Published on Aug 6, 2001
One of the benefits of re-laying out this site (and, in turn,
re-reading almost every review we’ve ever run) is that I’m shocked
at which albums have never graced our pages after nearly five
years. One of those is a disc which has been called the greatest
rock album in history –
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band from The Beatles.
I’m sort of surprised that no one, including myself, has dared
to tackle this one yet – but on the other hand, daring to cast a
critical eye on something which is almost revered in today’s world
is always a risky proposition. Nevertheless, I’m finally ready to
cast my vote on this one… and possibly throw stones at one of
rock’s most sacred cows.
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band has some absolutely
brilliant music on it… but I’m not about to declare it to be
rock’s best album. It’s not even the
Beatles’s best album.
Ah, I hear the e-mail programs around the world firing up to
flame me for that comment. Grab a sandwich and a beer, ’cause I
ain’t even begun to fire my volleys.
Granted, this album blew the doors off any image one had of The
Beatles up to that point. Gone were the happy pop ditties that had
made up the bulk of their early days. Gone also were the touring
days; the pressures of being the world’s biggest band helped kill
those plans. What John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and
Ringo Starr had in terms of creativity was the studio, and they
decided to put it to good use. The band was going to write music
for the sake of writing music, commercial appeal be damned.
Yet within this revolt came some of the Beatles’s most beautiful
music. “A Little Help From My Friends,” featuring a lead vocal from
Starr, is absolutely mind-boggling, and remains a favorite of mine
to this day. (It also further proves that Starr was anything but
the comic relief of the band, and his vocal talents were pretty
much ignored.) Likewise, “Getting Better” is a pretty powerful
piece of music that aims for the jugular. And while I won’t pretend
that “When I’m Sixty-Four” or “A Day In The Life” are among my
favorite Beatles songs in the world, they too pack a specific punch
– the former for the sake of finding one’s soulmate, the latter
turning up one’s nose at the trivializations of daily life.
So how can I dare to say that
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is anything but a
masterpiece? First, there’s “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,” a song
which was the Beatles experimenting with psychedelia. Tell me the
band wasn’t into drugs when Lennon and McCartney wrote this one…
“Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain / Where rocking horse
people eat marshmallow pies”. Give me a break. I’ll concede that
this one is a track you either love or hate; I just happen to be on
the other side of that fence.
Second is “Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!,” a song which has
to have some deeper meaning – a meaning I’m sure someone is going
to tell me about after this review runs. As it sits, this
particular song is disjointed in both musical and lyrical
structuring, and just fails to go anywhere. I’ve never been swept
off my feet by this song, and this album has songs which can do
just that.
Third is “Fixing A Hole” – and, no, I’m not biased against this
one because of George Burns’s rendition in the movie
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. (Believe it or not, I
actually have that soundtrack… I’ll have to dig it out one of
these days.) It’s another song that just goes nowhere, though I’m
sure the Beatles had loftier expectations of it. It kind of has
ties to “Girl,” even if the subject matter of both songs are
radically different.
Finally, there’s a group of songs which I’m pretty indifferent
to. “Lovely Rita,” “Good Morning, Good Morning” and “She’s Leaving
Home” aren’t the most stellar of Beatles tracks – and, I’ll admit,
“She’s Leaving Home” bothers me in ways I can’t describe. (Calling
Dr. Freud.) But for an album that people are putting on pedestals,
these particular tracks make me ask, “So what?”
I recognize that I’m rowing against the popular current here,
and
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band will continue to be
trumpeted as a stellar album by nearly everyone you run into. Don’t
get me wrong, it’s still worth owning and experiencing… but just
don’t get suckered into the hype that has been built around this
album for well over 30 years.