Sgt Pepper - The Beatles album that changed the face of pop culture

It's 50 years since The Beatles released arguably their greatest album, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Ahead of next week's anniversary, we asked a number of well-known figures about their memories of the landmark record and what made it special to them.
With a little help from their friends: The sleeve for The Beatles famous Sgt Pepper album. (PA).With a little help from their friends: The sleeve for The Beatles famous Sgt Pepper album. (PA).
With a little help from their friends: The sleeve for The Beatles famous Sgt Pepper album. (PA).

Mike Harding: Musician, writer and broadcaster

I was in my 23rd year and playing in a jug band when I heard Sgt Pepper for the first time and realised I was taking the wrong drugs.

Going round folk clubs with a banjo singing daft songs and drinking Tetley’s Bitter was no substitute for snogging Patti Boyd and playing the Shea Stadium while 12 million girls drowned out the noise from your Vox AC30 amps.

Fab four: (From left to right) George, Ringo, John and Paul  pictured in June 1967, the same month Sgt Pepper was released.  (PA).Fab four: (From left to right) George, Ringo, John and Paul  pictured in June 1967, the same month Sgt Pepper was released.  (PA).
Fab four: (From left to right) George, Ringo, John and Paul pictured in June 1967, the same month Sgt Pepper was released. (PA).
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I might have been wearing crushed velvet loon pants and I might have had long hair, but I was playing The Cloggers’ Arms in Oldham to an audience of 40 on a good day with a following wind. And I didn’t have an amp.

On hearing the album I realised that everything I thought I knew about music had just been blown out of the water. Hearing it for the second time convinced me that I’d been drinking the wrong water.

Brass bands, military uniforms, holes in Blackburn Lancashire, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, tape loops played backwards, whacky sound effects – this wasn’t the kind of three-chord-trick rock and roll I’d spent half my then life playing in the pubs of Manchester and Salford – this was Picasso on drums, Van Gogh on bass, Da Vinci on rhythm guitar and Jackson Pollock on lead.

Four blokes from Liverpool had taken rock/blues/music hall/jazz/surrealism and folk – mixed them all together and made something that was beautiful, mysterious, edgy and just so right. They had created a music that had sitars and Mr Kite and a Maharishi and knew just how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall which is exactly 4,000, or one if it’s big enough. It was amazing then and it still is.

Fab four: (From left to right) George, Ringo, John and Paul  pictured in June 1967, the same month Sgt Pepper was released.  (PA).Fab four: (From left to right) George, Ringo, John and Paul  pictured in June 1967, the same month Sgt Pepper was released.  (PA).
Fab four: (From left to right) George, Ringo, John and Paul pictured in June 1967, the same month Sgt Pepper was released. (PA).

Ian McMillan: Poet and broadcaster

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I was eleven years old in 1967 and I was getting excited by the imminent arrival of puberty and the sense that somehow the world was an exciting and ever-changing place. My cousin Josephine in Sheffield, who was a couple of years older than me, was a huge Beatles fan and during my periodic visits to her house I could sense her excitement at the imminent arrival of Sgt Pepper; I happened to be there when she brought it into the house for the first time and slipped it onto the Dansette. The first track echoed round the room and I wasn’t sure how to react. It sounded old and new at the same time. I vividly remember tapping my feet because that’s what I thought I should do. I have a memory of Josephine clicking her fingers although I may just have invented that. We tapped and clicked to the second track, With a Little Help from My Friends.

Then Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds came on and it sounded new and strange and weird and somehow it felt transgressive to be listening to it, although I would probably have said naughty, not transgressive. I’d seen another word written down in a magazine at school and the word was psychedelic. I knew that this track was meant to be psychedelic. I tried to look cool and I said, ‘Hey, this is psychedelic’ in a voice that was cracking and creaking because it was about to break. Sadly, because I’d only seen the word written down, I pronounced it ‘Passysch-y-delic’ as though it was a guest house in Rhyl. Josephine agreed. It was definitely Passysch-y-delic. She put the track on again.

Rita Britton: Fashion designer and shop owner

I’ve still got my original copy somewhere. I had just opened Pollyanna in Barnsley in March that year and I had an old record player and all I ever played at that time was Jimi Hendrix and The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album.

They were the new wave, there had been nothing much before them apart from Elvis and they looked and sounded exciting.

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Before I opened Pollyanna I worked in the Star Paper Mills. There were more than 60 girls working on the factory floor and when Beatles records were played over the tannoy all the girls used to scream. The manager used to play music hall songs and all the girls would groan. But he realised that if he played Beatles songs we would work faster.

This particular record was a real departure from their previous clean-cut image and the Italian suits. It was a complete change of direction which was absorbed by young people. It was colourful and different and a way of rebelling against your parents generation and the music of Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby.

Martin Carthy: Folk singer and musician

I was working with Dave Swarbrick in Denmark at the time and getting very well paid at a cabaret theatre. My wife at the time was pregnant and the money I was earning was an opportunity to put a deposit down on a house.

She sent me a copy of the album with a note saying “here’s the album we’ve all been waiting for”. When I first listened to it I thought it was astounding. It was really diligent and diligent is the word because they worked so hard for so long, they really stretched the limits of the recording studio.

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It was wonderful and full of optimism. They did better stuff later on but they wouldn’t have been able to do that without Sgt Pepper.

At the time rockers, folkies and jazz musicians were all falling over each other’s feet. There was a spirit of experimentation and this album embodied that whole notion.

