Talk:Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Honor vs. Honour

DNFTT. BencherliteTalk 16:36, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

The site en.wikipedia.org is an American website. The internet is, itself, an American invention. The last two wars fought between the US and the UK were won by the US. The correct spelling is h-o-n-o-r. When Britain does something of note, we'll change it back. And, don't say, "The language is English." It's bastardized French and German, anyway. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.137.226.147 (talk) 03:43, 13 January 2015 (UTC) Please read the note on your talkpage, we have accepted standards on Wikipedia. If you continue to change it will be considered vandalism and you could be blocked.- McMatter (talk)/(contrib) 03:46, 13 January 2015 (UTC) (edit conflict) The site attempts to be universal: see MOS:ENGVAR. --John (User:Jwy/talk) 03:50, 13 January 2015 (UTC) Consensus has been long established that British groups use British English. Also, this is a Featured article that has undergone a rigorous review of prose and sourcing, and therefore new editors should exercise caution in editing it, as the odds of being reverted (due to the edit not conforming to the FA criteria) are much higher. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 08:15, 13 January 2015 (UTC) And while we are being childish, the computer was invented in England, the World Wide Web was invented by an Englishman, Wikipedia has been built up by many non-Americans from all across the World, and American English (note that term English) is a bastardised form of British English. And guess what? - the Beatles were English too :-) Richerman (talk) 15:35, 13 January 2015 (UTC) Next week, Richerman will be devoting a few sentences to explain the relationship between this and this. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 15:44, 13 January 2015 (UTC) Is the Pope Catholic? Richerman (talk) 16:05, 13 January 2015 (UTC) I think we can assume the Pope's American … JG66 (talk) 16:29, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Punk Reaction

Despite my extreme passion for this album, the reception section is missing a vital aspect, the 1970's punk out roar against the album. A huge amount of critics began to diss it, primarily in the punk scene. It was panned for being pretentious art pop, not true rock music. As a matter of fact, by the late 1970's the albums reputation had severely waned. However the 1980 death of John Lennon has been credited as re elevating the Beatles to legend, near untouchable status. I feel a section in the reception to needs to talk more about the up and down reception of the album through the years. Its 1967-Mid 1970's legendary status, universal panning by the new, predominant punk scene, then its rise back to good grace. The only negative review that goes into detail is the goldstein one, which isn't sufficient to talk on the varying degrees of critical reception. Of course, expand the negative section would probably mean expanding the positive section. If we can reach a consensus on the expansion of the reception section to include the Punk Wave's public and widespead attacks on the album, ill begin to work. Please weigh in. Joshua0228 (talk) 00:57, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

@Joshua0228: Saw your comment but it's taken me this long to find something that might be useful to include. Having done quite a bit of work recently on Beatles releases either side of this one (Revolver, "Strawberry Fields", Magical Mystery Tour etc) I've come across this, from John Harris's "The Day the World Turned Day-glo!" feature (Mojo, March 2007, pp. 72–89):

Pepper's impact was seismic and universal, a matter not just of a dizzying cultural moment but an art form – rock music, that is – reaching multi-coloured maturity. In 1974 the staff of the NME made it their Number 1 all-time album, and it's hard to imagine a dissenting voice back then. At least 10 years after its release, Sgt. Pepper was still commonly regarded as rock's defining masterpiece.

Yet, 11 years further down the line, the 100-strong best-ever list published in the same title found no place for the album at all …

What on earth had happened to Sgt. Pepper? Though by no means universally degraded (a 2006 Radio 2 listeners poll had the album back on top) Sgt. Pepper had taken a protracted beating from which it has perhaps yet to fully recover. Regularly challenged and overtaken in the Best Beatle Album stakes by Revolver, the White Album, even Rubber Soul, it suffered more than any Beatles record from the long fall-out after punk, and even the band's Britpop-era revival mysteriously failed to improve its standing.

