Wow, it tickles me pink to hear people my parents' age wax nostalgic about a "you really had to be there" 40 year old album that objectively really does not hold up well. Strawberry fucking Fields Forever, anyone? Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds? Dear lord, it's embarrassing to listen to it with modern ears.

I'm sure it was all just so great in 1967 as part of the zeitgeist, and it being culturally significant and influential is fine, but actually listening to it is kind of a chore - well, even looking at the album cover, with its psychedelic neo-Victorian pastiche gives me a headache.

The Stones do hold up better, although they are definitely embarrassing themselves all over the place these days. But listening to "Sticky Fingers" when I was 15 made me want to have sex immediately.

I'd say that Pet Sounds had a bigger influence on better bands than the Beatles did (without Pet Sounds & the VU we wouldn't have a Jesus & Mary Chain or any of the subsequent spinoffs) even though generally I like the Beatles more than the Beach Boys; ditto the Kinks and Velvet Underground. If you listen to them without the aura of boomer nostalgia they still hold up quite amazingly well.

But yeah, Sgt. Pepper didn't really rock.

I love the Beatles. But Sgt. Pep isn't the greatest album of all time. Not even the best Beatles album. But it was just something about the timing. It was different. Everything from the album cover, to the myriad of sounds and styles. It was just everything coming together at the same time. If you're going to look at it through the eyes of 2007, sure you will find lots of fault. But this was just four guys, and their producer creating something amazingly unique out of thin air.

And a splendid time is guaranteed for all...

Someone may have already made this point (unfortunately I've burned my comments-reading time for the day and can't scan the 186 predecessor responses), but Gina Arnold comments on how it doesn't reflect the politics of the time... and cites American political issues.

Very surprising really, when you consider that we're talking about 4 English musicians recording in London, instead of a bunch of Haight-Ashbury lank-haired middle class finger-waggers singing another tedious fucking folk song about war. That sort of didactic directness is very hard to make interesting.

The Beatles, as a unit, are very fortunate. Like James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy, they entered the scene as something brand-new and different and departed before getting old and cliched. Unlike the Rolling Stones, they would never be accused of sticking around forever and becoming a parody of themselves. Like the aforementioned trio of "great ones who died young," everything The Beatles did was new and unique and all of their work is still held up as the example that others try vainly to follow. Individually, well, that's another story--look at poor Paul McCartney! (He's partnering with Starbucks, now, too.) Lucky result: Without "Sgt. Pepper" there would probably be no "Pet Sounds" or "Smile."

Gina Arnold says:

And if you think of the Beatles/Rolling Stones debate, the Stones won that in every possible way -- in terms of long life and record sales and influence

The reason being, Gina, that to do Beatles-style arrangements properly (Polyphonic Spree does not) takes a tremendous amount of work and talent, not to mention phenomenal songwriting at the foundation of the music. Much easier to rehash the Stones/Velvet Underground/Ramones ...

Sgt. Pepper's was one the Beatles' weaker albums, but, as others have mentioned, it must be viewed in the context of the times. Three-and-a-half years after the assassination of JFK ... turmoil at home in the US and war in Vietnam, Sgt. Pepper's heralded the ascendancy of our generation and our hope for the future and the promise of our democracy. A silly dream? Yes. It only took a few more assassinations (RFK & MLK in particular), the ongoing war, drugs, and a multi-decade process in which the media was consolidated and turned into the multi-nationals' house organ to derail the dream.

Even John Lennon dismissed Sgt. Peppers with the remark,"What do you remember? A Day In The Life ..." something to that effect.

The Stones lost the multi-dimensional aspect (they shared with the Beatles) to be hard and funny simultaneously - they had when Brian Jones was still in the band. Still fantastic, but not the same.

I listened to I Am The Walrus yesterday ... absolutely unbelievable to this day.

Does anyone remember that the ostensible "liberal" John Lennon wanted to include Adolf Hitler (!) on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as one of the "people we like?" With some difficulty he was persuaded to substitute a less controversial figure, namely Aleister Crowley, also known as "the Great Wild Beast." Crowley, I can understand. He was after all one of the founders of the New Age movement. But what is there to admire in a murdering racist scumbag like Hitler? --Julianus

Yep, I've read about Lennon suggesting putting Hitler among the background crowd on Sgt. Pepper cover, but it certainly wasn't because he admired him in any way. Obviously I can't know what really prompted him to make that suggestion, apparently seriously, but given his temperament, it seems very likely it was a cynical response to the whole shebang, adding a touch of darkness and a reminder that Hitler too was once an idol. Yeah, it would have been in really bad taste, maybe even worse than the original cover of Yesterday & Today. John had long before become sick of the Beatles' "nice guys" image and seemed intent on destroying it. On that note, if Mick Jagger had said the Rolling Stones were bigger than Christ, it wouldn't have caused much of a commotion because the worst was already expected of that "bad boys" band. Of course, in Britain itself and the rest of the civilized world Lennon's "bigger than Christ" remark didn't arouse much indignation at all and some priests even agreed with his assessment (as taken in the context of what Lennon really meant). Only in the American South and South Africa was such a huge stink raised about it. Funny, most of the people burning Beatles' records over the remark couldn't be bothered to get worked up about the Ku Klux Klan bombing churches and killing children during the same era.