It Was Forty Years Ago Today...

"...Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play
They've been going in and out of style
But they're guaranteed to raise a smile
So may I introduce to you
The act you've known for all these years
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band!"
(The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band)

It is kinda difficult for a 3 year old boy to understand all the things that make a record to be simply being considered the greatest ever (not only by me, but by gazillions of music publications around the world), but I can pretty much say it have been getting me hooked for the last 20 years.

From the start, I always thought there was something different with that album. The cover, the inner sleeve and the funny cut-out page. I didn't even had to listen to the album to get impressed with it. But I didn't want to just look at it, so I put it in the record player and played it! And I lost count of how many times I did it, almost all the songs were violently catching and even though I couldn't understand a single line, I tried to sing it nonetheless.

However, it'd take me more than a decade to find out what was all that stuff about. Reading about the making of the album is just like having a crash course on sound engineering for every music enthusiasts, especially the more technically inclined ones. Leslie speakers? Lennon not only used it for his Hammond Organ, like everybody else did, but he used it with his own voice, to sound like he was singing on the top of a mountain (in his own words). Direct Input? Macca was probably the first to use it to record bass sounds, something that almost every band does now.

And there's also all that things that people like to ponder about, like the hints that Paul would be dead scattered among the album, the subliminal messages that could be heard if the album was played backwards, the controversy surrounding the personalities portrayed (or that were supposed to be portrayed) on the front cover and of course, the pinpointing of what lines of the lyrics were actually inspired by drugs (I'd say all of them).

But indeed, Sgt. Pepper's is one of those albums you just can't live without...at least I can't!

"I've got to admit it's getting better
It's getting better all the time
I have to admit it's getting better
It's getting better since you've been mine!"