Harris goes on to cite how the album was synonymous with the Baby Boomers and "the comfy nostalgia-tinged smugness that befell the decade's progeny in the 1970s"; the 1978 Sgt. Pepper movie with the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton; and that: "After the era-closing death of John Lennon and voguish relegation of Paul McCartney, there's also an ongoing reluctance to embrace an album so blatantly motivated by the creative energy of the latter."

(That does contradict what you say about its standing as a result of Lennon's death, of course.)

It's safe to say that Harris is offering a very British perspective, particularly regarding the influence of punk; having said that, I think our article's possibly overly focused on what American commentators have to say. From memory, the 2nd edition of Carr & Tyler's The Beatles: An Illustrated Record offers some relevant comments – unsurprising given that they were NME journalists and this revised edition was published in 1978. I remember suggesting that Carr & Tyler's views would be worth including, and I think the same reappraisal argument that you're referring to was taken up by @Wasted Time R: early last year. (It'll be in the archives – and/or maybe it was discussed during FAC, not sure.)

I agree something should be mentioned in the article, although I really don't see that this would then require "expanding the positive section" as you suggest. The article's bulging at the seams already with the amount of comments and asides we get from musicologists and the like – through "Recording and production", "Music and lyrics", "Reception", "Reappraisal" and "Legacy". (I'm thinking especially about Reappraisal, given all that's preceded that section, and in the way it seems as though almost every sentence is followed by a long endnote offering a further comment/quote.) I've said it before: I reckon something's got to go. There's not just this legacy/punk issue to consider, but other points are missing. I'm thinking of: the immediate aftermath to the release and how, in many biographers' eyes at least, the Beatles appeared burnt-out post-Pepper; the LSD influence, and how the album became synonymous with the drug after the furore of McCartney's announcement in June 1967 that he'd taken it; the resentment the Beatles had towards Martin after critics made a point of praising him for his contributions (the Beatles' contention being that he, Emerick & co. were merely facilitating the band's ideas); and, most obviously, the fact that Harrison and Starr, and to a lesser extent Lennon, are practically invisible, when they've had plenty to say about Sgt. Pepper … JG66 (talk) 10:20, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping and for remembering this. Yes, my comments are in Talk:Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band/Archive 4, look for "On the substance of the matter" and then later "to repeat/expand what I wrote before". A bit of what I wanted ended up in the "Reappraisal" section of this article, but basically I never had much luck getting GabeMc to agree with me on anything. In particular he disliked the Carr-Tyler book, while I think it's an important part of Beatles historiography. Note that it was the 1975 first edition of Carr-Tyler that I was quoting; they were ahead of the curve, then the Sgt Pepper backlash intensified with the onset of the punk era.

I agree that there are other points missing and that there isn't always a clear reason why material got stuck into Notes rather than being in the main text. I don't agree that this means something's got to go. This is likely the most written-about album of all time, and as a result it's going to have a long article. In my view it's better to include everything of significance and let readers decide what they want to read than to omit material and never give readers a chance. Wasted Time R (talk) 12:26, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

I think An Illustrated Record is a good source. Being one of the earliest critical retrospectives of the Beatles, it did a lot to shape others' opinions (in my opinion). Other good sources are the articles "It was twenty years ago today..." by Kurt Loder and "Rock's most influential album?" by Michael Goldberg (both in Rolling Stone June 18, 1987). Loder offers a good synopsis of the re-appraisal of the album and the Goldberg article features quotes, positive and negative, from critics, producers and musicians. Piriczki (talk) 13:27, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

I don't think the Carr & Tyler can be ignored at all, it was landmark – eg. this. At the same time, I see Gabe's point, because Tyler (particularly) had a rather sinister agenda: he landed with a splash at NME by gleefully crucifying Lennon and Harrison over 1972–73. Heck, I loathe the book, personally – but I love Nicholas Schaffner's Beatles Forever. Answer is, they both belong. JG66 (talk) 13:57, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

