Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Super Deluxe

We're all used to a wave of hoopla whenever a big product is released, but in the case of Sgt. Pepper it's all true. Sgt. Pepper was not just a great album by the Beatles; it was the high point of the Sixties decade itself.It was the unexpected artistic triumph of all that had begun in early 1964.THE ERA::Beatlemania and the British Invasion precipitated a virtual mass extinction event for almost the entirety of the Early Sixties pop music scene. Almost everyone who had been big then never had a hit again and the few acts that survived (Lesley Gore, Gene Pitney, Jan & Dean, Elvis) were never as big as they had been after a final hit or two in '64. Only the Beach Boys went on to greater heights. Dismissed as a teen-idol type fad that would soon die out, the second wave of British Invasion groups that included the Animals, the Kinks and the Rolling Stones showed that there was more to this music than at first seemed the case.Coincidentally by 1965 the Folk Music Scene which had been big from 1961-63 was winding down very fast with less and less interest being shown by anyone but die-hard fans. Bob Dylan's going electric seemed to act as a signal, sending many of the creative artists of folk into the pop/rock scene which had been so re-energized by not only the British Invasion but also the concurrent rise of Motown. First came Folk-Rock, but there was far more to it than jingle-jangle 12-string guitars and Dylan songs. The folk people brought in a whole new set of musical values that included literate lyrics, topics besides romantic love and the idea that the album was the thing, not just two hit singles and a bunch of covers. Artists from folk would be in many of the top groups or solo acts of '65-'66 including the Byrds, the Mamas & the Papas, the Loving Spoonful, the Association, Simon & Garfunkel, Donovan etc.The Beatles did not ignore all this. They responded in two releases. Yesterday was accompanied by a string quartet and by doing this, opened the door to rock & pop absorbing classical influences and instrumentation, a major trend in 1966-67. Then with the acoustic, folk-influenced Rubber Soul, they indicated their joining with the folk artists and their views on making truly artistic albums. By this point the rock/pop scene was open to virtually all influences. By late summer of '66, everything went into a kind of hyper-drive; in the period roughly bookended by Revolver and Sgt. Pepper, everyone was doing their finest work, even the pure pop artists, with great material coming from every quarter. By this time people couldn't ignore this any longer and even the adult media who typically dismissed the teen scene had to take notice, peaking with Leonard Bernstein, in patrician tones, extolling the value of this music on the CBS special, Inside Pop - The Rock Revolution in Spring, 1967.Music was not all that was changing. To understand the Sixties you must understand it as being a time of total and unbridled optimism. Since the late Fifties in the U.S. and Western Europe there had been a feeling that everything was really wonderful, prosperity was the new normal and what few problems there were would soon be solved by science. You must understand that environmental problems were still unknown (Silent Spring had only been out a few years) and it was believed the Civil Rights Act alone would cure past racial disparities. The only problems were those of "The Affluent Society". From their prosperous lives the Sixties teens looked out at the world and saw things weren't so nice everywhere, and like a whole generation of Siddhartha's sought to save the world from its problems. The old order began to fray, especially on the two coasts (hings stayed the same in the interior much longer) and a new youthful counterculture began to arise, their answer being Universal Love. Naive? Yes, but it was very sincere and well-intended, and music became the vehicle that spread it.At the peak of all this, with much anticipation after Rubber Soul and Revolver, the Beatles produced Sgt. Pepper to absolute and universal acclaim from all quarters. It was seen as the great fulfillment of all the recent trends in pop music, the greatest pop album ever made, perhaps even one of the greatest works of art ever made. The superlatives were endless. It sold far beyond any album before it. Though it had no singles, radio stations played it as if every track was a single, even all of the five minute A Day In the Life, especially at night, its double crescendo seeming to sum up everything that was going on. It was like an explosion, played everywhere all summer long, with other pop music almost at a standstill, reacting to it. All the rest of 1967 and early 1968 were enveloped in its psychedelic haze. Then everything changed again, almost all the mid-Sixties artists vanished, and the new, heavier era of the Late Sixties began.THE BOX SET: This is everything a die-hard Beatles fan could possibly want. A 3-D cover curiously