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This programme contains some strong language | 0:00:02 | 0:00:05 | |
-ENGINEER: -Sgt Pepper's Lonely... -Hearts Club Band. -Hearts Club Band. -Take one. -This is take one. | 0:00:05 | 0:00:09 | |
ELECTRIC GUITAR | 0:00:09 | 0:00:11 | |
On 1st June, 1967, a record was released | 0:00:11 | 0:00:14 | |
that changed the rules of what a pop album could or should be. | 0:00:14 | 0:00:19 | |
That album was the Beatles' | 0:00:19 | 0:00:22 | |
Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. | 0:00:22 | 0:00:25 | |
# It was 20 years ago today Sgt Pepper taught the band to play | 0:00:25 | 0:00:30 | |
# They've been going in and out of style... # | 0:00:30 | 0:00:33 | |
Sgt Pepper was immediately acclaimed | 0:00:33 | 0:00:35 | |
as a startling new advance for music. | 0:00:35 | 0:00:37 | |
Nothing like it had been heard or seen before. | 0:00:37 | 0:00:41 | |
# Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band... # | 0:00:41 | 0:00:45 | |
It was the most expensive album cover yet produced - | 0:00:50 | 0:00:53 | |
an artwork in itself. | 0:00:53 | 0:00:55 | |
The lyrics, for the first time ever in a pop music LP, | 0:00:55 | 0:00:59 | |
were printed on the sleeve. | 0:00:59 | 0:01:00 | |
# Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends... # | 0:01:00 | 0:01:05 | |
Sgt Pepper chimed with the times. | 0:01:05 | 0:01:08 | |
It became the soundtrack to the '67 "summer of love". | 0:01:08 | 0:01:11 | |
The music was psychedelic and visionary. | 0:01:13 | 0:01:15 | |
In parts, that is. | 0:01:16 | 0:01:18 | |
The most extraordinary thing about the album is that | 0:01:20 | 0:01:22 | |
it's so firmly grounded in real life, not hippy fantasy. | 0:01:22 | 0:01:27 | |
# Lovely Rita, meter maid... # | 0:01:27 | 0:01:30 | |
Of the 13 songs on Sgt Pepper, | 0:01:30 | 0:01:33 | |
around half were inspired by newspaper stories, | 0:01:33 | 0:01:36 | |
pictures or everyday events. | 0:01:36 | 0:01:38 | |
# Lovely Rita, meter maid Nothing can come between us...# | 0:01:38 | 0:01:43 | |
Lovely Rita is addressed to a young woman | 0:01:43 | 0:01:46 | |
who gives Paul a parking ticket. | 0:01:46 | 0:01:48 | |
It's not a howl of rage, as you might expect, but a cheeky come-on. | 0:01:48 | 0:01:53 | |
# Heading for home, you start to roam then you're in town... # | 0:01:53 | 0:01:58 | |
A cornflake advert on TV inspired | 0:01:58 | 0:02:00 | |
John's sardonic take on married suburban life, | 0:02:00 | 0:02:04 | |
Good Morning Good Morning. | 0:02:04 | 0:02:06 | |
-# I used to get mad at my school -Now I can't complain | 0:02:07 | 0:02:11 | |
# The teachers that taught me weren't cool... # | 0:02:11 | 0:02:15 | |
The different songwriting personalities work hand in hand. | 0:02:15 | 0:02:19 | |
In Getting Better, we find Paul's message of sunny optimism... | 0:02:19 | 0:02:23 | |
# I've got to admit it's getting better... # | 0:02:23 | 0:02:27 | |
..mischievously undercut by John's "can't get no worse." | 0:02:27 | 0:02:29 | |
# It can't get no worse... # | 0:02:29 | 0:02:32 | |
# When I get older, losing my hair Many years from now... # | 0:02:32 | 0:02:38 | |
One of the album's was famous songs | 0:02:38 | 0:02:40 | |
was recorded after Paul's dad turned 64. | 0:02:40 | 0:02:43 | |
# Birthday greetings Bottle of wine. # | 0:02:43 | 0:02:46 | |
Most importantly of all, | 0:02:48 | 0:02:49 | |
this breadth of subject matter is mirrored and underpinned | 0:02:49 | 0:02:53 | |
by an extraordinary breadth of musical influences. | 0:02:53 | 0:02:56 | |
The album may start off with up-to-the-minute hard rock, | 0:02:57 | 0:03:00 | |
but then come echoes of folk, brass band and classical music, | 0:03:00 | 0:03:04 | |
vaudeville, and the music of other cultures. | 0:03:04 | 0:03:07 | |
# And the people...# | 0:03:07 | 0:03:10 | |
This is the real revolution of Sgt Pepper - all styles are fair game. | 0:03:10 | 0:03:16 | |
And this is what made it so very influential to later musicians - | 0:03:16 | 0:03:20 | |
its sheer musical ambition and scope. | 0:03:20 | 0:03:23 | |
# I read the news today Oh, boy... # | 0:03:23 | 0:03:26 | |
With the help of newly invented studio techniques, | 0:03:26 | 0:03:29 | |
the Beatles were making a kaleidoscope of sound | 0:03:29 | 0:03:32 | |
the likes of which had never been heard before. | 0:03:32 | 0:03:35 | |
# Newspaper taxis appear on the shore...# | 0:03:35 | 0:03:38 | |
There are innovations and revelations | 0:03:38 | 0:03:41 | |
on every track of the album. | 0:03:41 | 0:03:43 | |
In this film, I'm going to look at just some of the songs | 0:03:43 | 0:03:45 | |
in which I think the Beatles' brilliance at inventing | 0:03:45 | 0:03:49 | |
and reinventing musical form is at its most striking. | 0:03:49 | 0:03:52 | |
# Lucy in the sky with diamonds... # | 0:03:52 | 0:03:57 | |
I'm going to do so with the help of never-heard-before outtakes, | 0:03:57 | 0:04:01 | |
by unpicking the original master tapes, | 0:04:01 | 0:04:04 | |
and eavesdropping on the Beatles' own studio conversations. | 0:04:04 | 0:04:08 | |
-JOHN: -This time you get it in the middle of the song. | 0:04:08 | 0:04:11 | |
HE CHUCKLES | 0:04:11 | 0:04:12 | |
I had to laugh meself, you know. | 0:04:12 | 0:04:14 | |
Let's start the Sgt Pepper story at the beginning - | 0:04:19 | 0:04:22 | |
a momentous decision taken in August 1966. | 0:04:22 | 0:04:26 | |
# Think I'm gonna be sad I think it's today...# | 0:04:26 | 0:04:33 | |
The Beatles had been touring the world for three years, | 0:04:33 | 0:04:36 | |
but the fun had drained away, along with the audibility of their music. | 0:04:36 | 0:04:40 | |
They'd had enough, so they decided to give up touring altogether. | 0:04:40 | 0:04:43 | |
This looked like madness. | 0:04:45 | 0:04:47 | |
A pop group's success depended on playing their music live | 0:04:47 | 0:04:50 | |
so the audience would buy the records, | 0:04:50 | 0:04:52 | |
which were made quickly and cheaply. | 0:04:52 | 0:04:55 | |
Paul, can I just have a brief word with you? | 0:04:57 | 0:04:59 | |