Graham Ibbeson: artist and Sculptor

I was 16 when the album was released; it certainly was a shock to the system. On the street corners of Cudworth my mates were almost giddy with enthusiasm over this lump of vinyl, or so it seemed, but I wasn’t convinced. I thought it was a bit pretentious. The Fab Four were trying too hard to be different and it wasn’t working, although I did love the ‘pop art’ cover created by Peter Blake and Jann Haworth, and became a great fan of both artists from then on. The problem was that 1967 was also the Summer of Love and there were strange rumblings in this 16 year old. My thoughts turned to the California sunshine and ‘flower power’ and I remember painting a giant daisy on my battered Lambretta scooter.

However, the autumn of the same year saw a fundamental shift in my focus that subsequently changed the course of my life. I moved from being an apprentice electrician to being a full time art student and viewed the world from a different angle. The California dreaming had stopped (I’d already missed the number 10 bus from Barnsley to San Francisco via Grimethorpe), and I realised that being creative is about constantly pushing ideas forward and breaking down barriers, exactly what The Beatles were doing with this album.

Joolz Denby: Writer and artist

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I was more interested in the artwork than the music. I was just starting to become aware of psychedelic art and this was a distinctly British take on that. Nowadays it’s easy to do something like this digitally but back then no one had seen anything like it on a record before.

I was at school and one of my teachers had us all doing illustrations to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, I can only assume she didn’t know what it meant, and I did a psychedelic drawing that got 10 out of 10, so I was well chuffed. People forget sometimes that art affects you emotionally and the Sgt Pepper artwork was one of my earliest influences because it pushed me towards psychedelia.

Roger McGough: Poet, broadcaster and writer

I was in Liverpool at the time. My book Summer With Monika was published this year and so, too, was The Mersey Sound (an anthology of poetry by three Liverpool poets: me, Brian Patten and Adrian Henri).

I was part of The Scaffold – a comedy, poetry and music trio from Liverpool (which included Mike McGear, Paul McCartney’s brother), and there was a rumour that The Beatles were doing something different and a little bit crazy.

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Our song Thank U Very Much
was released that year but it was somewhat overshadowed by Sgt Pepper. When it came out most people thought it was great but there were one or two that didn’t think it was as good as their last record.

It had very strong Liverpool connections and music hall influences, but at the same time it was different to anything else they’d done before. It certainly had an impact.

But in Liverpool, and elsewhere, the docks were closing, the pits were being shut and people were being laid off.

There was a sense of optimism at the time but I think the Summer of Love was a middle class thing and mostly confined to London. The reality was different for most other people.

Barrie Rutter: Northern Broadsides founder

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I was in London that summer with the National Youth Theatre and I was playing Falstaff in Henry IV Part I. I wasn’t a big Beatles fan, I was more of a Rolling Stones fan – it seemed to cost more to follow The Beatles than it did to follow the Stones and I was just a poor lad from Hull.

When I first heard the record I remember not thinking much of it. Some of my mates told me to smoke a joint and listen to it, and I thought ‘why do I need a joint to listen to it?’ I’d rather have a pint.

But I do remember the album cover and spotting all the different people became a bit of a game, and a rather good game, with everyone seeing who they could pick out.

‘Flower power’ and the Summer of Love passed me by, I thought it was all a bit daft to be honest. It was another 18 months before I listened to the story of how Sgt Pepper was made with all the orchestras and the technology brought in by George Martin and it was really only then that I realised just how wonderful it was.

Dudley Edwards: Artist

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Younger people than me may not understand the magic effect that The Beatles had on the population at the time because so much of their style and techniques have been adopted by other bands since.

During the Sixties we would come to expect something new from the Beatles, they were very prolific and we didn’t have to wait long for a new single, or album, each one better than the last. Then after Revolver came out they disappeared off the radar for the best part of a year. The anticipation from the fans and the press was tangible.

There was also a prelude to Sgt Pepper to indicate the direction they were going in with the release of the Strawberry Fields Forever single in February. This is when the public saw just how much the band’s appearance had changed. Gone were the mop tops and suits and in were Afghan coats, paisley shirts, beaded necklaces and, most shockingly, the Viva Zapata style moustaches.

At the time of the making of Sgt Pepper I was living with Paul McCartney (he’d asked me to paint a mural in his house) and was fortunate enough to have attended a number of recording sessions.

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This meant that I heard the songs being put together. I wouldn’t have missed this experience for anything, but the downside was I didn’t get that surprise that everyone else got when they put the vinyl on the turntable for the first time. That’s what the artists themselves are always deprived of, because they experience every stitch, note and brush mark as their work is assembled over a period of time.

I have wonderful recollections of Sgt Pepper. For example, one day John, Paul and I were chewing the fat in Paul’s house when Paul said to me, “Would you mind if John and I retired to the music room to work on a new number?” Later they reappeared with guitars and asked for my opinion on what they had put together. This was the first rendition of It’s Getting Better. I thought it was fantastic but I didn’t want to appear sycophantic so stupidly I said, “it’s alright.”

Most of the recording sessions at Abbey Road took place late at night, on one occasion Paul’s particular skills didn’t require the others attendance. He had arranged for around a dozen French horn players from the London Philharmonic to play on a track. The musicians were assembled in two rows facing Paul who had the baton.

The first rendition sounded perfect to my untrained ear, but no, Paul said the second from the left was slightly out. The player nodded in agreement. This went on take after take, each time a different player acknowledging Paul’s corrections until they got it right.

I like to think that Douglas Binder (who formed the Pop Art Collective with me) and I perhaps had a small influence on Sgt Pepper as we painted Paul’s piano upon which he composed many of the tracks.