you didn't appreciate that, you were clearly either a lower form of intelligence or pro-Vietnam. And we were young and easily influenced. So the gospel was not much challenged, at the time. But our ears told us the Doors and Jimi had better records that summer, and our ears were right, the critics were wrong.

Now Gina Arnold says "We interpret and reinterpret and tell everybody what these things meant and how things were done, but actually getting to the primal moment of listening is very difficult." Well, that is a PERSONAL problem. An attentive listener who has not made the ego investment involved in becoming a "critic" will have NO problem hearing that primal moment when it really happens. But the critics usually have that problem, which is why they are so often swayed by fleeting notions of hipness or cool.

I know what I speak of, as a former regularly published "rock critic" who eventually decided that being a musician was more honest and true to my being than serving as a critic. Once the "expert" role was gone, I found I could enjoy the music a lot more, and once again had no problem finding that primal moment, whether listening to it in a recording or from the audience, or recognizing it while playing in an ensemble.

Nik Cohn is best known nowadays as "the guy who wrote the magazine article that inspired 'Saturday Night Fever.'" However, before that he was a British rock critic whose "Rock from the Beginning," published in the late 1960s, was an iconoclastic take on virtually all pop-music styles and the artists who sang them on both sides of the Atlantic from roughly 1955-68. His analysis of the Pepper-era Beatles was quite skeptical, even harsh, considering the haigiographic attitude of most of the entertainment media of the era. His conclusion was that, for all the "artistic" virtues of the album, it may not have been an unmixed blessing in light of the pretentious art-rock that followed and the unraveling of the Fab Four themselves.

Try finding this book on Amazon or at your local used-book store; it's well worth the effort.

This is really cool. I usually glance at the letters on all Websites that have news stories, but I've spent the better part of today returning to the computer off and on to read every one of these submission about the Beatles -- which are so good compared to the lame "article" that spawned them.

-tom payne writes in his posting:

"'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."

Yeah, maybe if we nail the parallels to the blue/gray dichotomy we can figure out this whole Civil War thing.

Anyway, "tom" says he was married in the Ozarks and used "In My Life" for the ceremony. I got married in Missouri (close to the Ozarks) and used the same song, with one of our musician friends strumming his acoustic guitar from the church balcony. Chance? I think not. We both could have picked a Rolling Stones of Kinks song, but get real.

I was at camp that famous summer of '67 when "Sergeant Pepper" was being played around the clock as each song was released, one at a time, promo'd and hyped by the DJs on our local radio station, on a little portable radio. I was a HS sophomore, hormones were raging, my girlfriend and all the rest of my friends were in camp. We coded that album in our DNA as we heard each song for the first time - then again and again - then went home and got the album and, yes, made out while listening to it over and over (this time in stereo). I've been listening to it ever since, sometimes on vinyl, sometimes on cassette tape, sometimes on CD.

Salon junior journalists, you just had to be there. Everything was possible at the end of the '60s. I thank Salon for hiring these sorry critics just so I got a chance to read all the pissed off -- but moving and insightful -- responses from us posting "amateurs."