《佩珀军士孤独之心俱乐部乐队》是有史以来最为重要的摇滚乐专辑，是史上最伟大的摇滚乐队在概念，声音，作曲，封面艺术，乃至录音技术等各个方面做出的不可超越的冒险。从专辑同名曲中华丽的铜管和模糊的吉他，到最后一首曲目《生命中的一天》结尾处的管弦乐队合奏和冗长、死亡般的钢琴和弦，《佩珀军士》中的13首歌曲，是披头士乐队作为录音棚艺术家八年以来的巅峰之作。在追求魔幻和卓越的道路上，约翰·列侬、保罗·麦卡特尼、乔治·哈里森和林戈·斯塔尔从未如此的无畏，如此的团结。
《佩珀军士孤独之心俱乐部乐队》专辑封面
作为披头士发烧友，曾经收集了几乎所有专辑
这张专辑陪我度过难忘的大学时光。除了音乐上的革命性，对于半个多世纪后的听众，更加重要的可能是音乐背后的意趣和精神。披头士乐队在他们最受欢迎的时刻，没有在狂热的“流量”中迷失自我，转而从更加深刻的“内省”中挖掘潜力，以13首风格各异的乐曲，巧妙编排成一张均衡、悦耳的专辑，开启了摇滚音乐史上的一次伟大革新。音乐背后，洋溢着一种生机勃勃、激扬进取的朝气，“乐而不淫、哀而不伤”，或可成为对披头士音乐的一句中肯评语。
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts ClubBand
Capitol, 1967
Sgt. Pepper's LonelyHearts Club Band is the most important rock & roll album ever made, an unsurpassedadventure in concept, sound, songwriting, cover art and studio technology bythe greatest rock & roll group of all time. From the title song's regalblasts of brass and fuzz guitar to the orchestral seizure and long, dying pianochord at the end of "A Day in the Life," the 13 tracks on Sgt.Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band are the pinnacle of the Beatles' eightyears as recording artists. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr were never more fearless and unified in their pursuit ofmagic and transcendence.
Issued in Britain onJune 1st, 1967, and a day later in America,Sgt. Pepper is also rock'sultimate declaration of change. For the Beatles, it was a decisive goodbye to matching suits, world tours andassembly-line record-making. "We were fed up with being Beatles,"McCartney said decades later, in Many Years From Now, Barry Miles'McCartney biography. "We were not boys, we were men... artists rather thanperformers.
At the same time,Sgt.Pepper formally ushered in an unforgettable season of hope, upheaval andachievement: the late 1960s and, in particular, 1967's Summer of Love. In itsiridescent instrumentation, lyric fantasias and eye-popping packaging, Sgt.Pepper defined the opulent revolutionary optimism of psychedelia andinstantly spread the gospel of love, acid, Eastern spirituality and electricguitars around the globe. No other pop record of that era, or since, has hadsuch an immediate, titanic impact. This music documents the world's biggestrock band at the very height of its influence and ambition.
"It was apeak," Lennon toldRolling Stone in 1970, describing both the albumand his collaborative relationship with McCartney. "Paul and I weredefinitely working together," Lennon said, and Sgt. Pepper is rich withproof: McCartney's burst of hot piano and school-days memoir ("Woke up,fell out of bed...") in Lennon's "A Day in the Life," a reverieon mortality and infinity; Lennon's impish rejoinder to McCartney's chorus in"Getting Better" ("It can't get no worse").
"Sgt. Pepperwas our grandest endeavor," Starr said, looking back, in the band's 2000autobiography,The Beatles Anthology. "The greatest thing about theband was that whoever had the best idea – it didn't matter who – that was theone we'd use." It was Neil Aspinall, the Beatles' longtime assistant, whosuggested they reprise the title track, just before the finale of "A Dayin the Life," to complete Sgt. Pepper's theatrical conceit: animaginary concert by a fictional band, played by the Beatles.
The first notes went totape on December 6th, 1966: two takes of McCartney's music-hall confection"When I'm Sixty-Four." (Lennon's lysergic reflection on his Liverpoolchildhood, "Strawberry Fields Forever," was started two weeks earlierbut issued in February 1967 as a stand-alone single.) ButSgt. Pepper'sreal birthday is August 29th, 1966, when the Beatles played their last liveconcert, in San Francisco. Until then, they had made history in the studiobetween punishing tours. Off the road for good, the Beatles were free to be aband away from the hysteria of Beatlemania.
McCartney went a stepfurther. On a plane to London in November '66, as he returned from a vacationin Kenya, he came up with the idea of an album by the Beatles in disguise, analter-ego group that he subsequently dubbed Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts ClubBand. "We'd pretend to be someone else," McCartney explained inAnthology."It liberated you – you could do anything when you got to the mic or onyour guitar, because it wasn't you."
Only two songs on thefinal LP, both McCartney's, had anything to do with the Pepper characters: thetitle track and Starr's jaunty vocal showcase, "With a Little Help From MyFriends," introduced as a number bySgt. Pepper's star crooner,Billy Shears. "Every other song could have been on any other album,"Lennon insisted later. Yet it is hard to imagine a more perfect setting for theVictorian jollity of Lennon's "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!"(inspired by an 1843 circus poster) or the sumptuous melancholy of McCartney's"Fixing a Hole," with its blend of antique shadows (a harpsichordplayed by the Beatles' producer, George Martin) and modern sunshine(double-tracked lead guitar executed with ringing precision by Harrison). The Pepperpremise was a license to thrill.
It also underscored thereal-life cohesion of the music and the group that made it. Of the 700 hoursthe Beatles spent makingSgt. Pepper from the end of 1966 until April1967, the group needed only three days' worth to complete Lennon's lavishdaydream "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds." "A Day in theLife," the most complex song on the album, was done in just five days.(The oceanic piano chord was three pianos hit simultaneously by 10 handsbelonging to Lennon, McCartney, Starr, Martin and Beatles roadie Mal Evans.) Noother Beatles appear with Harrison on his sitar-perfumed sermon on materialismand fidelity, "Within You Without You," but the band wisely placedthe track at the halfway point of the original vinyl LP, at the beginning ofSide Two: a vital meditation break in the middle of the jubilant indulgence.
The Beatles'exploitation of multitracking transformed the very act of studio recording (theorchestral overdubs on "A Day in the Life" marked the debut ofeight-track recording in Britain: two four-track machines used in sync). AndSgt.Pepper's visual extravagance officially elevated the album cover to a workof art. Michael Cooper's photo of the Beatles in satin marching-band outfits,in front of a cardboard-cutout audience of historical figures, created byartist Peter Blake, is the most enduring image of the psychedelic era. Sgt.Pepper was also the first rock album to incorporate complete lyrics to thesongs in its design.
YetSgt. Pepperis the Number One album of the RS 500 not just because of its firsts – it issimply the best of everything the Beatles ever did as musicians, pioneers andpop stars, all in one place. A 1967 British print ad for the album declared,"Remember, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Is the Beatles." AsMcCartney put it, the album was "just us doing a good show."
The show goes on forever.