It's gone downhill, performance, | 0:04:59 | 0:05:01 | |
Cos we can't develop when no-one can hear us, you know what I mean? | 0:05:01 | 0:05:04 | |
So for us to perform, it's difficult, | 0:05:04 | 0:05:06 | |
it gets difficult each time. More difficult. | 0:05:06 | 0:05:08 | |
Do you mean they don't listen to you | 0:05:08 | 0:05:09 | |
and therefore you don't want to do that? | 0:05:09 | 0:05:11 | |
Yeah, we want to do it, but if we're not listened to, | 0:05:11 | 0:05:14 | |
and we can't even hear ourselves, then we can't improve in that. | 0:05:14 | 0:05:17 | |
We can't get any better. | 0:05:17 | 0:05:19 | |
So we're trying to get better with things like recording. | 0:05:19 | 0:05:23 | |
How are you? Can I stop you? | 0:05:23 | 0:05:24 | |
Work began at Abbey Road in November '66. | 0:05:24 | 0:05:28 | |
The Beatles would be there for an unprecedented five months. | 0:05:28 | 0:05:31 | |
Having given up touring, | 0:05:31 | 0:05:32 | |
they didn't need to make music that could be played live. | 0:05:32 | 0:05:36 | |
Instead, with producer George Martin, they could turn the studio | 0:05:36 | 0:05:39 | |
into an audio laboratory, | 0:05:39 | 0:05:41 | |
pushing the possibilities of recording technology to new limits. | 0:05:41 | 0:05:45 | |
Together, they constructed a sound layer by layer, | 0:05:46 | 0:05:50 | |
track by track, instrument by instrument - | 0:05:50 | 0:05:52 | |
a method soon to be the norm | 0:05:52 | 0:05:54 | |
for more or less every artist in the world. | 0:05:54 | 0:05:57 | |
DRUM TRACK FOR SGT PEPPER'S REPRISE | 0:05:57 | 0:05:59 | |
Take 13. | 0:05:59 | 0:06:01 | |
-PAUL: -Ringo, keep it a bit straighter at the end, | 0:06:01 | 0:06:03 | |
keep it a bit straighter. Do a couple of bits, but... | 0:06:03 | 0:06:06 | |
Cos, see, it's got to edit in, hasn't it, into the other one. | 0:06:07 | 0:06:11 | |
Are you getting bored of being in The Beatles after all this time? | 0:06:13 | 0:06:16 | |
No. I'm having a great time. Merry Christmas to you. | 0:06:16 | 0:06:20 | |
-Long time since I've seen you. -Thank you very much, Ringo. | 0:06:20 | 0:06:22 | |
-That's all right, thank you. -Are you going to work now? | 0:06:22 | 0:06:25 | |
Well, I'll see what they're up to. | 0:06:25 | 0:06:27 | |
I think it may be tea-time, with any luck. Bye. | 0:06:27 | 0:06:30 | |
Strict radio silence was maintained. | 0:06:30 | 0:06:33 | |
The public could only wait and wonder | 0:06:33 | 0:06:35 | |
what the world's biggest band was up to. | 0:06:35 | 0:06:37 | |
-PAUL: -Keep the bass drum loud. | 0:06:39 | 0:06:41 | |
Keep the bass drum loud. Ba! | 0:06:41 | 0:06:44 | |
-DRUMS PLAY -Yeah! | 0:06:44 | 0:06:46 | |
Oh, is that what you're doing? | 0:06:46 | 0:06:48 | |
Only in February '67 did The Beatles unveil | 0:06:50 | 0:06:53 | |
the extraordinary sound world they'd been creating. | 0:06:53 | 0:06:56 | |
Two of the first tracks recorded for the Sgt Pepper project | 0:06:56 | 0:07:00 | |
were released - Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane. | 0:07:00 | 0:07:03 | |
-ENGINEER: -Take one. | 0:07:03 | 0:07:05 | |
# Living is easy with eyes closed | 0:07:08 | 0:07:13 | |
# Misunderstanding all you see... # | 0:07:13 | 0:07:17 | |
But hang on, you might be thinking, | 0:07:17 | 0:07:19 | |
neither of these two tracks is on the album. | 0:07:19 | 0:07:22 | |
No, they are not, but they could have been. | 0:07:22 | 0:07:24 | |
EMI and Brian Epstein, The Beatles' manager, | 0:07:25 | 0:07:28 | |
desperately wanted to release a new single. | 0:07:28 | 0:07:31 | |
There hadn't been one for a whole seven months. | 0:07:31 | 0:07:34 | |
So, in a bit of a flap, Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane | 0:07:34 | 0:07:38 | |
were put out as a double A side. | 0:07:38 | 0:07:40 | |
GUITAR AND VOCAL # ..tune in but it's all right | 0:07:40 | 0:07:43 | |
# That is, I think it's not too bad | 0:07:43 | 0:07:47 | |
# Let me take you down cos I'm going to | 0:07:49 | 0:07:54 | |
# Strawberry Fields | 0:07:54 | 0:07:57 | |
# Nothing is real | 0:07:59 | 0:08:03 | |
# And nothing to get hung about | 0:08:03 | 0:08:06 | |
# Strawberry Fields forever. # | 0:08:06 | 0:08:10 | |
In so many ways, Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever | 0:08:10 | 0:08:14 | |
were and are essential and integral parts of the Sgt Pepper project, | 0:08:14 | 0:08:18 | |
and not only musically. They also laid the groundwork | 0:08:18 | 0:08:21 | |
for one of the central themes of the album - childhood. | 0:08:21 | 0:08:24 | |
# Let me take you down cos I'm going to | 0:08:24 | 0:08:30 | |
# Strawberry Fields | 0:08:30 | 0:08:33 | |
# Nothing is real... # | 0:08:35 | 0:08:38 | |
Strawberry Fields Forever | 0:08:38 | 0:08:39 | |
was the first song recorded in the Sgt Pepper sessions. | 0:08:39 | 0:08:43 | |
The name comes from a Salvation Army children's home | 0:08:43 | 0:08:46 | |
near to where John Lennon grew up, Strawberry Field. | 0:08:46 | 0:08:49 | |
The strong draws on his childhood memories | 0:08:49 | 0:08:52 | |
of its annual garden parties, | 0:08:52 | 0:08:54 | |
complete with Salvation Army band, | 0:08:54 | 0:08:57 | |
and playing away from adult supervision | 0:08:57 | 0:08:59 | |
in its overgrown grounds. | 0:08:59 | 0:09:01 | |
These are its original iron gates. | 0:09:01 | 0:09:04 | |
# It doesn't matter much to me | 0:09:04 | 0:09:10 | |
# Let me take you down... # | 0:09:10 | 0:09:13 | |
Nothing, absolutely nothing, could have prepared the world | 0:09:13 | 0:09:16 | |
for the unique masterpiece that was Strawberry Fields Forever. | 0:09:16 | 0:09:20 | |
Its daring, its bizarre soundscape, its unorthodox structure, | 0:09:20 | 0:09:24 | |
and its stylistic originality still astonish today. | 0:09:24 | 0:09:28 | |
# Strawberry Fields forever... # | 0:09:28 | 0:09:31 | |
Right from its haunting opening notes, | 0:09:31 | 0:09:33 | |
a strange flute-y sound played by Paul | 0:09:33 | 0:09:36 | |
on a then still-novel keyboard, a Mellotron, | 0:09:36 | 0:09:39 | |
an early form of sampler, | 0:09:39 | 0:09:41 | |