@Piriczki: Hey, thanks for those suggestions. I've found the Loder piece online. He doesn't seem to offer anything as authoritative (or should that be "sweeping"?) as the John Harris/Mojo article, aside from saying that Pepper sounds dated and faddish. It's all useful, anyway. I think it's important that Harris qualifies his statement with the phrase "Though by no means universally degraded", although he's perhaps overstating the case regarding the album's critical downfall, I don't know. Acclaimed Music lists Pepper's various appearances on critics' best-album lists. Looking there, I'm surprised to see the album still at number 1 in the 1987 edition of Paul Gambaccini's The World Critics Best Albums of All Time. Then again, with relevance to the (UK) punk backlash, it should be noted that most of those critics polled by Gambo were American – at least, that was certainly the case with his first book. I used to have an old, old copy of that 1977 edition (from memory, the top ten went something like: the Beatles at numbers 1, 5, 6 and 9, Dylan at 2 and 3, Stones at 7 and 8 – it would be interesting to see how the top ten looked in '87). JG66 (talk) 04:15, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

You'll be happy to know Sgt. Pepper was #1 on Rolling Stone's 100 Best Albums of the Last Twenty Years in 1987. Piriczki (talk) 06:23, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for posting that Chicago Trib piece – even though I was old enough to be listening to the Beatles records as they came out, I wasn't quite old enough yet to form a real appreciation for their work, and so I too read Carr-Tyler, Schaffner, and Castleman-Podrazik cover to cover when they came out. In particular, as an American, nothing of the early Beatles period made musical sense to me until Carr-Tyler came out and I saw the British versions of the albums; around the same time they became available as imports, so I bought them and started hearing the coherent evolution of their sound for the first time. Carr-Tyler was a bestseller in the U.S. and I would guess it helped a lot of other Americans gain a new perspective on Beatles musical development too. As for their having it in for George I quite agree, and I was/am a huge George fan, but still the value of the book far outweighed its faults. Wasted Time R (talk) 14:22, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

<edit conflict> @Wasted Time R: Slightly surprised you think all the detail is needed, but then I'm a big believer in GA-ing song articles, and I see almost all the tracks on this album as GA-worthy – if the commentary given on each one were just siphoned off to the dedicated song article. My point is, even before Reception, Reappraisal, etc, I find this article an exhausting read: we've heard what everyone else thinks of it, but what exactly is it? (That's partly what I mean about the band element being invisible: the article's focus seems to be McCartney, Martin, Emerick.)

