Although their previous studio album Revolver is now the more acclaimed, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is arguably The Beatles' most famous work and the one that had most influence on the music and society of its time. It had no track breaks, a message in the run-off groove and was developed loosely from Paul McCartney’s concept of an album by a fictitious band. The lyrics were printed on a lavish gatefold sleeve, with its famous front cover by Peter Blake, reflecting the tenor of the time and opening doors of both perception and excess.
Having retired from touring, the band was free to use the recording studio to the ultimate, with no time or financial restrictions and limited only by their own creativity. From the suite-like ‘A Day In The Life’, with that long thunderous chord coaxed from a bewildered orchestra, to the alleged-and-denied drug references in ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’, the beautiful ‘She’s Leaving Home’, the sentimentality of ‘When I’m Sixty Four’ and George Harrison’s mystical wig-out ‘Within You Without You’, it sparked argument and amazement in equal measures.
Originally the album was to include ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, but that didn’t stop it becoming a benchmark, the term “their Sgt Pepper” later applied across the board to any band’s supreme lifetime achievement.