recalling Their Satanic Majesty's Request. An original LP facsimile inside containing four CD's of music and DVD and Blu-Ray versions of the 1997 documentary and a beautiful hard-cover book full of photos of the band and era. The CD's are the original mono and new stereo mix of the album, plus two discs of the Sgt. Pepper sessions that include various takes of the songs in development, some being vocal or instrumental tracks only, plus Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane. Those two songs were originally intended for the album but were released in early '67 as singles because the Beatles needed something after Yellow Submarine/Eleanor Rigby. George Martin truly regrets that they weren't included but I'm happy the way they were. Sgt. Pepper is already 40 minutes long, pushing the length of a 60's LP before sound quality was lost. It is also a fairly light-spirited album with two "heavy" tracks of five minutes each, and adding Strawberry Fields may have been too much. It's perfect as it is. Besides, Strawberry Fields was a major event in itself. What kind of pop song was this? Nothing like it had been done before. It was a remarkable breakthrough that showed the Beatles were rapidly advancing. Penny Lane was a perfect bright foil, a bouncy, cheery song guaranteed to get major airplay; a perfect single between two important albums. Though the two extra discs will be of most interest to lifelong fans (of any age) they do show the importance of George Martin, the true fifth Beatle, who brought their ideas into existence.THE SOUND: To judge the sound, especially important with not just a new remastering but a new mix, I made a playlist that song by song listed the Mono; then the original stereo (from the Beatles 2009 box set) then the new mix. Mono is mono. It's hot now in oldies CD's because people want to now hear things the way they originally did, and we all heard almost all 60's music on mono home, transistor and car radios and mono albums. Of course Sgt. Pepper was the album that caused the huge boom in sales of stereos that made stereo the norm very quickly, so the set shows this somewhat ironic transition. The new mix wins by light years. The sound is deeper, richer, more enveloping, clear, more transparent and more detailed. It's the kind of improvement that makes you think, "Well, what was I listening to before ?" It's that good.A PERSONAL NOTE: I have to thank the makers of the box set for clearing something up for me. I was beginning to think I had a false memory. I clearly remembered a Penny Lane that ended with a trumpet fanfare instead of the cymbal fade-out, yet no such version ever appeared on CD. Finally, here it is on Disc 4, listed as "Capitol Records mono US promo mix". It seems to have been the one most played by my local radio station back then. Thank you for including it!

This is a field report, really. Not worked over like an essay. Just notes from an immersion. Fresh. And I hope smart.I popped the new mix disc out of its sleeve and put it in the CD player, running it through a Denon receiver and five-way speakers cranked up in the tunnel-like listening room above our garage. As I did when the LP arrived in the Bay Area in June 1967, I listened to the whole album, straight through, except I didn’t have to turn over the vinyl, as I did then. But I did it in my mind, anyway: the album is in two acts.Let me say two things up front, in the interest of full disclosure, as we say. First, I mildly hate digital sound. This CD had the drawbacks of all CDs, that raspy upper edge to everything. It was clean—no pops or scratches—but subtly screechy on the high end. That’s digital. I’ve only listened to this album on clean vinyl for the past decade and a half. And, second, I’ve only listened to it in its original mono. This LP is in a direct lineage from Phil Spector through Brian Wilson. It’s meant to be “wall of sound,” with a blend that stereo can never match or whose alleged “limitations” it can never pretend to rectify. There is no film conceived and shot in black and white that improves with colorization. And that’s what a stereo mix of this album will always be.Having said that, I say: go get this mix, especially if you’ve been imbibing that putrid stereo mix that has been the only game in town since the end of the 1960s. This mix uses original master tapes that make the instruments and vocals glow with a clarity you haven’t heard. Power chords are knifier. Grace notes pop out. Counterpoint is crystalline. Overtones shine. And now, the bass (for the most part) and drums (all the time) stand out melodically in ways that will, I say it advisedly, touch you. The intricate structure of interlocking timbres the Beatles (and George Martin) dreamt up reveals itself like a finely chiseled torso.I often quote to my students Ford Madox Ford’s statement that a good style consists of ”a constant succession of tiny surprises.” This mix gives good style. Yet it still feels solidly authentic in that you never hear anything that seems added or jacked or gimmicky. It stays true to the songs, while only occasionally slightly reimagining them, but always intelligently.Here, a track by track rundown of impressions:The opening track’s initial snare drum crack and distorted guitar chord literally made me exclaim, “Oh, my God.” It is so annunciatory and arresting. It demanded my attention with authority.