"Remember Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band is The Beatles." Ad in New Musical Express, June, 1967.
"Sgt Pepper contains words and ideas which are far above anything anyone else is capable of creating." Fan comment.
"The title song is the only one I really like. It's The Beatles we used to know before they went stark raving mad and started to write rubbish." Fan comment.
Inextricably tied to the Summer of Love, I still remember hearing the "Sgt. Pepper's..." album coming out of windows as I walked through my neighborhood as a teenager. This book is a good summation of the album's impact on people, brought to light by incorporating fan's perspectives and quite a few photos (some you've seen, others not) and other ephemera (like a full page repro of the newspaper New Musical Express with the quote above) from that era. Of the Beatles/Sgt. Pepper's books recently published I've read, Spizer's gets closest to that whole "Beatles/Sgt. Pepper's experience" through combining facts about the album and the personal remembrances of fans. Plus his usual good selection of period reproductions (like the Asia Edition of Life Magazine from June, 1967, the Sizzle Sheet from Capitol Records, "Artifacts From the Summer of Love, etc.) which are as important as the text in getting a better picture of "back then".
The book is laid out in logical sections, like influences on and of "Sgt. Pepper's...", an American perspective (written by Spizer), the Canadian reaction to the album, how pop music came to a crossroads in '67 (originally published in Beatlefan in 1997) which is a good overview of music in that period, plus sections on how the album was heard in Italy, Belgium, Germany, and behind the Iron Curtain ("...the discs were smuggled into the country."/"Just like a dream, I was holding a Beatles disc for the first time ever."). There's a chapter full of fan's quotations, each a paragraph or two long. Plus there's a reprint from Beatlefan, June '67 on the effect of the album as seen by fan Bill King which is also about other music/bands/hippies from the period. And when you include a section on the album packaging, a chapter titled "Recording History: Who Did What?" which looks at each track in some detail, plus a chapter incorporating bands making music at that time like the Airplane, Monkees, the Mothers of Invention, Yes, and other groups that help put "Sgt. Pepper's..." in perspective, this is a pretty well rounded look at this album. Plus, a piece on the identity of the army soldier pictured in the insert artwork--with photos of proof.
The text, like Spizer's other Beatles books, is both interesting and informative. The reproductions are nicely done--clean and bright. There's a number of books on the Beatles/"Sgt. Pepper's...", some that also incorporate life in 1967. But Spizer has taken a different tack and included many fan's reminiscences about the impact the album had on them and their friends. Great writing by Spizer and others, and some personal fan remembrances, and packed with a good cross section of photos, ads, album covers, record charts, and other ephemera, this book will either take you back to those times or give you some idea of what it was like in 1967.
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Dennis Angry
Great series of books
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 25, 2021