Rant #1,685: It Was 49 Years Ago Today ...

Happy June 1 to you.

Unlike May 1, which is May Day, there is no June Day today.

I am sure that the non-Communist world is happy with that.

Where were you 49 years ago today?

I was 10 years old, living in Rochdale Village, South Jamaica, Queens, New York, and I was probably waiting for the end of school so I could go to day camp.

Back then, school generally ended on June 29 or thereabouts, so I had just a few more weeks of school and then the greatest time of the year would begin.

But 49 years ago today, the Beatles released their LP "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," and, well, the world was never the same.

It didn't get released in America until later in the month, but in England, its release really marked a change in attitude, and a change in the music which would last pretty much forever.

The Beatles were changing the type of music we were listening to, to begin with, and had put out a good stream of albums that were not just compendium of singles tracks, such as "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver," but the world could not have foreseen "Sgt. Pepper."

Psychedelia was in full swing back during this period in 1967, the Summer of Love was about to come upon us, and the top rock act in the world was not the Beatles, it was the Monkees, or at least as far as sales were concerned.

The Monkees had their own "statement" album, "Headquarters" sitting at the top of the charts, and then "Sgt. Pepper" came out--later in the month in America--and the Monkees' album became something of an afterthought, as did every other album, period.

"Sgt. Pepper" was a compendium of songs that pretty much ran together to tell a story, a story that has since been open to personal interpretation, perhaps chronicling the life of one Billy Spears, from getting up out of bed to "The End."

Some people don't interpret it that way, and that is fine, you can look at it any way you want.

The album was meant to listen to from beginning to end in one fell swoop, not as a collection of singles, and it had no American single release until many years later. It wasn't the first rock album to do this--the Beatles had actually done this before themselves, and the Monkees album that sat at the top of the charts didn't contain any actual 45s from it either, at least in America--but "Sgt. Pepper" was set up this way, purposely.

The experience of "Sgt. Pepper" was not in the individual songs, but "the sum is equal to the whole of its parts." You had to listen to the whole thing to "get" the album.

Certainly, it was not the first pop concept album. Frank Sinatra had toyed with the idea on a few of his LPs, and there were other pop albums that looked into the concept.

But it was "Sgt. Pepper" which brought that concept to fruition, and did it so successfully that people are still analyzing it today.

Since they were not touring anymore, the Beatles were not constrained by what they could do on the concert stage live, and they took that tack into the studio, which became their playground. With producer George Martin at the helm, the Beatles used the studio to craft an LP that would be hard to duplicate live, and maybe that was its point.

Heavily influenced by the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds," the album has a little bit of everything on it musically, whether you like out and out pop: "Getting Better," psychedelia: "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," bubblegum: "Pretty Rita," or even Eastern mysticism: "Within You, Without You."

But since the album has to be listened to as a whole, it gives one time to interpret each of the songs, and how it fits into the whole. This was such a revolutionary concept back then, that unless you really remember the period, it is hard to understand just how revolutionary this was.

Prior to "Sgt. Pepper," albums were generally little more than a collection of 11 or 12 songs, most of them singles, with a few filler tunes thrown in to round out the LP.

But on this Beatles' album, something else was afoot.

Heck, even the LP's cover was open to interpretation--who were all of these people, and why were they on the cover of this album?

All of a sudden, rock and roll matured from a kids' music to something that was quite adult, and quite interesting to interpret, and argue about the meaning of each and every lyric, each and every song.

The album went right to No. 1 in England, and once it got to our shores, it pushed the Monkees' LP right off the top of the charts. In fact, Micky Dolenz recounts that he was there when "Good Morning, Good Morning" was recorded in the studio, and he was so blown away by what he heard that he anticipated the release of this album, just like the rest of the public did.

Personally, I love the album as much as the other guy, but it is not my favorite of theirs or even of the period. I enjoyed the Beatles' early albums, which in America were basically collections of singles, and I enjoyed "Magical Mystery Tour," which was an LP in America, again of singles cobbled together with the soundtrack of their ill-fated TV special.

But saying that, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" is a masterpiece, because it made us think while we listened to this LP, from beginning to "The End."

Rock and roll has never been looked at the same way since, and that is what made the LP such a sterling achievement.

And 49 years later, the sterling hasn't tarnished one bit.