“With a Little Help from My Friends” is convincing, displaying more than the previous track the splendid lateral spreading and blending of instruments and voices—a distinctive trait of the whole album.I’d hoped to be satisfied by “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” since the old stereo mix disembowels the mono so completely. This track turns out to be the greatest disappointment of the new stereo mix. In fairness: no other song is so perfectly blended in an almost hallucinatory way as this one in the mono mix. But here John’s voice still protrudes, not buried in the instrumental haze the Beatles intended. And if the phasing of the chorus that the mono includes has been restored here, it’s far too faint. That phasing gave blood to the track in its mono original.“Getting Better,” though, is gorgeous, with its chimey hammerstroke chords and faux Beach Boys vocals. This mix got to me. I started crying almost instantly, though I’ve got to admit that this song chokes me up every time I hear it in any format. Still, this version is breathtaking.“Fixing a Hole” offers an interesting compromise with the mono version. The lead vocal, which feels as if it’s literally buried (i.e., in a hole) in the mono, is not full-frontal here as in the old stereo mix. Rather, the engineer (Giles Martin) places it in its own echoey space, as though stuck in a cistern apart from the instruments. When I heard the maracas boosted in the coda, I thought, “Nice.”“She’s Leaving Home” appears in the correct key (F major instead of the E major in the old stereo mix). Given the separation of lines and colors, though, this version makes the carefully articulated bowed strings (and harp) the real responsorial stars of the track. I’d never felt that so intensely before.“Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” emerges as more three-dimensional than the mono, but lacks the kind of layering of imaginary depth it could have: it’s all too frontal for my tastes. Nevertheless, the tape collage coda satisfies more than the mono. (I literally whooped when it ended).“Within You and Without You” works better than the mono in this regard: by splitting George’s voice from the strings it reinforces the dialectic of “within” vs. “without.” The responsories of sitar and strings further bespeak the dialectic feeling.“When I’m 64” makes the song finally feel like a crooner fronting a band (unlike the mono or the old stereo version). Unfortunately, the clarity only boosts the kitschiness of the song.“Lovely Rita”: lovely indeed. One of the tracks where the counterpoint leads you along from moment to moment. I felt as if someone, for the first time, had cleaned the window that looks out onto the song. And, again, I cried. The coda, by the way, lacks the cool mystery of the mono, but reveals . . . something. What? Loveliness? One of the best tracks in the mix.“Good Morning, Good Morning” offers excellent balance and a prominence of drums that kept me smiling, despite this being one of the lesser tracks in the album.Sadly, this new stereo mix muffs the perfect transition (chicken cluck to grace-note electric guitar) from “Good Morning” to the Sgt Pepper reprise that the mono provided. Nothing about this new mix could raise the reprise from being merely pro forma, perfunctory, anyway. It did sound better in the mono, though.“A Day in the Life.” I’m sure this was the track Giles Martin was most determined to mix just right. I think he succeeded. You will hear nuances in John’s lead vocal that make it feel more intimate than ever. The orchestral sound masses will scare you in a way different from the smudgy, less clarified version of old. It’s not so much like a dam bursting as a series of earthquakes toppling buildings one onto the other: you hear each new layer’s crash. When Paul sings “I went into a dream” the music more strikingly shifts into another dimension than the old stereo mix. I should say: it plunges you into the dream state.The final three-piano (plus low organ) E major chord thunders, as it should. And, again, heaven forgive me, I blurted out, “Oh, my God.” The miking is so hot you hear a piano bench squeak loudly as the chord decays. It’s like a parishioner muttering “Amen.”The old dead wax comic loop ensues (read about it elsewhere if you don’t know about this). It was a move the group devised strictly for vinyl and it juts out as silly and incorrect here.When it ended, I couldn’t help myself: I played “Getting Better” again. And swayed and raised my hands and bobbed my head and cried one more time.Verdict: So glad to get this new, reverential album mix and hear what pays valid and distinguished honor to a vinyl goddess.