Pop Culture Series: Sgt. Pepper
Revisiting Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
June 2, 1967
It was twenty years ago today
Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play
They’ve been going in and out of style
But they’re guaranteed to raise a smile
Rock & Roll in the late ’60s was exemplified when The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in the U.S. on June 2, 1967. It was released in the U.K. the day before. No other rock & roll album defined the soundtrack of the Summer of Love better than Sgt. Pepper. It captured the fantasy, psychedelics, love, and drugs of 1967. Especially with the last song, “A Day In The Life,” which urged:
“I’d love to turn you on.”
In 1967, I was on a school field trip to San Francisco. Directly across the street from Ghirardelli Square was a record store where I bought my copy of Sgt. Pepper. It felt almost scandalous to bring it home to my small town because “everyone knows it’s all about drugs,” or so people thought. I did not know it then, but that was not entirely incorrect, as we’ll see.
In 2017, Giles Martin, the son of the original Beatles’ producer, Sir George Martin, released the six-disc boxed set 50th Anniversary (Remix) Edition of…