GabeMac – well, he was very good at blanking editors that challenged him, and all too ready to take things very personally. It's unfortunate, because he misconstrued things that were merely symbolic of a shared passion for the subject. I was reminded of that when I followed your archived link, saw him referring to my "walls of text". I dunno, I think article content merits discussion, and that might involve something beyond a bullet point, author name, and a page number … Having received the first of a few warning salvos from Gabe, and seen him remove my comments from this album talk page the day after he nominated the article for FA, I stayed away from the subsequent FAC in the interests of harmony, given his and my clashes in the past. That sounds very Within-You-Without-You of me – well … Well, I'm not interested now (and wasn't then) in marking anyone's homework or chasing vendettas. My point is that this is a Wikipedia article yet in many ways it doesn't represent the Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band; it's too focused on McCartney's guiding role in the album's creation, with musicologist-speak serving as auxiliary interference. Of course McCartney's role should be highlighted, but not to the extent that other band members get hardly a look in. I've got no end of sources that suggest a more group-oriented perspective than we present here, while still acknowledging McCartney's crucial input. (Wasted Time R, please don't take this as being aimed at only you. I'm beaming far and wide!) JG66 (talk) 16:22, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Nothing so taken. And there are certainly reasonable differences of opinion about article length; there's a classic argument that the more skillful writers are the ones who can make it shorter (I guess that's not me :-). Regardless, going back over the "Side one"/"Side two" sections, I agree that they are heavy going. Musicological content is okay (WP articles are often technical, look at anything in medicine, math or physics for instance) but I would distinguish between song material that relates to the album as a whole, which belongs here (segues between songs, common lyrical themes or musical motifs, or album-wide trends such as McCartney handling a lot of the lead guitar parts) versus per-song material that is unique to that song and can be relegated to the song article (like the long quote about Yoko re "Lucy" or the back history of "When I'm Sixty-Four", just to take a couple of examples). As for the article overplaying McCartney's role, if I remember correctly at some point I said Lennon's role was being overlooked but Gabe dismissed that by saying John was heavily into drugs and out of it during this period. In any case, I will note that after giving all my comments at various stages, I did not give it a 'Support' at FAC, so I certainly have no objections to it being revised. Wasted Time R (talk) 20:02, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I don't mean to sound anti-musicologist. It's an important perspective to include; I only know Everett's book, which is great. What I'm talking about is that there's so much of it, almost as if the approach is that we simply have to hear from Womack, Moore, Riley, Everett, MacDonald at (almost) every turn. Not only that, but Tim Riley (music critic) and Ian MacDonald are all too quick to don a critic's hat and offer their personal opinion, rather than a musicologist's assessment. It's a thin line between the two, I realise, but to my way of thinking, critical opinion belongs under Reception (Reappraisal, Legacy, etc); whereas, in a section like Music & Lyrics, we should be reading description and interpretation of the songs, some background on their creation, and any role they serve in the context of the album.

I've been applying the latter approach when cutting down the similar, musicologist-heavy text GabeMc added discussing side one of Revolver (I'm up to the fifth or sixth song there). I've tried to retain the notable points offered by the musicologists, while limiting the level of straight-ahead personal opinion we get from them. And I have to say – as with Sgt. Pepper – I can't see that a fair and balanced approach was consistently applied previously, when it comes to the selection of which personal opinions to include. The note from Riley about "Within You, Without You" on Pepper, for instance ("In Riley's opinion "Within You Without You", which he describes as monotonous, dull and "directionless", is "the most dated piece on the record ... [it] could easily have been left off with little to no effect" on the album.") – I find that pretty gratuitous after we've had MacDonald's similar comments. As a comparison, at Revolver, I noticed that Gabe had included MacDonald's unflattering description of "Love You To" ("sourly repetitious in its author's usual saturnine vein") yet not so for MacDonald's view of "Here, There and Everywhere" – namely, that that song's "overall effect is chintzy and rather cloying". Lest anyone think I'm just some outraged Harrison fan – a) I'm not!, and b) one couldn't possibly work on Harrison song and album articles without being prepared to tackle the extremely diverse opinions his work usually attracts (as I said above re Carr & Tyler and Schaffner, they both belong). So I've cut MacDonald's statement on "Love You To" from the album but have included it in the song article's Reception section; also, I've added the comment about "Here, There and Everywhere" to Reception at that song article, but not the album article, obviously. The point about the inclusion of Riley's comments being gratuitous is that he would seem to have no appreciation of Indian classical music – in that, "directionless" is a ridiculous thing to say about a song that effectively condenses the various sections of a raga. That's his opinion (fine, and I'd be sure to include it at the song article's Reception section), but rather than his comment on this appearing in the album's Music & Lyrics section, what's needed is some informed description from authors such as Peter Lavezzoli or Gerry Farrell, who, given their expertise ([1], [2]), are able to appreciate what Harrison was attempting in the genre. JG66 (talk) 07:18, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Wow, you aren't kidding about GA'ing song articles – I just looked at your user page – there are obscure Harrison tracks, especially from Living in the Material World and Extra Texture, that I've forgotten (even though I own the albums) and am surprised even have articles, much less GA articles. Anyway, you are certainly right about the polarized response to his work, both during the Beatles and after. But I agree that preference in an album article should be given to intelligent criticism over reflexive dismissal. Wasted Time R (talk) 01:54, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, define "obscure"! No, I know what you mean. In fact there are plenty of times when I've worked on an article about a song I didn't much like, let alone intend to take to GAN, but then gradually changed my opinion, or at least came to appreciate the track in a new light. And that's purely due to the level of discussion it's received and what that reveals. (I've long wanted to do more work on other artists' articles also, as I'm not short of decent sources. It just never seems to work out that way!)

