Context is everything. When Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released on 1 June, 1967, nothing like it had been heard or seen before. In hindsight, what came to be termed ‘rock’ probably began with earlier albums such as Highway 61 Revisited, Pet Sounds, The Doors, Fresh Cream, The Velvet Underground & Nico, even Revolver. But there’s little disagreement that for the two-and-a-half million people who ran out and bought a copy of Sgt. Pepper… in the summer of 1967, it was the sonic detonation that blew a giant hole through the That world of mono pop. Its effect was immediate, widespread and experienced as a major event. Of its first broadcast on radio, Roger Waters never forgets “pulling the car over into a lay-by, and we sat and listened… in this old beat-up Zephyr, just completely stunned.”
Having taken 400 hours of studio time over 129 days, it was certainly a recordbreaking production intended to shock and awe. And because Abbey Road’s fourtrack equipment necessitated constant mixdowns to a second machine to free up tracks, Ringo found himself hanging around for so many lost hours, that it was Sgt. Pepper… who taught him how to play chess. It’s a fitting symbol of how this milestone project transformed The Beatles from giddy young men into thoughtful, middle-aged individuals.