Sgt. Pepper and the Beatles: It Was Forty Years Ago Today (review)

The Beatles and their repertory have grown in popularity as subjects with both general audiences and scholars, if not for the quality of the music, then for their historical and cultural significance. In addition to the numerous attempts at analysis and biography, George Martin (with William Pearson) in With a Little Help from My Friends: The Making of Sgt. Pepper (Boston, 1994) specifically deconstructs the making of the album that serves as the topic of the volume reviewed here.

The publication of a collection of essays dedicated to perhaps the Beatles' most audacious artistic project, 1967's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, should appeal to the numerous educational institutions that now offer courses on this and related subjects. With the growing availability of materials on the Beatles—both official and unofficial—the task of writing something meaningful about their lives and their art grows increasingly focused and creative. Consequently, Olivier Julien of the Universities of Paris-Sorbonne and Paris-Sorbonne Nouvelle has brought together a number of Beatles authors to offer their thoughts on this significant work. The series editor, Derek Scott (p. xv), proclaims in the preface an 'upheaval' in musicology, creating a 'new urgency for the study of popular music alongside the development of new critical and theoretical models'. This current volume addresses some of those ideals while belatedly celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper.

As familiar as many of us are with the music, the artwork, and the ideas behind Sgt. Pepper, readers will find new ideas in this volume. Michael Hannan's article ('The Sound Design of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band') stands out as perhaps the most important contribution to this collection. His approach borrows from film studies to look at how George Martin and Geoff Emerick along with the Beatles shaped the aural quality of the album and introduces the listener to the album as an audioscape. In a different vein, John Kimsey ('The Whatchamucallit in the Garden: Sgt. Pepper and Fables of Interference') uses the album as a vehicle for an examination of the notion of authenticity, situating Sgt. Pepper as a historical and cultural object. Indeed, the notion that popular music recordings might hold more than only fleeting interest for us represented an outlandish idea in 1967, even for the world's best-known ensemble.

Unsurprisingly, several authors revisit their previous publications, repackaging their ideas to reference this particular musical collection. For example, Sheila Whiteley ("'Tangerine Trees and Marmalade Skies": Cultural Agendas or Optimistic Escapism?') revisits material from her well-known book, The Space between the Notes: Rock and the Counter-Culture (London, 1992) to consider the album as either escapism or cultural prophecy. Ian Inglis ('Cover Story: Magic, Myth, and Music') expands on part of his article 'Nothing You Can See that Isn't Shown: The Album Covers of the Beatles' (Popular Music, 9/1 (2001), 83-97) that considers the significance of Peter Blake's design and execution of the iconic gatefold record sleeve and the enclosed cutout items. Terence O'Grady's piece ('Sgt. Pepper and the Diverging Aesthetics of Lennon and McCartney') revisits and updates his earlier The Beatles: A Musical Evolution (Boston, 1983), exploring the contributions of the Beatles' two primary songwriters as evidence of the songwriters' growing differences. And Allan Moore ('The Act You've Known for All these Years: A Re-encounter with Sgt. Pepper'), who has made this particular album his speciality, notably in The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Cambridge, 1997), provides us with a reflective summary of his previous thinking. Indeed, most of the articles possess an element of retrospection on previous publications.

Surprisingly, a recurring problem lies in how often authors stray from their subject. David Reck ('The Beatles and Indian Music'), for example, revisits his seminal article 'Beatles Orientalis: The Influences from Asia in a [End Page...