what a pointless and terrible "conversation". painful.

it might have been a bit more illuminating to have a couple of musicians talking about one of the finest collections of pop composition and arranging of all time. you would be hard pressed to find a single serious song writer (not just lyric writer, they have to write music as well) who could say anything negative about this album.

really poor choice of critics there guys. they blather generalities about "the 60s" and miss the entire point.

Amen. The grey men, the souldead ones, have taken over again, and we need all the optimism we can get. And the Beatles, all in all, were an adrenalin rush of optimism, coming on Sullivan two months after Kennedy was murdered, and taking us all along on an all too brief mystery tour. I still believe it, too, all of it, despite the heaviness and heartache in the world. I still play in two bands at 60, and there isn't a republikan to be found anywhere in our family. Change is not only possible; it's inevitable. The question is, are we going to be agents of change, or victims of it? "we were talking about the space between us all/ and the people who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion/never glimpse the truth/'til it's far too late and they pass away." If you have a pulse, it's not too late.

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.

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.

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.

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."