9 Things We Learned from Sgt. Pepper's Musical Revolution

Sgt. Pepper week continues. The BBC celebrated the 50th anniversary of the landmark album by broadcasting a brand new one-hour special that aired yesterday (June 3) on the BBC (and PBS in the U.S. and Canada), Sgt. Pepper's Musical Revolution with Howard Goodall. 

Noted British classical composer Goodall narrates this special which explores the making of the album by showcasing snippets of outtakes (some culled from the various 2017 Pepper CD sets, other exclusive to this series) and illustrated by archival films and photographs as well as striking visual effects. The special is an unofficial sequel to The Making of Sgt. Pepper, the fine 1992 doc that is part of the Super Deluxe box set.

The key difference here is that the Goodall special lacks new appearances by any of the remaining Beatles or their confidantes. Instead, Goodall takes us on a musical lecture-tour of the Pepper sessions. His musical observations are insightful and new even to lifelong fans of the album. Like a good teacher, Goodall offers insight but speaks in terms that don't sail over our heads. Here are some things we learned:

1) In December 1966, EMI recording engineer Ken Townsend (far right) joined the fast and dreamy versions of Strawberry Fields Forever by slowing down the fast one to match the tempo and key of the slower one. He accomplished this by manipulating the electricity supply feeding the tape machine. Remember: there were no computers in those days, just magnetic tape machines. And no, George Martin didn't pull this off, though he oversaw it.

2) The influence of Little Richard on Penny Lane. No surprise that Paul was a huge Little Richard fan, but Richard's double-time rhythm (heard on such hits as Lucille that The Beatles covered on BBC Radio) had a direct effect on the piano performance on Penny Lane.

3) Now consider that the piano performance of Penny Lane is actually four different pianos mixed together.

4) The musical "wash" that appears twice in Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite consists of one-second snippets culled from various calliope recordings (circus organs) that producer George Martin had engineer Geoff Emerick splice together at random. Okay, maybe this is not news to some Beatlefreaks, but the Goodall special isolates several splices of them so you can hear them individually--and that is a revelation.

5) John's vocal was recorded at a slower speed, so he sounds younger (and higher in pitch) in Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, a song that's based on a child's fantasy (Alice in Wonderland).

6) Paul's melancholy vocal in She's Leaving Home is rooted in the ancient "modal" tradition that Paul would've absorbed from Anglo-Celtic folk songs he heard growing up in Liverpool.

7) The numerous shifts of rhythm (taal) in George's Within You, Without You are absolutely normal in Indian music, though unusual, if not radical, for Western rock music.

8) George's vocal is actually a compromise between Western and Indian conventions. The latter "stretches" single words over several bars--and this bears no comparison in Western songs, certainly not rock. The Goodall special features an Indian singer demonstrating how Within You, Without You would be sung in the Indian tradition, which is light-years from Western music.

9) The glissando orchestral "rush" heard twice in A Day in the Life was inspired by avant-garde composers such as John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen (above). John, and especially Paul, were curious about these composers. They all share a spirit of musical adventure.

I hated Strawberry Fields Forever

by Allan Tong

It was the age of vinyl and I had worn out the grooves of the 1973 Apple/Capitol double-compilation 1962-66 ("red" album) and had eagerly taken him home the companion 1967-70 "blue" album from Sam the Record Man on Yonge Street in Toronto. I threw the disc on my father's turntable, cranked it up and dropped the needle on side 1 of the album. I heard this funereal dirge (Paul's mellotron) then this ghostly voice intoning, "Let me take you down..."

What the fuck?

It sounded like shit. It sounded too slow. It sounded ugly. It was Strawberry Fields Forever, released 50 years ago today in the UK.

Like a lover you grow to understand her idiosyncrasies, it took me a long time to first understand just what the hell John Lennon was saying when he sang, "I think I know of me, ah yes, but it's all wrong" and more time to appreciate just how good the song was.

I wasn't alone.

On March 11, 1967, Dick Clark played the video of SFF and Penny Lane to an audience of American teenagers. Most of them had heard I Want To Hold Your Hand, Help! and Yellow Submarine, the band's last number one, and the clever ones would have clued into Tomorrow Never Knows,but this song blew them away...or confounded them. The reactions after seeing the "film" what we call "video" now) included:

"I thought it was great."

"I don't like their hair."

"They looked older and it ruins their image."

"It was funny."

"Their mustaches are weird!"

"Looked good."

Pete Townshend was one of the first to hear the single before release. He noted that Lennon looked gaunt and nearly unrecognizable, and the music that emanated from the turntable was strange:

Brian Epstein had summoned me, with Eric Clapton, to be the first two artist-peers to hear "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane", The Beatles' new recordings, on an eight-track tape recorder. John was nervous, I remember. He was with Cynthia, his first wife, and she seemed more relaxed than he was. After we had heard the tracks, I was speechless.

The New Musical Express' Derek Johnson wrote: "Certainly the most unusual and way-out single The Beatles have yet produced – both in lyrical content and scoring. Quite honestly, I don't really know what to make of it."

The Beatles, like contemporaries Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Brian Wilson and soon Jimi Hendrix and, in jazz, Miles Davis, strove to push the boundaries into new sounds, but they risked leaving their audience behind. Just ask The Beach Boys, whose Smile confused a lot of their fans in the late-60s. With its backwards tapes, slowed-down vocals, audio loops and avant-garde sounds inspired by Stockhausen, Strawberry Fields Forever invaded the pop charts. In the week it was released, the U.S. top 10 looked like this:

1 KIND OF A DRAG - The Buckinghams
2 I’M A BELIEVER – The Monkees
3 RUBY TUESDAY – The Rolling Stones
4 GEORGY GIRL – The Seekers
5 (We Ain’t Got) NOTHIN’ YET – The Blues Magoos
6 LOVE IS HERE AND NOW YOU’RE GONE – The Supremes
7 98.6 – Keith
8 TELL IT LIKE IT IS – Aaron Neville
9 THE BEAT GOES ON Sonny and Cher
10 GIMME SOME LOVIN’ - The Spencer Davis Group

Some fine songs by great bands here, including The Supremes and Spencer Davis, but the closest song approaching SFF in inventiveness was Ruby Tuesday by their alleged rivals, The Stones. SFF and Penny Lane sounded like something from outer space.


It's a crime that SFF reached only number 8 on the U.S. charts and with Penny Lane only 2 in the U.K. Now it's universally lauded as the greatest Beatles--or rock--song next to A Day in the Life.

What happened?

Once in a while a piece of art will reach its audience that's ahead of its time and the audience must catch up. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey is a good example. The Beatles began as a teenybopper band and SFF/Penny Lane announced them to be artistes. This single has endured as a masterpiece and its influence is incalculable.

Me, I hated Strawberry Fields Forever, and now it's my favourite song of all time. Period. It speaks to me like no other. It doesn't just entertain me, but moves me. It means something. A book, a movie, a painting, a song, whatever. You are what you love, and I love Strawberry Fields Forever. It will play at my funeral and birthdays.  It is true and beautiful. It will always be a part of me, and we all need a piece of music like that.