we are in uncharted musical waters. | 0:09:41 | 0:09:44 | |
OPENING BARS OF STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOEVER | 0:09:45 | 0:09:53 | |
# Let me take you down cos I'm going to | 0:09:55 | 0:10:01 | |
# Strawberry Fields | 0:10:01 | 0:10:04 | |
# Nothing is real | 0:10:06 | 0:10:09 | |
# And nothing to get hung about... # | 0:10:10 | 0:10:14 | |
But while the song might have hinted at the sensation of an acid trip, | 0:10:14 | 0:10:18 | |
that's not what it's about. It's a song about childhood memory - | 0:10:18 | 0:10:22 | |
an unsettling one, at that, bristling with insecurity. | 0:10:22 | 0:10:26 | |
CHAOTIC PERCUSSION | 0:10:26 | 0:10:31 | |
-JOHN: -I go crazy! I go crazy! | 0:10:33 | 0:10:36 | |
PERCUSSION CONTINUES | 0:10:36 | 0:10:39 | |
Strawberry Fields Forever took 55 hours of studio time to create. | 0:10:39 | 0:10:44 | |
Nowadays, many of the techniques it employs are routine. | 0:10:44 | 0:10:47 | |
Back then, though, they had to be painstakingly developed, | 0:10:47 | 0:10:51 | |
often from scratch, by producer George Martin | 0:10:51 | 0:10:53 | |
and his Abbey Road engineers. | 0:10:53 | 0:10:55 | |
-GEORGE MARTIN: -Strawberry Fields Forever take seven, | 0:10:58 | 0:11:01 | |
remix from four-track. | 0:11:01 | 0:11:04 | |
Take six. | 0:11:04 | 0:11:06 | |
A remarkable example of this ingenuity came about | 0:11:06 | 0:11:10 | |
when John decided he wanted to combine | 0:11:10 | 0:11:12 | |
the dreamy opening mood of one take | 0:11:12 | 0:11:14 | |
with the energetic groove of another, | 0:11:14 | 0:11:17 | |
the two performances having been recorded ten days apart. | 0:11:17 | 0:11:21 | |
"So what?" I hear you say This is what. | 0:11:22 | 0:11:25 | |
The two takes are not only made up of different instruments | 0:11:25 | 0:11:28 | |
playing at different volumes, but they are in different keys, | 0:11:28 | 0:11:32 | |
and, most inconveniently, performed at different speeds, too. | 0:11:32 | 0:11:36 | |
Joined together, they should sound like this. | 0:11:36 | 0:11:40 | |
SLOWER, LOWER PITCHED TAKE # Let me take you down, cos... | 0:11:40 | 0:11:43 | |
FASTER, HIGHER PITCHED TAKE # ..I'm going to | 0:11:43 | 0:11:48 | |
# Strawberry Fields. # | 0:11:48 | 0:11:50 | |
Awkward. | 0:11:50 | 0:11:51 | |
Nowadays, editing these two disparate sections together | 0:11:51 | 0:11:54 | |
so you can't hear the join could be done on a phone app, | 0:11:54 | 0:11:57 | |
never mind in a studio using computerised recording systems. | 0:11:57 | 0:12:00 | |
In December 1966, it had never even been tried, | 0:12:00 | 0:12:04 | |
so George Martin and his team decided to follow a hunch. | 0:12:04 | 0:12:08 | |
What if they could slow down the faster take | 0:12:08 | 0:12:12 | |
so it matched the other one in speed and key? | 0:12:12 | 0:12:15 | |
It was a neat idea, but how could the machine be slowed down | 0:12:17 | 0:12:21 | |
by a regulated amount? | 0:12:21 | 0:12:22 | |
In those days, magnetic tape recorders | 0:12:22 | 0:12:25 | |
didn't have a variable speed function. | 0:12:25 | 0:12:27 | |
Until, that is, EMI engineer Ken Townsend | 0:12:27 | 0:12:30 | |
effectively invented just such a function | 0:12:30 | 0:12:34 | |
by cunningly manipulating | 0:12:34 | 0:12:36 | |
the electricity supply feeding the playback machine. | 0:12:36 | 0:12:40 | |
This is where the join between the two takes place. | 0:12:40 | 0:12:43 | |
# ..take you down cos I'm going to | 0:12:43 | 0:12:48 | |
# Strawberry Fields... # | 0:12:48 | 0:12:52 | |
Awesome. | 0:12:52 | 0:12:54 | |
# Nothing is real | 0:12:54 | 0:12:56 | |
# And nothing to get hung about | 0:12:56 | 0:13:00 | |
# Strawberry Fields forever | 0:13:00 | 0:13:02 | |
# Strawberry Fields forever | 0:13:04 | 0:13:08 | |
# Strawberry Fields forever... # | 0:13:08 | 0:13:12 | |
Strawberry Fields Forever set the tone for Sgt Pepper, | 0:13:12 | 0:13:15 | |
musically and technically, | 0:13:15 | 0:13:17 | |
even if it didn't make it onto the album. | 0:13:17 | 0:13:19 | |
It also helped inspire Paul's journey into the musical past - | 0:13:19 | 0:13:24 | |
The Beatles' shared past. | 0:13:24 | 0:13:25 | |
-PAUL, CLICKING FINGERS IN TIME: -Two, one, two, three, four. | 0:13:26 | 0:13:30 | |
PIANO PLAYS "PENNY LANE" | 0:13:30 | 0:13:34 | |
John and Paul met at a church fete in 1957, | 0:13:42 | 0:13:45 | |
a stone's throw away from Strawberry Field, | 0:13:45 | 0:13:48 | |
and started writing songs together almost straightaway. | 0:13:48 | 0:13:51 | |
Their creative relationship was part collaboration, part rivalry, | 0:13:51 | 0:13:55 | |
so Paul reacted to John's masterpiece by coming up with | 0:13:55 | 0:13:59 | |
one of his own - Penny Lane. | 0:13:59 | 0:14:01 | |
# In Penny Lane there is a barber showing photographs | 0:14:01 | 0:14:05 | |
# Of every head he's had the pleasure to know | 0:14:05 | 0:14:08 | |
# And all the people that come and go | 0:14:09 | 0:14:13 | |
# Stop and say hello... # | 0:14:13 | 0:14:17 | |
Penny Lane is a short bus ride from where Paul and John grew up. | 0:14:17 | 0:14:20 | |
As teenagers they used to meet at the bus shelter | 0:14:20 | 0:14:23 | |
in the middle of the roundabout mentioned in the song. | 0:14:23 | 0:14:25 | |
Penny Lane is a surreal nostalgic journey | 0:14:27 | 0:14:29 | |
back to the very beginnings of the Beatles story. | 0:14:29 | 0:14:32 | |
MUSIC: Lucille by Little Richard | 0:14:38 | 0:14:43 | |
# Lucille, won't you do your sister's will? | 0:14:49 | 0:14:54 | |
# Lucille, won't you do your sister's will? # | 0:14:56 | 0:15:02 | |
The Beatles grew up obsessed with 1950s rock and roll. | 0:15:02 | 0:15:05 | |
Paul in particular fell in love with | 0:15:05 | 0:15:07 | |
the flamboyant style of Little Richard. | 0:15:07 | 0:15:10 | |
Little Richard was responsible for one particular shift | 0:15:10 | 0:15:13 | |
in the rhythmic pattern that underpinned rock and roll. | 0:15:13 | 0:15:16 | |
The four beats in a bar - one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four - | 0:15:16 | 0:15:22 | |
