It was 40 years ago today...

June 1st, 1967, The Beatles told the world “It was 20 years ago today, Sgt. Peppers taught the band to play”. That was 40 years ago June 2nd for the American release and the Band is still playing in the hearts and minds of millions of followers worldwide.

Liverpool’s “The Quarrymen” become Beatles set out to make a truly artistic album and 129 days and $75,000 later; they recorded Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. The year was late 1966-early 1967 and they used a then state-of-the-art 4-track recorder to tediously record an album that stayed on the top of the charts (#1) for 15 straight weeks. The album has sold in excess of 10 million copies and as of today, ten million and one. I went to Wal-Mart and bought the CD…again.

700 hours of recording went into this endeavor which Rolling Stone magazines says is the “most important rock and roll album ever made” and rated it number one out of the top 500 albums ever produced. “A day in the life” is stated as the most complex song on the album, took 5 days to record. 5 days? Its amazing single piano chord at the end was actually done using 3 pianos and 5 people, including a roadie named Mal Evens.

This album set the Beatles on a course far different than the Ed Sullivan version, America had become accustomed to. The Fab Four were all in disguise as a fictitious Sgt. Peppers Band and the album cover was clustered with characters most people recognized. W.C. Fields, Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Mae West, Carl Jung and even a garden gnome graced the crazy cover. Back in the day, virtually all buyers of L.P.’s spent hours gazing at the album art and this one beat anything we’d ever seen.

This particular album was the first to include a complete lyrics list, something we’ve all came to expect in the Internet age and Dolby Noise Reduction, still the standard for excess noise reduction in recorded sound.

This pivotal album, in the late 60’s was as much a part of our lives as was the space race, race riots and the Vietnam War. The 60’s! Wow! What an overload of emotions, trauma and turmoil America was immersed in. Political figures and civil rights leaders were dying right alongside friends and neighbors in the Vietnam War. Drugs, sex and rock & roll at the Woodstock Music Festival were in the news and yes, L.S.D.

Folks think this country is wild in 2007. They compare it to the hippie/Vietnam days. They either didn’t live through the 60’s, or they have forgotten. The 60’s were like a volcano in comparison to today’s bottle rockets. Mystical sounding Indian sitar music floated through the head-shops, filled with incense smoke, lava lamps and black-lights. On the walls were neon glowing posters of the wildest pictures of Kama-Sutra poses and misquoted scripture.

“Peace-Love-Dope!” cried many and to quote keyboardist Ray Manzarek of the band -The Doors “We were right about the peace and love, but we missed it on the dope part”. Back to Sgt. Peppers, the famous song Lucy in the sky with Diamonds no doubt is in reference to LSD, at least we all thought so. “Suddenly someone is there at the turnstile, the girl with kaleidoscope eyes”. Yea, it’s LSD, alright. Trust me…

Joe Cocker was given the song “A little help from my friends” by the Beatles, to help him get on his feet and we all know where that went. “When I’m 64” was about an age so far in the future that many of us haven’t reached it yet, but Paul has and so has Ringo. John Lennon and George Harrison, if they had lived, would both have passed the 64 mark also.

Find someone my age who can’t sing most of “A day in the life” and I’ll be surprised. “Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head – found my way downstairs and drank a cup, and looking up, I noticed I was late…”

Many people expressed alarm with Sgt. Pepper’s and the next album “Magical Mystery Tour”, but my generation saw them as the future and indeed they were, as the early 70’s is still considered the golden age of rock and roll. However, most people forget it was the Beatles who started it all and I predict, when Paul and Ringo finally pass on to the next life, there will be Beatlemania again in America and around the world.

Oh, by the way, the member identified as the one and only Billy Shears in the opening song of Sgt. Pepper’s? It was Ringo Starr…