Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band [Remastered]

1	Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
2	With A Little Help From My Friends
3	Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
4	Getting Better
5	Fixing A Hole
6	She's Leaving Home
7	Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite
8	Within You Without You
9	When I'm Sixty Four
10	Lovely Rita
11	Good Morning Good Morning
12	Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)
13	A Day In The Life
14	Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Documentary

Barnes & Noble

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

All Music Guide

With Revolver, the Beatles made the Great Leap Forward, reaching a previously unheard-of level of sophistication and fearless experimentation. Sgt. Pepper, in many ways, refines that breakthrough, as the Beatles consciously synthesized such disparate influences as psychedelia, art-song, classical music, rock & roll, and music hall, often in the course of one song. Not once does the diversity seem forced -- the genius of the record is how the vaudevillian "When I'm 64" seems like a logical extension of "Within You Without You" and how it provides a gateway to the chiming guitars of "Lovely Rita." There's no discounting the individual contributions of each member or their producer, George Martin, but the preponderance of whimsy and self-conscious art gives the impression that Paul McCartney is the leader of the Lonely Hearts Club Band. He dominates the album in terms of compositions, setting the tone for the album with his unabashed melodicism and deviously clever arrangements. In comparison, Lennon's contributions seem fewer, and a couple of them are a little slight but his major statements are stunning. "With a Little Help From My Friends" is the ideal Ringo tune, a rolling, friendly pop song that hides genuine {|Lennon|} anguish, à la "Help!"; "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" remains one of the touchstones of British psychedelia; and he's the mastermind behind the bulk of "A Day in the Life," a haunting number that skillfully blends Lennon's verse and chorus with McCartney's bridge. It's possible to argue that there are better Beatles albums, yet no album is as historically important as this. After Sgt. Pepper, there were no rules to follow -- rock and pop bands could try anything, for better or worse. Ironically, few tried to achieve the sweeping, all-encompassing embrace of music as the Beatles did here. Stephen Thomas Erlewine