were subdivided into threes, or triplets. | 0:15:22 | 0:15:25 | |
Little Richard evened out those threes into twos. | 0:15:28 | 0:15:32 | |
HE PLAYS TWO HITS PER BEAT | 0:15:32 | 0:15:36 | |
See what I did there? | 0:15:39 | 0:15:41 | |
Turning the shuffle, as it was known, into a double-time rhythm | 0:15:41 | 0:15:44 | |
gave rock and roll a fresh impetus, | 0:15:44 | 0:15:46 | |
and made it easier for teenagers to jive to. | 0:15:46 | 0:15:49 | |
MUSIC: Lucille by Little Richard | 0:15:49 | 0:15:53 | |
Paul made his own contribution to the subdividing of beats. | 0:16:05 | 0:16:08 | |
He takes Little Richard's eight even beats to a bar... | 0:16:08 | 0:16:11 | |
..and makes them into four even beats in the bar. | 0:16:14 | 0:16:16 | |
HE PLAYS "PENNY LANE" CHORDS | 0:16:16 | 0:16:20 | |
Which is a musical version, I suppose, | 0:16:25 | 0:16:27 | |
of replacing jogging with walking. | 0:16:27 | 0:16:29 | |
# There beneath the blue suburban skies... # | 0:16:32 | 0:16:37 | |
But here's the thing. The piano in Penny Lane isn't just one piano. | 0:16:39 | 0:16:43 | |
On the record, it's four. And we can follow the trail of them all | 0:16:43 | 0:16:47 | |
by unpicking the track layer by layer, | 0:16:47 | 0:16:50 | |
like an archaeological dig, in the original masters. | 0:16:50 | 0:16:53 | |
It's a fantastic demonstration of how the Beatles put together | 0:16:53 | 0:16:56 | |
their songs using the studio as part of the creative process. | 0:16:56 | 0:17:01 | |
"PENNY LANE" PIANO | 0:17:01 | 0:17:05 | |
With the piano engine room in place, | 0:17:28 | 0:17:31 | |
more surprises were to come in the song's instrumentation. | 0:17:31 | 0:17:34 | |
Here's one of them. | 0:17:34 | 0:17:36 | |
HE PLAYS "PENNY LANE" | 0:17:36 | 0:17:39 | |
This is a harmonium, a 19th-century foot-pumped reed organ | 0:17:44 | 0:17:49 | |
originally designed for smaller churches and chapels. | 0:17:49 | 0:17:53 | |
Paul uses it to add some deep, breathy sustained notes. | 0:17:53 | 0:17:57 | |
Paul and John's magpie-like search for instrumental colours | 0:18:02 | 0:18:05 | |
that were unusual, half-forgotten or unexpected is one of the most | 0:18:05 | 0:18:09 | |
distinctive features of the Sgt Pepper project. | 0:18:09 | 0:18:12 | |
Alongside classical, woodwind and brass, | 0:18:13 | 0:18:15 | |
Penny Lane also gives pride of place to a so-called piccolo trumpet, | 0:18:15 | 0:18:20 | |
a sound that was last fashionable in 1750. | 0:18:20 | 0:18:23 | |
MUSIC: Penny Lane | 0:18:23 | 0:18:29 | |
While the Penny Lane sessions were under way, Paul saw a performance | 0:18:29 | 0:18:33 | |
of JS Bach's second Brandenburg Concerto on the TV. | 0:18:33 | 0:18:36 | |
MUSIC: Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 by JS Bach | 0:18:36 | 0:18:40 | |
He decided he wanted the baroque trumpet sound on it for Penny Lane. | 0:18:43 | 0:18:48 | |
TRUMPET SOLO SECTION OF "PENNY LANE" | 0:18:48 | 0:18:51 | |
When this baroque-style melody is superimposed on | 0:19:03 | 0:19:06 | |
the thoroughly contemporary backing of Penny Lane, it creates, | 0:19:06 | 0:19:10 | |
like so much on Sgt Pepper, a new hybrid sound - | 0:19:10 | 0:19:14 | |
not a copy, not a clone, a totally new combination. | 0:19:14 | 0:19:19 | |
HANDCLAPS AND BACKING VOCALS | 0:19:19 | 0:19:24 | |
-JOHN: -But that'll have the backwards trumpet on that. | 0:19:29 | 0:19:32 | |
-PAUL: -Forward trumpet. Oh, no, backwards, sorry. | 0:19:32 | 0:19:37 | |
TRUMPETS PLAYING BACKWARDS | 0:19:37 | 0:19:43 | |
HANDCLAPS AND BACKING VOCALS | 0:19:43 | 0:19:50 | |
Penny Lane isn't just a nostalgic postcard | 0:19:54 | 0:19:57 | |
of The Beatles' 1950s youth. | 0:19:57 | 0:19:59 | |
It reaches far further back in time, to Victorian days. | 0:19:59 | 0:20:04 | |
This musical time travel was to be echoed throughout Sgt Pepper. | 0:20:04 | 0:20:09 | |
-ENGINEER: -For The Benefit Of Mr Kite, this is take one. | 0:20:09 | 0:20:12 | |
-JOHN: -BEING For The Benefit. | 0:20:12 | 0:20:13 | |
Three, four. | 0:20:16 | 0:20:17 | |
TRACK PLAYS | 0:20:17 | 0:20:22 | |
# For the benefit of Mr Kite | 0:20:23 | 0:20:25 | |
# There will be a show tonight on trampoline | 0:20:25 | 0:20:29 | |
# The Hendersons will all be there Late of Pablo Fanque's Fair | 0:20:32 | 0:20:36 | |
# What a scene! | 0:20:36 | 0:20:38 | |
# Over men and horses Hoops and garters | 0:20:38 | 0:20:41 | |
# Lastly through a hogshead of real fire | 0:20:41 | 0:20:44 | |
# In this way Mr K will challenge the world... # | 0:20:44 | 0:20:48 | |
One day in January 1967, John Lennon wandered into an antique shop | 0:20:50 | 0:20:55 | |
in Sevenoaks, Kent and saw a poster advertising | 0:20:55 | 0:20:58 | |
a circus performance which took place in 1843. | 0:20:58 | 0:21:02 | |
He bought it, but it was also a gift. | 0:21:02 | 0:21:04 | |
Practically all the lyrics of Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite | 0:21:05 | 0:21:08 | |
come from this flyer. | 0:21:08 | 0:21:10 | |
-JOHN, NASALLY: -# For the benefit of Mr Kite | 0:21:12 | 0:21:15 | |
BASS PLAYS | 0:21:15 | 0:21:17 | |
Two, three, four... | 0:21:17 | 0:21:18 | |
-GEORGE MARTIN: -Don't shout it out, | 0:21:19 | 0:21:21 | |
-though, John, just... -Well, all right. | 0:21:21 | 0:21:23 | |
You'll hear it, though, I mean, it'll be on the bass. | 0:21:25 | 0:21:27 | |
Well, we'll have the massed Alberts on by then, won't we? | 0:21:27 | 0:21:30 | |
Two, three, four... | 0:21:30 | 0:21:32 | |
MUSIC PLAYS: | 0:21:32 | 0:21:34 | |
# For the benefit of Mr Kite | 0:21:38 | 0:21:40 | |
# There will be a show tonight on trampoline... # | 0:21:40 | 0:21:44 | |
Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite | 0:21:44 | 0:21:46 | |
is Sgt Pepper's most obvious musical tribute to a bygone era. | 0:21:46 | 0:21:51 | |
Ironically, though, | 0:21:51 | 0:21:52 | |
it's also one of its most technologically challenging. | 0:21:52 | 0:21:56 | |
To grasp how ingenious George Martin and his team were on this song, | 0:21:56 | 0:22:00 | |
we need to understand | 0:22:00 | 0:22:02 | |
just how limited recording resources were in 1967. | 0:22:02 | 0:22:06 | |
