Recording "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"

About

The Beatles’ last recording session as a group took place on June 22, 1966, when they finalized “Revolver“. After a summer spent touring internationally, including stops in Germany, Japan, the Philippines and the USA, the band took a break and each Beatle spent time doing solo activities. During this time, Paul McCartney vacationed in France, Spain and Kenya, and also composed the soundtrack for the film “The Family Way“. He also spent time in recording studios with Donovan and The Escorts.

On November 24, 1966, The Beatles were back at EMI Studios, Abbey Road, to start recording their next single and album.

In November The Beatles returned to the studio for the first time after they had decided to stop touring. They were generally fed up with their lives. They’d had a lot of aggro in that past year, coupled with Brian Epstein worrying that they were going down the pan. He thought that it was the end of The Beatles, and there were all sorts of signs of that in 1966. There was the Philippines disaster, and the falling attendance in some of their shows, and they were fed up with being prisoners of their fame.

We started off with ‘Strawberry Fields’, and then we recorded ‘When I’m Sixty-Four and ‘Penny Lane’. They were all intended for the next album. We didn’t know it was Sgt Pepper then – they were just going to be tracks on The New Album — but it was going to be a record created in the studio, and there were going to be songs that couldn’t be performed live.

George Martin – From “The Beatles Anthology” book, 2000

The big influence was Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys. That was the album that flipped me. The musical invention on that album was, like, ‘Wow!’ That was the big thing for me. I just thought, ‘Oh dear me. This is the album of all time. What the hell are we going to do?’ So, Sgt Pepper eventually came out, basically, from the idea that I had about this band. It was going to be an album of another band that wasn’t us. We were going to call ourselves something else, and just imagine all the time that it wasn’t us playing this album. So, I had this song written of ‘Sgt Pepper’, who, twenty year’s ago today, taught us to play and we’re his protégés and here we are.

Paul McCartney – From “The Beatles: Off the Record” by Keith Badman, 2008

We didn’t think it was fair game for the people who had already spent their pounds on buying the ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and ‘Penny Lane’ single to have it included on an album. We thought that we should give them virgin stuff on an album and so we excluded the tracks from the Sgt Pepper album. I wish we had left them in actually, we could have made an even better album than it was.

George Martin – From “The Beatles: Off the Record” by Keith Badman, 2008

They were free to think of any idea they could lay their hands upon. They would come to me and say, ‘We don’t quite know what we want, but we’ll try and indicate to you.’ It was my job to get inside their minds and find out what kind of noises was inside their brains and translate it into practical terms. My involvement with Pepper was enormous, but I was no longer dictating to them my ideas, on the contrary, I was trying to get out of them their ideas and mould them. It really was a partnership. Pepper grew of its own accord. I don’t think they really knew what they were doing on it, and I didn’t have a great deal of an idea either, but somehow, some magic hands did and started doing something.

George Martin – From “The Beatles: Off the Record” by Keith Badman, 2008

The current Beatles recording sessions are producing some very trendy clothes as well as some forward-looking songs. The variety of musical instruments in the studio is only equalled by the varying styles of The Beatles’ suits, jackets, ties and shoes. Paul zipped into the studio wearing a lemon-yellow jacket, set off by a brightly striped tie. George strolled in with his Civil War moustache, but minus beard. A long, black, Mississippi gambler’s jacket and black moccasins set off his moustache. Ringo and John arrived together in John’s mini, with blacked-out windows, of course. The new moustache and sideboards suit Ringo very much, but curiously, they are much blacker than his medium-brown hair. So much that people say that he’s stuck them on. John’s Chinaman type moustache topped a neckerchief, held together at the throat with badge, inscribed with the words, ‘Down With Pants’. The contact lenses have now been discarded and he’s wearing the steel-rimmed spectacles that he had made for the film How I Won The War. There’s no truth in the rumour that these spectacles are going to be blacked out in the near future, to match his car windows.

From The Beatles Monthly Book – From “The Beatles: Off the Record” by Keith Badman, 2008

Last updated on March 24, 2023

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