Although it bears the usual Lennon/McCartney credit, the song Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band could have been credited to McCartney-Evans-Aspinall, as the two faithful assistants to the Beatles had more to do with its creation than Lennon did. Paul even promised some royalty payments to Mal Evans, but he knew that he could not tinker with the official songwriting partnership without consequences on a number of levels such as music publishing rights, not to mention public perception.
Recording commenced on February 1st, 1967, at Abbey Road Studios. Paul knew exactly what he wanted the rhythm guitar part to sound like, so John picked up a bass guitar, and the group laid down nine attempts at a backing track. Take nine served as the master, onto which Paul overdubbed a new bass part, wiping out John's bass line. On February 2nd, Paul added his lead vocal, then he joined John and George to record the harmonized group vocals. Ringo, Mal and Neil may have sung along, as well. If so, their voices are well down in the mix. The 50th anniversary edition of the album contains the song as it stood at this time, including the extra measures after the point where it would eventually segue into the next number.
A full month later, on March 3rd, four French horn players reported to the studio for another overdub session. There was no pre-arranged score for them, so it proved to be a labor-intensive evening as Paul hummed what he wanted them to play and one of the players wrote it out. Once their part was recorded, George made multiple attempts at a lead guitar part. According to engineer Geoff Emerick in his book Here, There and Everywhere, Paul eventually played the lead part himself. If this is correct, then Paul played rhythm, lead and bass guitar on the finished track, though George did provide a second rhythm part on the master.
The final touches were applied to the track on March 6th when numerous sound effects were pulled from the EMI archives. These included the sounds of an audience quietly talking before a show, another audience laughing (this from a Beyond the Fringe live performance), and an orchestra warming up. They did not have to dig deep to find the latter - it was recorded only weeks earlier at the session for the huge crescendos heard on A Day in the Life. Yet another effect would be added a month later to help cover the segue into Ringo's song, which had not even been written yet.
The major conceit of the album is that Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is an alter ego of the Beatles. The cover appears to be a funeral for their old Fab Four image, with wax figures of their former selves actually in attendance. They all embraced this new image so much that they donned their psychedelic silk band uniforms one more time at the end of 1967 for one of the promotional films for the single Hello Goodbye.
Sgt. Pepper's band is depicted as part of the citizenry of Pepperland in the animated film Yellow Submarine. When the Beatles arrive to save the day, they are amazed at their resemblance to the band and adopt their uniforms to fight the Blue Meanies. Or course, the song plays during this sequence and even continues straight into With a Little Help from My Friends. Both songs appear on the 1999 album Yellow Submarine Songtrack.
John Lennon lashed out against the image in the song How Do You Sleep, an attack on McCartney from the 1971 album Imagine. George Harrison joined in with a stinging lead guitar as John sang, "So Sgt. Pepper took you by surprise..." By 1973, however, he had mellowed, and he composed the song I'm the Greatest for Ringo's self-titled album. As Ringo sings "Yes, my name is Billy Shears," the sound of a cheering crowd mimics that on the original Sgt. Pepper track. John plays rhythm guitar and sings harmony for much of the song. George plays lead guitar and keyboardist Billy Preston also plays on the track. Sadly, John had not yet fully reconciled with Paul, so old Hamburg friend Klaus Voorman plays bass in his stead. Still, this Pepper tribute is the closest thing we would get to a Beatles reunion on record at the time.
Next up - the reprise.
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