These days, thanks to digital recording, | 0:22:07 | 0:22:10 | |
you can create as many layers of sound on top of each other | 0:22:10 | 0:22:13 | |
as you like, as separate recordings all fitting together - | 0:22:13 | 0:22:16 | |
hundreds, if you want. | 0:22:16 | 0:22:18 | |
But all that George Martin and the Beatles had available to them | 0:22:19 | 0:22:23 | |
was a princely four separate tracks on one magnetic tape. | 0:22:23 | 0:22:27 | |
What they frequently did was use up | 0:22:28 | 0:22:31 | |
all four tracks on tape machine number one, | 0:22:31 | 0:22:33 | |
then make a mix of those four, and record it, | 0:22:33 | 0:22:36 | |
or bounce, as it's known in the trade, | 0:22:36 | 0:22:39 | |
onto one track of the four available on tape machine number two. | 0:22:39 | 0:22:42 | |
So in Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite, for example, | 0:22:44 | 0:22:47 | |
the first four tracks were used up by 1 - Paul's bass... | 0:22:47 | 0:22:50 | |
BASS TRACK PLAYS | 0:22:50 | 0:22:53 | |
..2 - John's guide vocal... | 0:22:53 | 0:22:55 | |
# Hendersons will all be there Late of Pablo Fanque's fair | 0:22:55 | 0:22:59 | |
# What a scene! # | 0:22:59 | 0:23:00 | |
..3 - Ringo's drums, | 0:23:00 | 0:23:02 | |
and 4 - George Martin playing a harmonium. | 0:23:02 | 0:23:05 | |
HARMONIUM TRACK PLAYS | 0:23:05 | 0:23:08 | |
Except for the guide vocal, which was ditched, | 0:23:10 | 0:23:13 | |
these were mixed and then bounced down to one track of | 0:23:13 | 0:23:16 | |
the second machine, and so the process went on. | 0:23:16 | 0:23:20 | |
-JOHN: -What? | 0:23:20 | 0:23:21 | |
Oh, yeah, we're all on different tracks. Yeah, yeah, all the time. | 0:23:23 | 0:23:26 | |
Why don't they just all play at once, then, you might ask? | 0:23:27 | 0:23:31 | |
The reason is that the song was being created layer by layer | 0:23:31 | 0:23:34 | |
and some sections of it | 0:23:34 | 0:23:36 | |
simply couldn't be done by live performance. | 0:23:36 | 0:23:38 | |
For example, the bit where Henry the horse dances the waltz. | 0:23:38 | 0:23:41 | |
# And of course Henry the horse dances the waltz | 0:23:41 | 0:23:45 | |
INSTRUMENTAL SECTION | 0:23:45 | 0:23:48 | |
To capture this talented animal's pirouetting star turn, | 0:23:56 | 0:23:59 | |
what was needed was a way to suggest the atmosphere of | 0:23:59 | 0:24:03 | |
an old-fashioned circus purely in music. | 0:24:03 | 0:24:06 | |
John told George Martin he wanted to "smell the sawdust". | 0:24:06 | 0:24:11 | |
OLD RECORDING OF FAIRGROUND MUSIC | 0:24:11 | 0:24:17 | |
A fairground organ sound was decided on, but calliopes, or "call-I-opes" | 0:24:17 | 0:24:22 | |
as they are known, aren't played from a keyboard - | 0:24:22 | 0:24:24 | |
they are operated by punch cards, like a player piano. | 0:24:24 | 0:24:28 | |
Instead of using one of these straight, | 0:24:28 | 0:24:30 | |
George Martin gathered together as many taped recordings of them | 0:24:30 | 0:24:34 | |
as he could find, and asked his assistant, Geoff Emerick, | 0:24:34 | 0:24:37 | |
to chop them up into one-second fragments, | 0:24:37 | 0:24:40 | |
throw them in the air, and stick the pieces together again | 0:24:40 | 0:24:44 | |
in a kind of random musical patchwork quilt. | 0:24:44 | 0:24:46 | |
This is the result. | 0:24:48 | 0:24:49 | |
CALLIOPE COMPOSITE TRACK PLAYS | 0:24:49 | 0:24:53 | |
You could describe it as an early manifestation of sound sampling, | 0:25:00 | 0:25:05 | |
now ubiquitous, and it works brilliantly. | 0:25:05 | 0:25:07 | |
Henry the Horse's waltz now has a strikingly surrealistic, | 0:25:07 | 0:25:12 | |
archly comic tone, a wonderful kind of movie in sound, | 0:25:12 | 0:25:15 | |
which an existing calliope tune could never have conjured up. | 0:25:15 | 0:25:19 | |
END SECTION OF "MR KITE" PLAYS | 0:25:19 | 0:25:23 | |
-PAUL: -John, sing... | 0:25:37 | 0:25:39 | |
Sing those quicker: | 0:25:39 | 0:25:40 | |
# Cellophane flowers of yellow and green | 0:25:40 | 0:25:43 | |
-# Yellow and green. # -OK. -Anyway... | 0:25:44 | 0:25:47 | |
OPENING BARS OF "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" | 0:25:49 | 0:25:54 | |
JOHN: # Picture yourself in a boat on a river... # | 0:25:54 | 0:25:58 | |
-JOHN CHUCKLES PAUL: -Come right in with the... | 0:25:58 | 0:26:01 | |
One of the most famous of all the songs on Sgt Pepper was, | 0:26:01 | 0:26:05 | |
like Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite, also inspired by a picture. | 0:26:05 | 0:26:10 | |
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds | 0:26:10 | 0:26:12 | |
was a childhood drawing by John's son Julian | 0:26:12 | 0:26:15 | |
about a friend of his at primary school. | 0:26:15 | 0:26:17 | |
# With tangerine trees and marmalade skies... # | 0:26:17 | 0:26:23 | |
But there's another little girl wandering through | 0:26:23 | 0:26:26 | |
this remarkable song - Alice in Wonderland. | 0:26:26 | 0:26:28 | |
Published in 1865, Lewis Carroll's surreal children's classic | 0:26:30 | 0:26:35 | |
came back into vogue | 0:26:35 | 0:26:36 | |
in the hallucinogenic haze of a century later. | 0:26:36 | 0:26:39 | |
It was also a childhood favourite of John and Paul's. | 0:26:40 | 0:26:43 | |
VOCAL TRACK PLAYS: # Towering over your head | 0:26:43 | 0:26:48 | |
# Look for the girl. # | 0:26:48 | 0:26:50 | |
MUSIC STOPS | 0:26:50 | 0:26:52 | |
COUGHING | 0:26:52 | 0:26:55 | |
Concentrate, swing it. | 0:26:55 | 0:26:58 | |
OPENING BARS OF "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" | 0:26:58 | 0:27:03 | |
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds | 0:27:03 | 0:27:05 | |
is not, despite its initials, about LSD. | 0:27:05 | 0:27:07 | |
And what's most arresting about it anyway | 0:27:07 | 0:27:10 | |
is not its, "Hey, man, that's far out," vibe. | 0:27:10 | 0:27:13 | |
Like Strawberry Fields Forever, the song evokes in the music | 0:27:13 | 0:27:17 | |
as well as the lyrics a child's-eye view of the world. | 0:27:17 | 0:27:20 | |
