Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Album

At the end of the song, the MC introduces the lead singer... who will be singing the next song "With a Little Help From My Friends"

"Billy Shears" (Ringo)

For this album, John felt that his songs were almost

"Done to order"

John said he wanted to

"smell the sawdust on the floor"

This album for many people became the soundtrack to

"the Summer of Love"

Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields did not make it to

#1

Charted #____ for 22 weeks in UK

1

What aesthetics of the record were different?

1) Record jacket had pink waves instead of being plain white 2) album came with cardboard cut-out badges, mustaches, and bandstand & was packaged as a luxurious gatefold with full lyrics printed on the back

Firsts for Sgt. Pepper include____

1) bit of a "concept album & 2) first record without "banding" (the tracks are not separated by extended silences, giving the impression of a single performance.

Charted #1 for __ weeks in the US

15

"A Day in the Life" Side Two: total amount of recording time was

34 hours

Strawberry Fields Forever took over ___ hours to record

55

Some of the people included

Bob Dylan, Laurel and Hardy, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, 3 Shirley Temples.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band & With a Little Help from My Friends was a

Fave live show concept-audience noise at the beginning, tuning, cheering, acting as an MC of their own album,

"Fixing a Hole" has a descending guitar solo by

George

Lovely Rita's piano solo was played by

George Martin

"Getting Better" is a ______ saying

Jimmie Nicol

Getting Better's third verse is explicitly referring to ____

John's abusive history

It was released simultaneously all over the world on ___

June 1st 1967

Who insisted they pay him to be put on album cover?

Leo Gorcey (but they painted him blue because they weren't going to pay him)

"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" has a very active _____ bass line

McCartney

In Strawberry Fields Forever band take includes the

Mellotron, a primitive sampler, on which pressing a key actives a short tape playback of a pre-recorded sound (in the case of "Strawberry Fields Forever" it was the flute sound).

Getting Better has another "trademark" bassline by

Paul

The acid guitar solo/fills in "Good Morning, Good Morning" Side Two are played by

Paul

Side Two When I'm Sixty-Four is about ____

Paul's dad 64th birthday

Side Two When I'm Sixty Four: arrangement by Martin (clarinet trio) which emphasizes

Paul's music hall style

First time the Beatles single doesn't top the charts

Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields

Who was the album designed by?

Peter Black

George studied with ______ in ____

Ravi Shankar in Bombay India

She's Leaving Home has no ___

Ringo

Strawberry Fields drums are notable as

Ringo got a deeper, more "boomy drum sound (slack-tuned drum skins + dampened drums with towels/sweaters) and played a remarkable set of musical fills

With a Little Help jokingly refers to ____

Ringo's singing troubles; lampooning his own limited singing range

Most expensive album to date?

Sgt. Pepper

"A Day in the Life" Side Two was two songs in one ....

They originally recorded 24 measures of empty space, just keeping time, with Mal counting out measure numbers. They set an alarm clock to mark the end of the section

"Good Morning, Good Morning" Side Two is inspired by ____

a breakfast cereal advertisement

Second part of Strawberry Fields Forever includes:

a later orchestration by Martin (on John's request) and included cellos, brass instruments, and a Swarmandel (indian zither), in addition to the band.

Penny Lane jokes:

a musical one ("Banker sitting" accompanied by a very low contrabass note), as well as a dirty one ("four of fish and finger pie"...)

In Penny Lane, Paul's lyrics "flatten" the different times of year to present ___

a psychedelic portrait of Penny Lane: the season's ambiguity, is it summer or winter?

Later in Penny Lane, before the very last chorus repeat, Paul employs ______

a so-called "truck driver" modulation (a type of direct modulation, changes the key "upwards", like a trucker downshifting/revving up the engine for speed; very common in commercial/pop music for the uplifting psychological effect) .

In Sgt. Pepper, Paul plays the ___

abrasive acid lead guitar lines

Earliest version of Strawberry Fields Forever is ___

acoustic guitar-driven

"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" has _____ harmonies & meter changes

adventurous because the verse, pre-chorus and chorus are in three different keys meter changes: verse and pre chorus are in triple meter while chorus is in 4

Penny Lane incorporates a distorted, ____

amplified piano track, which feedbacks at the very end

This album marks Paul's ____

ascent as the creative leader of the Beatles

The title track opens the album with

audience/tuning sounds making it appear as if the listener was attending a live performance.

George only sings ____ in Sgt. Pepper

back up (an early sign of Georges alienation)

In Strawberry Fields: The "swooshing" sounds in the background of verses 2 and 3 are

backwards cymbal hits, overdubbed later. They really liked backwards tape sounds and would try almost everything backwards at this point.

In Penny Lane we note a hyperactive, melodic

bass line which is a Paul trademark

Sgt. Peppers was the first Beatles album without an altered tracklist _________

between the US AND UK version

"Good Morning, Good Morning" Side Two lyrics critique the ____

boredom/sameness of suburban life/societal expectations

Sgt. Pepper was Paul's ___

brainchild

Strawberry Field's Forever was worked on ____

by John in Spain on the set of Richard Lester's movie How I Won the War in 1966

Final chord in A Day in the Life was played

by Paul, John, Mal & Ringo on three grand pianos, George Martin on harmonium. Geoff Emerick "rode" the control room faders to capture as much of the sound as possible, then used audio compression to boost the signal up. It's a very noisy chord, you can hear a lot of background noise from the studio, but it's still an epic kind of sound.