Going back to the Beatles, say, I was amazed just recently to see how highly regarded Harrison's "It's All Too Much" is, and the whole post-Pepper/Magical Mystery Tour era also. This is completely at odds with the picture that MacDonald and others present as fact, when they echo George Martin's belief that May–October 1967 was something close to the nadir of the Beatles' recording career. And that's a perfect example, imo, of how the MacDonald/Riley-like take on things is not always reflective of the consensus of opinion, and why we should be more discerning about their presence in the interests of accuracy. FTR, I used to regard MacDonald's Revolution in the Head as something of a bible – but any reverence has been completely shot down over the last 3+ years, almost with every Beatles-related article I've worked on. Now I see MacD's, and Riley's, views as blurring the lines between musicologist, Beatles historian, and music critic. The quote from John Harris at "Too Much" casts some light on this, regarding the Beatles in late '67, just as the 2009 review scores for the MMT album tell their story. The other thing is, "Tomorrow Never Knows" from Revolver was ridiculed by the majority of reviewers in 1966, according to sources I have (scandalous but true), while the likes of "Yellow Submarine", "When I'm 64" and "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" have all received their share of unflattering comments in subsequent decades. Nowhere in the two album articles' Music & Lyrics section does this get mentioned, which is absolutely fine if we're agreed that such details don't belong, and so long as that approach is applied consistently (which is my point about the inclusion of MacDonald's opinion on "Love You To" vs omission for "Here, There and Everywhere"). I think the same when it comes to giving several writers' high praise (their personal opinion, again) of a particular track: most of that belongs in the album's Reception or Legacy sections, if space allows, but most likely in the song article's Reception section. JG66 (talk) 07:36, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Personnel

The list of musician contributions to this album has changed dramatically in this article over the past few months, despite the same sources being used. In addition to this the personnel information in the main article doesn't match the information in the album songs' articles. A wikipedia article of this standard should be more thoroughly examined before any additional change. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.217.145.189 (talk) 09:03, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

you what?

@Binksternet: I'm confused, I gave a perfectly good rationale for my edit, and the changes are valid – what do you mean, "Rv ... Block evasion by Chowkatsun9"? JG66 (talk) 13:29, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I was aiming to get rid of this one edit by a sockpuppet, not your work. Binksternet (talk) 17:24, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Ah, no worries. If I'd looked harder, I would have seen as much, I'm sure.

Just a note (to everyone) about that Personnel section. I've been comparing the current version with how it read in May 2014, when the article made FA, and the two are quite close, though there are some inconsistencies. I plan to go back and check everything against MacDonald, because, from a quick comparison, I can see that Lennon's so-called "vocal percussion" on Lovely Rita doesn't appear to be included (yet we do have "vocalisations" under McCartney); there's "kazoo" under Harrison, say, but no "comb and tissue paper"; and I'm not sure where McCartney's "electric piano" has come from … Also, if they're being cited to MacDonald, the session musicians' contributions to Within You Without You are incorrect (well, MacDonald or otherwise, they are incorrect): harmonium shouldn't be there, swarmandal should be, and it's dilrubas plural.

Figured I'd raise this up-front. On the other hand, I only have a 1998 edition of MacDonald, so if anyone's got the '05 edn and sees a discrepancy or two, give me a shout. JG66 (talk) 21:06, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Correct title?

This article is called "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" but when you read the text on the album cover it says "Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band". Should the apostrophe be there or not?