# A girl with kaleidoscope eyes... # | 0:27:22 | 0:27:28 | |
It's established in the nursery-style music-box opening | 0:27:28 | 0:27:32 | |
with its falling chromatic scale, played by Paul. | 0:27:32 | 0:27:35 | |
HE PLAYS RIGHT HAND PART OF OPENING BARS | 0:27:35 | 0:27:38 | |
This sets the mood of the song - | 0:27:42 | 0:27:44 | |
dreamlike, disorientating, otherworldly. | 0:27:44 | 0:27:46 | |
And to keep that mood going, and constantly develop it, | 0:27:46 | 0:27:49 | |
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds takes us on a harmonic journey. | 0:27:49 | 0:27:54 | |
Sometimes a harmonic progression | 0:27:54 | 0:27:55 | |
just goes from one chord to another... | 0:27:55 | 0:27:57 | |
HE PLAYS CHORD SEQUENCE | 0:27:57 | 0:28:00 | |
..then returns home. | 0:28:00 | 0:28:01 | |
But more advanced use of harmony allows these journeys | 0:28:01 | 0:28:04 | |
to move to a new centre of gravity altogether. | 0:28:04 | 0:28:07 | |
This is called a modulation. | 0:28:07 | 0:28:09 | |
HE PLAYS MODULATED CHORD SEQUENCE | 0:28:09 | 0:28:12 | |
Modulations have been the bread and butter | 0:28:13 | 0:28:16 | |
of Western classical music since the 18th century, | 0:28:16 | 0:28:18 | |
but they weren't much of a feature of either folk music or of pop music | 0:28:18 | 0:28:22 | |
before the Beatles. | 0:28:22 | 0:28:24 | |
At the heart of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds's verse | 0:28:24 | 0:28:27 | |
is an instability caused by the fact that Paul's bass line | 0:28:27 | 0:28:30 | |
drifts away from the home key of A by introducing notes | 0:28:30 | 0:28:35 | |
beneath the chords that don't really belong in that key. | 0:28:35 | 0:28:38 | |
Without these rogue notes, | 0:28:38 | 0:28:40 | |
the first phrase would sound something like this. | 0:28:40 | 0:28:43 | |
HE PLAYS CHORDS WITH STANDARD STYLE BASS NOTES | 0:28:43 | 0:28:45 | |
# Picture yourself on a boat on a river | 0:28:45 | 0:28:48 | |
# With tangerine trees and marmalade skies | 0:28:48 | 0:28:52 | |
Now let's hear it with Paul's destabilising bass notes. | 0:28:52 | 0:28:57 | |
HE PLAYS CHORDS WITH NEW BASS NOTES | 0:28:57 | 0:28:59 | |
# Picture yourself in a boat on a river | 0:29:07 | 0:29:12 | |
# With tangerine...# | 0:29:12 | 0:29:14 | |
The bass here isn't just adding a bit of intrigue to a phrase, | 0:29:14 | 0:29:17 | |
it's transforming the harmonic or chordal structure of the whole song. | 0:29:17 | 0:29:23 | |
# You answer quite slowly... # | 0:29:23 | 0:29:25 | |
What this baseline does is undermine the key of A. | 0:29:25 | 0:29:28 | |
It's saying, "Don't get comfortable here." | 0:29:28 | 0:29:31 | |
A, now flaky, starts to drift, | 0:29:31 | 0:29:34 | |
first to F sharp minor, | 0:29:34 | 0:29:37 | |
then to D minor, | 0:29:37 | 0:29:39 | |
then to a new harmonic home, | 0:29:39 | 0:29:41 | |
totally alien to the starting point of A - B flat for... | 0:29:41 | 0:29:45 | |
# Cellophane flowers of yellow and green. # | 0:29:45 | 0:29:49 | |
# Cellophane flowers of yellow and green | 0:29:50 | 0:29:55 | |
# Towering over your head | 0:29:55 | 0:29:59 | |
# Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes and she's gone... # | 0:30:00 | 0:30:06 | |
But we don't stay with B flat for long either, | 0:30:06 | 0:30:09 | |
because another nifty modulation is soon upon us. | 0:30:09 | 0:30:12 | |
We drift away from B flat | 0:30:12 | 0:30:15 | |
through C, then D, | 0:30:15 | 0:30:17 | |
to the chorus's key of G. | 0:30:17 | 0:30:19 | |
# Lucy in the sky with diamonds | 0:30:20 | 0:30:25 | |
# Lucy in the...# | 0:30:26 | 0:30:28 | |
In simple terms, | 0:30:28 | 0:30:29 | |
moving from one key to another can alter the mood of a piece, | 0:30:29 | 0:30:33 | |
like the difference in seeing the same view | 0:30:33 | 0:30:35 | |
with brown, blue or green filters. | 0:30:35 | 0:30:38 | |
If you keep doing it repeatedly in a song, it creates | 0:30:38 | 0:30:41 | |
an atmosphere of unpredictability. It is, if you like, | 0:30:41 | 0:30:44 | |
an aural equivalent of an ever-shifting kaleidoscope, | 0:30:44 | 0:30:48 | |
or a girl with kaleidoscope eyes, in fact. | 0:30:48 | 0:30:51 | |
# Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers | 0:30:52 | 0:30:56 | |
# That grow so incredibly high... # | 0:30:56 | 0:31:01 | |
In this period of their development, Lennon and McCartney | 0:31:01 | 0:31:04 | |
were clearly loving their newly discovered wizardry of modulation. | 0:31:04 | 0:31:07 | |
In fact, of the 15 tracks on Sgt Pepper, if we include | 0:31:07 | 0:31:11 | |
Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane, | 0:31:11 | 0:31:13 | |
a staggering 12 involve modulations. | 0:31:13 | 0:31:16 | |
But they were always conjured up | 0:31:16 | 0:31:18 | |
like the best magician's trick - invisibly. | 0:31:18 | 0:31:21 | |
# Lucy in the sky with diamonds | 0:31:23 | 0:31:27 | |
# Lucy in the sky with diamonds. # | 0:31:28 | 0:31:30 | |
Another reason why Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds | 0:31:30 | 0:31:33 | |
has a compelling sense of strangeness | 0:31:33 | 0:31:35 | |
is because we're not hearing John's voice straight. | 0:31:35 | 0:31:38 | |
Actually, it was recorded | 0:31:38 | 0:31:40 | |
with the tape running deliberately at a lower speed. | 0:31:40 | 0:31:43 | |
So when the tapes played back at a normal speed, | 0:31:43 | 0:31:46 | |
the vocal sound has a higher, brighter quality. | 0:31:46 | 0:31:50 | |
# With tangerine trees and marmalade skies. # | 0:31:50 | 0:31:55 | |
Mostly when a voice is raised in pitch artificially like this, | 0:31:56 | 0:32:00 | |
a process later given the name "vary speed", | 0:32:00 | 0:32:03 | |
its essential resonances, so-called formants, | 0:32:03 | 0:32:06 | |
change too, so that the vocal quality sounds thinner, | 0:32:06 | 0:32:09 | |
as the more mature parts of the voice get stripped out. | 0:32:09 | 0:32:13 | |
# With tangerine trees... # | 0:32:13 | 0:32:16 | |
At its most extreme, an adult voice can sound like a chipmunk. | 0:32:16 | 0:32:20 | |
-HIGH-PITCHED: -# Somebody calls you You answer quite slowly... # | 0:32:20 | 0:32:26 | |
