John Lennon was destined for superstardom even before leaving Liverpool. While he navigated his middle-class upbringing and sought his place in the world, his collaboration with Paul McCartney produced some of the most significant hits of the 1960s. The extensive repertoire covered by The Beatles has influenced generations of musicians. Despite their impact on an entire era, Lennon believed that certain aspects of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band could have been greatly improved.
At the time, though, there was no telling what the next Beatles project would sound like. Since the Fab Four had performed their final show and would never go on tour again, many wondered whether the moptops that everyone grew to idolise were on the verge of collapse.
However, the band were still stretching every time they walked into Abbey Road Studios. After trying out a folk song that Lennon had written called ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, the psychedelic flourishes of the final product led the band to think more expansively for their next album statement.
Once McCartney came back home to England and fiddled around with the salt and pepper packets on the plane, he had his answer for what their new direction would be with Sgt Pepper. Making a conceptual album around an imaginary band, the entire band would feature the band going through different musical genres without a care in the world, making pitch-perfect hard rock on the title track before bringing the house down with a final farewell at the end.
Although McCartney took charge, none of his bandmates were in love with the idea of making anything of the concept. While Lennon and George Harrison would create their own masterpieces for the album, they never attempted to fit in line with the concept, creating the kind of interesting musical art pieces that sat alongside McCartney’s story-driven songs.
Looking back on the way the record was mixed, Lennon would say that the songs that he worked on weren’t half as good as they could have been, saying, “I actively dislike bits…which didn’t come out right. There are bits in ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’ I don’t like. Some of the sound in ‘Mr Kite’ isn’t right. I like ‘A Day in the Life’, but it’s still not half as nice as I thought it was when we were doing it”.
Regardless of Lennon’s harsh opinion of his work, the album would be the right release at just the right time. Coming out amidst the Summer of Love, The Beatles managed to perfectly capture the zeitgeist of the time on their latest record, making songs that seemed to speak for the audience that was slowly learning to tune in and drop out rather than go along with the lives their parents imposed on them.
While the album did mark a peak in Lennon and McCartney’s partnership, it would also spell the beginning of the end, as the pair eventually grew more distant and fell out in the late 1960s over business decisions. Still, if this is half as good as what Lennon heard in his head, there’s no telling of the kind of musical genius that the former Beatle thought the band were going to do.
