JUNE 1

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band was a concept album. The Beatles pretended to be another band (hence the name), which allowed them to take risks with the style and topics of songs, as well as with the music production. Keep in mind that technology was very different in 1967. Most songs were recorded on two tracks, but The Beatles used four tracks, and with creative engineering, were able to layer more sounds on top of those tracks. Music wasn't digital, it was recorded on tape. If they wanted to edit something, they had to cut the tape and attach it back together.

And that's exactly what their producer George Martin did on the song Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite. He found recordings of carousel music, cut them up into smaller pieces, and reattached them together in a random order. This served as the background music for much of the song, creating a feel of being at the circus.

The song She's Leaving Home is about a real girl, Melanie Coe, who ran away from home. By chance, Paul McCartney had met her four years earlier when he was a guest judge on a game show. He didn't know of the connection until after the song was released.

At the end of the song Good Morning, Good Morning, the animal noises are in order: each animal can eat or scare the previous animal. It starts with a rooster, and continues to a cat, a dog, a cow, a horse, a sheep, a lion, an elephant, and then ends with a pack of bloodhound dogs with human fox hunters blowing bugles. The cock-a-doodle-do at the end of this song is in the same key as the first note of the song Sgt. Pepper Reprise, and the two songs are blended together. Your dog may go crazy at the end of this song, because The Beatles recorded a dog whistle to accompany the animal sounds. We can't hear it - but dogs sure can!

The songs Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever were supposed to be on the album, but were released a few months ahead of time as a single record. This was a common music release tradition - a small record would be sold with one song on each side. This helped to get people excited for the release of the full album.

The album cover is almost as famous as the music on the record. Besides the four Beatles, there are 71 figures. The names of these people are outlined in this WikiPedia article.