But a subtle raising of the pitch makes the singer sound younger, | 0:32:26 | 0:32:29 | |
and so when we're hearing the solo voices on Sgt Pepper, | 0:32:29 | 0:32:33 | |
singing about childhood or the past, | 0:32:33 | 0:32:35 | |
we are literally hearing younger versions of them. | 0:32:35 | 0:32:38 | |
# Lucy in the sky with diamonds | 0:32:40 | 0:32:45 | |
# Lucy in the sky... # | 0:32:45 | 0:32:47 | |
In a subconscious way, we, the listeners, | 0:32:47 | 0:32:49 | |
are being led back in time with such studio tricks. | 0:32:49 | 0:32:52 | |
But going back in time didn't always mean | 0:32:52 | 0:32:55 | |
indulging in untroubled nostalgia. | 0:32:55 | 0:32:57 | |
Is the tempo all right, Paul? | 0:32:59 | 0:33:01 | |
Take six. | 0:33:01 | 0:33:02 | |
Right, here we go. | 0:33:05 | 0:33:06 | |
One, two, three, two, two, three. | 0:33:06 | 0:33:08 | |
INTRO TO "She's Leaving Home" | 0:33:08 | 0:33:11 | |
Think of the 1960s, and a series of now-famous images comes to mind - | 0:33:29 | 0:33:34 | |
Carnaby Street, Twiggy, Mary Quant, | 0:33:34 | 0:33:37 | |
face paint, flowers, | 0:33:37 | 0:33:38 | |
hippies in tie-dye, and so on. | 0:33:38 | 0:33:41 | |
But that was the Swinging Sixties and the Summer Of Love | 0:33:41 | 0:33:44 | |
for a few thousand people at most. | 0:33:44 | 0:33:46 | |
For everyone else, especially outside London's West End, | 0:33:47 | 0:33:51 | |
mid-'60s Britain wasn't that different | 0:33:51 | 0:33:53 | |
from the post-war greyness of the 1950s. | 0:33:53 | 0:33:56 | |
# Wednesday morning at five o'clock | 0:34:02 | 0:34:06 | |
# As the day begins | 0:34:06 | 0:34:09 | |
# Silently closing her bedroom door | 0:34:12 | 0:34:18 | |
# Leaving the note that she hoped would say more | 0:34:18 | 0:34:22 | |
# She goes downstairs to the kitchen | 0:34:22 | 0:34:26 | |
# Clutching her handkerchief... # | 0:34:26 | 0:34:30 | |
Just getting by could be bleak. | 0:34:30 | 0:34:32 | |
Throughout the late '50s and early '60s, | 0:34:32 | 0:34:34 | |
writers, dramatists and film-makers reflected this | 0:34:34 | 0:34:37 | |
by creating intense, gritty portraits | 0:34:37 | 0:34:39 | |
of contemporary working-class British life. | 0:34:39 | 0:34:43 | |
She's Leaving Home is their musical equivalent. | 0:34:43 | 0:34:46 | |
# We gave her most of our lives. # | 0:34:46 | 0:34:49 | |
Paul was inspired to write the song by a newspaper story he read | 0:34:49 | 0:34:52 | |
during the Sgt Pepper sessions. | 0:34:52 | 0:34:53 | |
A young woman, aged 17 in the article, leaves home | 0:34:56 | 0:34:59 | |
to seek adventure in the swinging city, and, presumably, | 0:34:59 | 0:35:03 | |
sexual freedom, devastating her straight-laced parents | 0:35:03 | 0:35:06 | |
in the process. | 0:35:06 | 0:35:08 | |
To portray this generational conflict, She's Leaving Home | 0:35:08 | 0:35:12 | |
also bucks the trend of most pop songs that preceded | 0:35:12 | 0:35:15 | |
by presenting more than one character's perspective. | 0:35:15 | 0:35:18 | |
There's the neutral observer, whose voice begins the story, | 0:35:18 | 0:35:21 | |
narrating in the third person. | 0:35:21 | 0:35:24 | |
# She goes downstairs to the kitchen | 0:35:24 | 0:35:28 | |
# Clutching her handkerchief. # | 0:35:28 | 0:35:31 | |
And towards the end of the song, we get a hint, too, | 0:35:31 | 0:35:34 | |
of the protagonist's point of view. | 0:35:34 | 0:35:36 | |
# Fun is the one thing that money can't buy... # | 0:35:36 | 0:35:41 | |
But, most unusually, in the chorus the story also includes | 0:35:41 | 0:35:45 | |
the point of view of the runaway's distressed parents. | 0:35:45 | 0:35:48 | |
# She breaks down and cries to her husband | 0:35:48 | 0:35:52 | |
# "Daddy, our baby's gone." # | 0:35:52 | 0:35:56 | |
To further dramatise the parent-daughter deadlock, | 0:35:57 | 0:36:01 | |
the different viewpoints are sung simultaneously, | 0:36:01 | 0:36:04 | |
a technique called polyphony, meaning many voices. | 0:36:04 | 0:36:07 | |
And the interplay of these melodies is known as counterpoint. | 0:36:07 | 0:36:10 | |
-# She... -# We never thought of ourselves | 0:36:10 | 0:36:14 | |
# Is leaving | 0:36:14 | 0:36:16 | |
# Never a thought for ourselves | 0:36:16 | 0:36:20 | |
# Home | 0:36:20 | 0:36:22 | |
# We struggled hard all our lives to get by | 0:36:22 | 0:36:26 | |
# She's leaving home... # | 0:36:26 | 0:36:27 | |
Not only is this musically satisfying, | 0:36:27 | 0:36:29 | |
it's also generous, and it's emotionally and politically mature. | 0:36:29 | 0:36:33 | |
Sympathy is shown for the parents as well as the alienated young woman. | 0:36:33 | 0:36:37 | |
Polyphony and counterpoint are musical tools that have been around | 0:36:39 | 0:36:42 | |
for hundreds of years in classical music. | 0:36:42 | 0:36:45 | |
But there's an even older alchemy at work in She's Leaving Home. | 0:36:45 | 0:36:49 | |
If you've ever wondered why the song sounds so melancholy, | 0:36:49 | 0:36:52 | |
it's not just because of the subject matter | 0:36:52 | 0:36:54 | |
or its delicate harp and strings accompaniment. | 0:36:54 | 0:36:57 | |
It's also because Paul's melody is modal. | 0:36:57 | 0:37:00 | |
Now, long before Western music had major and minor keys, | 0:37:00 | 0:37:04 | |
it had an ancient system of note families called modes. | 0:37:04 | 0:37:08 | |
Here's one... | 0:37:08 | 0:37:09 | |
Here's another... | 0:37:11 | 0:37:13 | |
And here's another... | 0:37:14 | 0:37:16 | |
African-American Blues and most of the world's traditional music | 0:37:17 | 0:37:21 | |
is modal. Here's an example - | 0:37:21 | 0:37:23 | |
an old English folk song called The True Lover's Farewell. | 0:37:23 | 0:37:27 | |
# Oh, fare you well, I must be gone | 0:37:28 | 0:37:32 | |
# And leave you for a while | 0:37:32 | 0:37:36 | |
# But wherever I go, I will return | 0:37:36 | 0:37:39 | |
# If I go 10,000 mile, my dear | 0:37:39 | 0:37:44 | |
# If I go 10,000 mile. # | 0:37:44 | 0:37:48 | |
There's a sense of sadness in its rise and fall, isn't there? | 0:37:48 | 0:37:52 | |
