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Editorial Reviews

In 1967, John Lennon and Paul McCartney were the biggest stars in the world. But Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys had just released Pet Sounds and in the process created a new landmark in ambition and beauty in rock. What were the British pair to do? They responded with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, by turns a drugged-out, merry, intoxicating, funny, sad, nostalgic, psychedelic, obscure, and crystal-clear song cycle that sometimes played like a concept album (there's this band, see, that introduces this big star named Billy Shears...) and sometimes played more abstractly. In the latter case, the album reads as a personal odyssey through the windmills of a generation's mind: a mind full of music, ambition, societal pressures, childhood, dreams good and bad-and thoughts about getting to first base with a girl named Rita. More than 30 years after its release, the record still impresses any number of ways. There's McCartney's effortless mastery of all manner of pop styles, including the music-hall cameo "When I'm Sixty-Four," the ballad "She's Leaving Home," and the rock classic that is the title song; as well as Lennon's wild excursions into psychedelia ("Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," "Good Morning, Good Morning"); George Harrison's mystical, dramatic sitar composition, "Within You Without You" -- even Ringo Starr's steady drumming and his timeless, everyman vocals on "A Little Help from My Friends." And to conclude the record is "A Day in the Life," arguably rock music's most empathetic, sublime creation: a suicide, a ringing alarm clock, and the chord to end all chords. Bill Wyman, Barnes & Noble

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