Debunking “Sgt. Pepper”

We interrupt your usual Selective Service reading for the following commentary.

Uncle Sam pointed me in the direction of a Guardian Unlimited article that takes on one of the most hallowed albums in the history of modern music: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The article, entitled “Sgt. Pepper’s is the most overrated album of all time,” got me thinking about the album, its place in the all-time album ranking, and its place within the hierarchy of The Beatles’ canon.

The author, Richard Smith, points out that Pepper is often cited as a top album on many lists, but can’t figure out why it is given such lofty praise:

There was a time - from round about the early 70s to the late 80s - when Pepper would routinely appear at the top of every critic’s poll of “The Greatest Albums Ever Made”. Thankfully, it slowly dawned on many critics that this was a cliché, a choice made not because of anything intrinsically great about the record, but because they’d fetishised what it represented. Music for grown-ups. The birth of rock. The exact moment when pop started having pretensions to “art”. Zzzz…

Again, it had me thinking about where Pepper fits in the grand scheme of things.

First things first: I am an unabashed Beatle fan. I have multiple copies of every one of their albums: U.S. and U.K. versions, bootlegs, the vaunted “Dr. Ebbetts” and “Mirror Spock” remasters, live recordings, etc. I also have a nearly complete collection of their solo work, warts and all. If you look at my Last.fm listening stats, you’ll see The Beatles, Lennon, Harrison and McCartney (both solo and in Wings) occupy four five of the top ten places, overall.

So I’m a fan - perhaps an obsessive one.

And that said, I’ll admit: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is not the best album of all time. It’s not even the best album the Beatles ever made.

Let’s look at the reasons people (critics and fans alike) cite when they hoist Pepper aloft, and address them in kind:

Sgt. Pepper is a cohesive, themed album. Perhaps it was in its original track order, when McCartney envisioned a “birth to death” song cycle on side one (”Sgt. Pepper,” “Friends,” “Mr. Kite,” “Fixing A Hole,” “Lucy,” “Getting Better,” “She’s Leaving Home”). But both Lennon and McCartney were quick to note that the running theme of Sgt. Pepper’s Band was peripheral - it didn’t even really bookend the album, in the end, as “A Day In The Life” was added after the fade of “Sgt. Pepper - Reprise.”

And cohesion in sound? Please. You have straight rock (”Good Morning, Good Morning” and “Lucy In The Sky”), Vaudeville (”When I’m Sixty-Four”), circus music (”Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite”) and Indian raga (”Within You Without You”) - the last bit sticking out like a sore thumb relative to its neighbors.

The Beatles have far more cohesive themes on Abbey Road, with it’s side-two medley from “Sun King” to “The End.” The U.S. version of Rubber Soul had even more commonality and continuity to its tracks than its U.K. counterpart. And both have better flow and cohesion than Sgt. Pepper.

Sgt. Pepper innovated with new recording techniques. Actually, the Fabs and George Martin peaked in this regard on Revolver: getting the most out of the antiquated Abbey Road equipment, and adding outside instrumentation to the mix. Sure, Pepper raised the ante a bit with the linked four-track recorders and the full symphony on “A Day In The Life” (the strongest track on the album, in my view), but it wasn’t a radical improvement compared to the in-your-face recordings that made up the entirety of Revolver.

From “Taxman” to “Eleanor Rigby,” “Love You To” to “She Said, She Said,” and from “Good Day Sunshine” to “Tomorrow Never Knows,” Revolver showed a completely new side to The Beatles. While they may have refined the sound for Pepper, they’d set the new standard a year earlier. And if you want to be even more nit-picky, it could be argued that the double A-side single of “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever” was the true peak synthesis of The Beatles’ chemically-fueled imaginations and the technical wizardry of George Martin and Geoff Emerick.

Pepper is the strongest album of the 1960s. Okay, let’s look at this in context. I’ll sheepishly admit that Pepper was one of the most culturally significant albums of the late-1960s, and certainly the most culturally significant album of 1967. It was the apex of the “Summer of Love” that blossomed in the spring of 1967. The psychedelia throughout Pepper (which still isn’t as weird as “Tomorrow Never Knows”), the colorful cover art and the “new-look Beatles” were all trend-setters, in some respect.

But Pepper was hardly alone in this regard. At the same time The Beatles were working on their big album, just down the hall at Abbey Road studios, a new band called The Pink Floyd was working on their debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn - an album that was even more fancy-free and psychedelic than anything on either Revolver or Pepper. Across the pond, Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks worked on the aborted SMiLE! project, an album that had more cohesive themes than anything The Beatles ever released and one that could’ve given Pepper a run for “Album of the Summer” honors. Similarly radical albums came out from Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Frank Zappa, CSN and many others - it just happens that The Beatles had a better press agent.

So, you’re asking: where does Sgt. Pepper rank in The Beatles’ canon?

In my view, it’s top five, but not the top. Here’s my ranking of the top ten Beatles albums (all U.K. versions, except where noted):

1. Revolver
2. A Hard Day’s Night
3. Abbey Road
4. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
5. Rubber Soul (U.S. version)
6. Help!
7. The Beatles (a.k.a. White Album)
8. With The Beatles
9. Magical Mystery Tour
10. Get Back (became Let It Be)

See - even a bootleg album appears in the mix.

And in terms of “Best of All Time,” my pick for that honor goes to The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. In my list, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is top-25, but not top-10.

So Richard Smith has a point: Sgt. Pepper is not the best album of all time. Yes, it was important in its day, and it has some really great songs. But it’s not the best of all time, and it’s not the best of The Beatles.

Let the commentary begin.