Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Stereo - 2009 remaster)

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Disc 1

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About

From the liner notes:

Historical Notes

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was The Beatles’ eighth album in just over four years. The frequency of their releases seems startling now but as the ten months between Revolver and this LP passed by, there was much speculation about the perceived long delay. In fact, the group had abandoned concerts and were dedicating themselves solely to songwriting and prolongs work in the studio. Released on 1^st June, 1967, the immediate artistic and commercial success of Sgt. Pepper vindicated this new approach adopted by The Beatles. It was the LP that provided the ubiquitous soundtrack to ‘the summer of love’ but its appeal is timeless.

The previous summer The Beatles had raced to finish recording Revolver – completing the last song just three days before the start of the tour that visited West Germany, Japan and the Philippines. Some tense encounters in Asia – and also on summer tour of the USA and Canada – rocked their already shaky commitment to touring. Besides, their concerts were musically out of sync with their recent innovative records – not one song from the current LP Revolver was played onstage during the North American tour.

The frustration of repeating their old repertoire to screaming fans, who could not hear them anyway, when added to the other pressures on the road in the summer of 1966, led the group to decide that the concert on 29^th August at Candlestick Park, San Francisco would be their last. They now became a studio group with no concern about how to replicate their records in concert. In their first session for five months, The Beatles began recording ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. Its evolution showed the musical imagination and technical experimentation of the previous album would be continued. Things were not always complex, of course, because the other new recording at this time was the much more straightforward ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’. In the last days of the year, work began on ‘Penny Lane’. To stop the long wait since August for new material, ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ were released in February, 1967 on a double A-sided single.

In the UK, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band became the fourth Beatles album from which no singles were taken during the 1960s. remarkably, this was also the case in the USA where – also for the first time – the LP’s track listing was exactly the same as in the UK. The only American alteration was the removal of the high pitch tone and garbled speech embedded in the run-out groove. An initial run of 148 weeks in the British album chart included a total of 27 weeks at number one between June, 1967 and February, 1968 (it was interrupted occasionally by The Sound Of Music soundtrack album and Val Doonican Rocks But Gently). In the USA it remained at number one for fifteen of its initial run of 88 weeks in the Top 200.

Even before Sgt. Pepper was released, The Beatles had started work on the title track of their next project, the TV film Magical Mystery Tour.

Recording Notes

Produced by George Martin

Orchestrations by George Martin

Principal Engineer: Geoff Emerick

The Beatles’ recording grew more adventurous and innovative with every album release. Built on the experience and knowledge gained while making the ground-breaking Revolver, the inspirational work by The Beatles and George Martin on the next album showed the world what could be achieved in a recording studio.

More often than not, the imaginative arrangements required more tracks than were available on one four-track tape. The solution was to create extra tracks by copying the first four tracks to a second blank tape and simultaneously combining some of them to leave free as many tracks as were needed for additional overdubs. The need for more tracks reached a peak on Sgt. Pepper with ‘Getting Better’ requiring ‘bouncing down’ no less than three times.

The Beatles began work on ‘Getting Better’ on 9^th March, 1967. First, the rhythm section of bass, drums, guitar and ‘Pianet’ electric piano was recorded on all four tracks. These were mixed together onto one track of a new tape, which left three tracks available for overdubs. Additional drums and bass were recorded on track two and double-tracked on track three; the final free track was used for a tamboura drone and piano. When copying to a third tape, the two bass and drum tracks were combined to one track and the tamboura and piano track was mixed in with the rhythm section. This left two tracks to record a double-tracked lead vocal, harmonies and handclaps. This third tape was then copied to a fourth tape to allow the two vocal tracks to be combined into one, creating a track for a guitar overdub. At the end of this protracted process, ten unique tracks had been used to complete the song.

Revolver had seen the introduction of Artificial/Automatic Double Tracking and this was also used throughout Sgt. Pepper. The sessions for the album also marked the first use of DI (Direct Injection) boxes. For example, on ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ Paul’s bass guitar was connected directly to the mixing desk rather than being recorded by a microphone in front of a speaker cabinet. There was also the speeding up and slowing down of tapes during recording and mixing, which altered the tempo and pitch of a voice, instrument or whole song. This is particularly evident in the sound of Paul’s voice on ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’.

The Beatles had worked during the night on several occasions when making Revolver but nocturnal recordings became the norm for Sgt. Pepper. No session ever began before 7:00pm and could sometimes finish as late – or early – as 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning. Their experimental and painstaking approach meant that it took nearly 400 hours to complete the LP – an astonishing amount of work for an album at that time.

This remastered album has been created from the original stereo analogue master tapes.

Remastered by Guy Massey and Steve Rooke.

Project Co-ordinator: Allan Rouse

Thanks to Simon Gibson

Historical Notes: Kevin Howlett and Mike Heatley

Recording Notes: Allan Rouse and Kevin Howlett

Project Management for EMI Records Ltd: Wendy Day and Guy Hayden

All songs published by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, LLC.

Digital Remaster © 2009 The copyright in the sound recording is owned by EMI Records Ltd. © 2009 EMI Records Ltd. This label copy information is the subject of copyright protection. All rights reserved.

Artwork © 2009 Apple Corps Ltd. All photographs © Apple Corps Ltd.

All photographs taken at Chelsea Manor Studios, London, March, 1967, except where otherwise stated.

Album Redesign: Drew Lorimer

Photo Retouching: Gavin O’Neill

Photo editing and research: Aaron Bremner and Dorcas Lynn