"Good Morning, Good Morning" Side Two constantly ____

changes meters in verse, irregular groups of 5s 4s and 3s clearly navigated by Ringo

Ringo says he learned how to play ____ during the recording sessions during this time

chess

"Penny Lane" reflects Paul's

childhood in Liverpool and has a lot of sincerity, lyrically.

Strawberry Fields Forever refers to the

childhood memory of sneaking into Strawberry Field, which was an orphanage with extensive gardens, when he was a child. The demo shows the embryonic status of the song: the melody, harmony, and lyrics are basically all already there.

Pivot Chords are ___

chords that are common between the two keys and can act as a gateway from one to the other.

Notice the ___ again in She's Leaving Home:

complex prosody: phrase lengths are asymmetrical, melody kind of tumbles around, almost like the image of the girl tiptoeing down the stairs.

The Beatles became a symbol for the

counterculture=because they were perceived as being anti-establishment.

"Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!": circus interlude music done by ___

cutting up a bunch of organ and calliope recordings (some made by them, some from the archives), throwing the pieces of tape in the air, and then splicing it together.

John was _____ at the time of the sessions

deeply into acid withdraw letting Paul get his way

In "Good Morning, Good Morning" Side Two the coda features a sequences of ____

different animals sound recordings (in order of increasing size/fierceness); the clucking chicken at the end becomes the guitar riff of the "Sgt. Pepper's" reprise.

The Beatles are posing as a _________

different band, a weird Edwardian Military band/rock group hybrid, wearing strange/garish outfits

John was also

dismissive of some songs.

John was reportedly

dissatisfied with the arrangements

The album ends with a joke:

dog whistle tone, meant to be audible only by younger fans and pets (not for older people) then a mishmash of what sounds like gibberish was pressed into the records runout groove, which is concentrical (does not end).

"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was inspired by a ___

drawing by John's son Julian, featuring one of his preschool buddies (Lucy).

With a Little help obviously has a ___ reference

drug "I get high with a little help from my friends" (also juvenile penis joke)

Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields (released as a double A side) were the ____

earliest songs recorded from the Pepper session

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band & With a Little Help from My Friends was an ______ as much as a record

experience

The end of Strawberry Fields is "amazing" as the ____

first coda fades out, then you get a second coda of seemingly unrelated jamming (with some backwards tape effects), then a second fade and John saying "Cranberry Sauce"). The first of many great weird Beatles codas (actually the first might have been "Rain").

John wore his ____

glasses

They are not limited by ______

having to compose things they could play live

____ pretty clever in Lovely Rita

internal rhyme scheme

The people appearing on the cover were

intricate cardboard cut outs carefully arranged

Side Two of Sgt. Pepper has one ____ track

less. but still the same length

For this album they became whoever they wanted to be as they all grew ____

mustaches and more facial hair

Fixing a hole is a psychedelic song with ____ lyrics

mysterious

Radio stations were playing the album ______

on a loop, back-to-back

"Getting Better": Paul was reminded of Jimmie Nicol's saying while

on a walk with his sheepdog Martha

The opening is taken from _______

one of the early band takes, with Mellotron, slide guitar (not very loud/prominent in the part they used) and a generally more stripped down sound.

In "A Day in the Life" they eventually decided to fill the "linking" section with an

orchestral crescendo. It was arranged by George Martin so that each player was free to play at their own pace from the lowest note they had to the highest note that would fit into an E Major chord (the first chord of Paul's section). 40 orchestral players were present, wearing full evening attire, they recorded the section four times (eventually wearing masks/clown noses, which can be seen on the promo film). The four takes were then mixed together onto a single track—the four-track recorder obviously was full, so they used the "synced" method we talked about in the Revolver lecture, with Ken Townsend using a common control tone to synchronize two 4-track machines.

There is no _____ between the two songs, the applause dies down and then the next song starts, ____ with some of the clapping

pause; overlapping

Paul requested a ____ for Penny Lane

piccolo trumpet solo (performed by David Mason

In "Penny Lane" Paul uses _____

pivot chords to modulate between different keys for verse and chorus

Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields were released upon

pressure from EMI in February 1967 because the media was suggesting that the Beatles had dried up

"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is a ____ song

psychedelic

Paul and Mal came up with the idea of Sgt. Pepper when ____

returning from their 1966 post-tour vacation

She's Leaving Home has no ____

rock instruments

Side Two: Within You, Without You: is the ____

second song to be recorded by a solo Beatle song (first one was Yesterday) only George participates

Side Two "Lovely Rita" is a semi-made up story about a fictional, slightly ____

sexualized meter maid

The Beatles at this time have mastered _____

studio experimentation in Revolver

Also notice in Lucy in the sky:

tambura drone, guitar through leslie cabinet (pre-chorus) and Lowrey Organ (intro melody)

Getting Better has the ____again

tambura for sustained effect on third verse

most noticeable instruments are the in "Within You, Without You"

the dilruba (bowed sitar), tambura, and tabla; notice the deep, detailed recorded tabla sound. George also plays a nice sitar solo

With a Little help pair exemplary of Paul's two main styles:

the rocker and the Broadway tune master

She's Leaving Home has just ____

the voices and small orchestra

At this stage, the Beatles are no longer _____

touring

Side Two: Within You, Without You: has ______ session musicians.

uncredited Indian

"Fixing a Hole" has ____ sounds

unusual

"Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" lyrics are taken from a ____

vintage circus advertisement poster found by Lennon

She's Leaving Home lyrics are about ____

young emancipation & difficulty of communicating between the older and current generation

Estimated production costs?

£25,000 (equivalent to about $610,000 today).

The cover alone cost _____

£3000 pounds to make