28 thoughts on “Half A Century Of Sgt. Pepper”

  1. They’re all good. The most amazing thing about the Beatles is how consistently good they were. Most bands have at most a few songs that are memorable. The Beatles had a whole catalog.

  2. Short-timer Kyle Smith also got the best (movie) Bond wrong as well.
    Admittedly I never saw the George Lazenby rendition but he also only did one. And you only live twice….

    No Roger Moore may not have been a Saint, but he *was* the best Simon Templar (then and ever)…

    1. Yeah. Roger Moore turned it into camp. Live and Let Die was his only good one. It fell off a cliff after that. The one that had the Space Shuttle flying to the Moon was the nadir. And, then the one after that where it was obvious he was wearing a toop. We howled at that one.

      Best Bond movie: Goldfinger. No question about it.

      But, I also really enjoyed On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, though it seems a lot of people did not. From there, any other Sean Connery.

      The rest is just crap. Try as I might, I never could see any of the others as an actual spy.

      1. The consensus seems to be that The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) was Moore’s best Bond. I find it hard to dispute that.

        The camp was dialed down just enough, and the script just strong enough, that it turned out to be a decent Bond film. The theme song was almost as good as Live and Let Die’s. Almost.

        I find the grittier Bond of the early Connery and Daniel Craig eras to be the most watchable. Dalton clearly wanted to go in that direction, but Cubby Broccoli was unwilling to go very far in that direction.

        1. TSWLM: Loved the opening theme. Barbara Bach – yes. Lotus Esprit – yes. Opening scene with Union Jack parachute – yes. Jaws… can’t bear to watch it.

      2. “Roger Moore turned it into camp”

        wasn’t that the era and also he’s only the actor who is told what to do/say, when to do/say it and also is dressed by someone else.

        If you want to blame anyone, blame the Broccoli’s.

        Notice how bond changes when True Lies, Mission Impossible, etc. all made the ‘old’ bond just look toy-ish?

  5. Surely that was tongue-in-cheek 🙂

    Seriously:-) everyone knows that the best Beatles album was “Revolver”, followed by “Abbey Road”, with “Sgt. Pepper” tied for third with the white album (which might have been able to rival “Revolver” had it not had a real-songs-to-crappy-filler ratio of less than one).

    More seriously (for real), I contend that the post-Revolver decline of the Beatles was a direct result of abandoning touring and playing live, which is the heart of rock and roll.

    1. I think you’ve relaxed your mind and floated downstream too far 🙂 Side B of Abbey Road is the best.

      1. That’s my fav, too, but I didn’t think it was anyone else’s. The End really connects right into the pleasure centers of my brain.

  6. Sgt. Pepper’s was nothing until it was reworked as a Star Wars parody (playlist).

    Two of my favorite tracks are AA Twenty Three and Reprise/A Day in the Life of Red Five

    From the comments:

    This is literally the greatest thing of all time.

    This might be Western Civilization’s greatest achievement.

    This transcends parody into art. I’ve never seen or heard such a remarkably coincidental and consistent mash-up of sounds, ideas and images contrasted and combined to produce something alchemical and amazing. This is the new Dark Side of the Raimbow, only far greater an achievement because of the cleverness of the lyrics, and the manipulation of the two soundtracks into a seamless creation of hilarious and inspiring beauty.

    1. Good, but my vote for best “Sgt. Pepper” re-imagining is the Big Daddy version. For those not in the know, Big Daddy was a group of LA musicians who had a shared love of ’50s rock and doo-wop; from ’83 through the mid-’90s they released several fantastic and hilarious albums of contemporary songs done in the style of the late ’50s bands – including a 1992 complete remake of “Sgt. Pepper.” Sheer genius! Check them out at http://bigdaddy59.com and iTunes.

      1. Also check out their album, “Cutting Their Own Groove”.

        I think every track is good, but “Welcome to the Jungle”/”The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and “Money For Nothing”/”Sixteen Tons” are bizarrely wonderful.

  7. Of course, Sgt. Pepper was a reaction to Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys. (Well, vocals by them – most of the rest was Brian Wilson and the studio musicians called The Wrecking Crew in LA.)

  9. I hate to be a wet blanket, but the Beatles are one of the biggest bands whose music completely disappeared from the airwaves. Duran Duran said they were the new Beatles, and they were right. Neither one can likely be found on your radio dial.

    Stations will play music from the Stones, the Who, CCR, Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Moody Blues, Deep Purple, Jimmy Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, and Roy Orbison, but you’ll almost never hear a Beatles song. Perhaps it’s because our tastes changed, or perhaps it’s because many bands came out with better Beatles-like songs than the Beatles did, or perhaps it’s because the Beatles broke up before the course of rock and roll’s different genres was finally set, or perhaps there’s just no good advertising market of Beatles fans.

    But for some reason, they don’t get airplay, or at least don’t get airplay in places I’ve been.

    1. Since I listen pretty much exclusively to satellite radio and almost never listen to terrestrial radio, I don’t have this problem. Even before SiriusXM launched a Beatles channel a couple of weeks ago, the Underground Garage channel, which has a heavy British Invasion influence, is a bastion of the Beatles. And the Who, the Stones, the Kinks, Cream, etc. Plus the Ramones, lots of ’50s blues masters, ’70s NY punk/New Wave like Television and Jim Carroll, Dylan, Lou Reed and the Velvets, the White Stripes, Big Star, the Raspberries, the Elvi (Presley and Costello)…and lots more.

      1. Yeah, but on satellite radio you can still probably listen to Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, and the Andrews Sisters. Surely they play that kind of mix because “American Patrol” would make every commute feel like you’re liberating Paris.

        1. Kyle only recently started writing for NRO. His first piece was about Bond films, with which Charles disagreed, and wrote a similar tweet. He is also a huge Beatles (and Sgt Pepper) fan, so he probably strongly disagrees with this as well.

    2. Well, this is a first. The wittmaster got stumped. Unless this is the old, “I don’t understand what this means.” ploy used to get people to explain something uncomfortable.

  11. Kyle’s probably just trying to be contrarian.

    I mean – those questioning the mighty Pepper’s crown usually advert to Revolver, or possibly the White Album or even Abbey Road.

    But Magical Mystery Tour? It’s really just two EP’s slapped together under the rubric of a (mediocre) band film. Admittedly, they’re brilliant EP’s.

    That said, if LP’s had been able to reach beyond 40 minutes running time, they could have left “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane” on board Pepper, and then there would be *no* dispute as to which Beatles album was the best. (Martin and Epstein later claimed that they felt it was nit right to require fans to pay twice for the same songs, but that had not held them back before.)

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