Conjuring up the idea of an earlier, earthier form of song. | 0:37:52 | 0:37:56 | |
The verse melody of She's Leaving Home belongs to one of these modes - | 0:37:56 | 0:38:00 | |
the Aeolian folk mode. | 0:38:00 | 0:38:03 | |
# Friday morning at nine o'clock, she is far away. # | 0:38:03 | 0:38:09 | |
Now, Paul didn't sit down and think, "I'll write a modal tune today." | 0:38:13 | 0:38:17 | |
It was instinctive. | 0:38:17 | 0:38:19 | |
Modes are embedded in the Anglo-Celtic folk songs | 0:38:19 | 0:38:22 | |
he heard growing up. | 0:38:22 | 0:38:23 | |
Like the childhood images evoked in Strawberry Fields Forever, | 0:38:23 | 0:38:27 | |
Penny Lane or Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, | 0:38:27 | 0:38:29 | |
the intuitive use of a folk mode in She's Leaving Home | 0:38:29 | 0:38:32 | |
reaches back in time. | 0:38:32 | 0:38:34 | |
In this case, making the listener feel a sense of loss. | 0:38:34 | 0:38:37 | |
# Fun is the one thing that money can't buy | 0:38:37 | 0:38:40 | |
# Something inside that was always denied for so many years | 0:38:40 | 0:38:45 | |
# Bye-bye | 0:38:45 | 0:38:47 | |
# She's leaving home | 0:38:51 | 0:38:55 | |
# Bye-bye. # | 0:38:55 | 0:38:58 | |
Take nine. Still rolling. | 0:39:05 | 0:39:06 | |
My fucking arm's dropping off, I tell you. | 0:39:09 | 0:39:12 | |
Playing Sgt Pepper for the first time, the vinyl version, | 0:39:12 | 0:39:15 | |
and dropping the stylus onto the beginning of side two, you could | 0:39:15 | 0:39:19 | |
have been forgiven for thinking you'd put on the wrong record. | 0:39:19 | 0:39:22 | |
So far, we've been on a turn-of-the-century bandstand, | 0:39:22 | 0:39:26 | |
in an Alice In Wonderland phantasmagoria, | 0:39:26 | 0:39:29 | |
a slice-of-life northern drama, | 0:39:29 | 0:39:31 | |
and a Victorian circus. | 0:39:31 | 0:39:33 | |
Now we're transported to another continent. | 0:39:33 | 0:39:36 | |
Take one. | 0:39:39 | 0:39:40 | |
The Lonely Hearts Club Band's Edwardian bandstand | 0:39:50 | 0:39:53 | |
has turned into an ashram. | 0:39:53 | 0:39:55 | |
And instead of a brass band, we're hearing the sitar, the dilruba, | 0:39:55 | 0:39:59 | |
the tambura, the swarmandal and the tabla. | 0:39:59 | 0:40:01 | |
Within You Without You is the most unexpected and, as it turns out, | 0:40:26 | 0:40:30 | |
most visionary of all the many surprises on the album. | 0:40:30 | 0:40:34 | |
It's no great exaggeration to say that the song | 0:40:34 | 0:40:36 | |
is a turning point in 20th century popular music. | 0:40:36 | 0:40:39 | |
It helped set in motion what we'd now call world music. | 0:40:41 | 0:40:45 | |
# We were talking | 0:40:45 | 0:40:48 | |
# About the space between us all | 0:40:50 | 0:40:57 | |
# And the people. # | 0:40:57 | 0:41:00 | |
What's radical is not just that it uses Indian instruments. | 0:41:00 | 0:41:04 | |
Sitars had been played in pop records before, | 0:41:04 | 0:41:07 | |
by the Rolling Stones, for example, and indeed The Beatles themselves. | 0:41:07 | 0:41:11 | |
But in those cases, the Indian instruments were there | 0:41:11 | 0:41:14 | |
merely to provide an exotic sound, | 0:41:14 | 0:41:16 | |
a kind of aural flavouring, like musical joss sticks. | 0:41:16 | 0:41:19 | |
No, George Harrison, in this piece, | 0:41:21 | 0:41:24 | |
is co-opting the fundamental principles | 0:41:24 | 0:41:26 | |
of Indian music, and that is an undertaking of | 0:41:26 | 0:41:29 | |
a quite different order altogether. | 0:41:29 | 0:41:31 | |
# Da, da, da, da | 0:41:35 | 0:41:37 | |
# Da, da, da. # | 0:41:37 | 0:41:39 | |
You see, because... | 0:41:39 | 0:41:40 | |
Because this mar is right into the beat. | 0:41:40 | 0:41:45 | |
If it goes... | 0:41:45 | 0:41:46 | |
# Long as I need, I need, I need | 0:41:48 | 0:41:50 | |
# Long as I need, I need. # | 0:41:52 | 0:41:54 | |
George first heard a classical Indian recording in 1965. | 0:41:54 | 0:41:58 | |
It was a life-changing moment. | 0:41:58 | 0:42:01 | |
A year later, he sought lessons with the man he'd heard playing - | 0:42:01 | 0:42:05 | |
the great virtuoso of Indian classical music, Ravi Shankar. | 0:42:05 | 0:42:08 | |
# Da, da, da, da, da, da, da | 0:42:08 | 0:42:11 | |
# Da, da, da, da, da, da | 0:42:11 | 0:42:12 | |
# Da, da, da, da. # | 0:42:16 | 0:42:18 | |
Hinduism, with its emphasis on the snares and illusions | 0:42:18 | 0:42:21 | |
of the material world, had become an important part of a new kind of | 0:42:21 | 0:42:24 | |
spirituality that many in the West were seeking. | 0:42:24 | 0:42:27 | |
For some, it proved a passing fad. | 0:42:27 | 0:42:30 | |
For George, it became a lifelong and sincere commitment. | 0:42:30 | 0:42:34 | |
And he studied not only Indian music, | 0:42:34 | 0:42:36 | |
but Hindu religious philosophy. | 0:42:36 | 0:42:38 | |
Remarkably, it was this that George was attempting to evoke | 0:42:40 | 0:42:43 | |
in a pop album. | 0:42:43 | 0:42:45 | |
Within You Without You is a heartfelt reflection on the | 0:42:45 | 0:42:48 | |
state of being in the modern world. | 0:42:48 | 0:42:50 | |
# When you've seen beyond yourself | 0:42:50 | 0:42:53 | |
# Then you may find peace of mind | 0:42:53 | 0:42:57 | |
# Is waiting there | 0:42:57 | 0:42:58 | |
# And the time will come when you see we're all one | 0:43:02 | 0:43:07 | |
# And life flows on within you and without you. # | 0:43:07 | 0:43:13 | |
To see just how radical Within You Without You was, | 0:43:13 | 0:43:16 | |
let's look at the basic building blocks of Indian music | 0:43:16 | 0:43:19 | |
and how they differ significantly from the Western approach. | 0:43:19 | 0:43:23 | |
Take rhythm, for example. | 0:43:23 | 0:43:24 | |
In Indian music, rhythmic patterns and the way they evolve | 0:43:24 | 0:43:28 | |
play a far more important role | 0:43:28 | 0:43:29 | |
than how a piece of music is constructed | 0:43:29 | 0:43:32 | |
than they do in Western music. | 0:43:32 | 0:43:34 | |
In Western music, it's quite normal for the rhythm to loop around | 0:43:34 | 0:43:37 | |
and around, unchanging throughout a piece. | 0:43:37 | 0:43:39 | |
Indian music, on the other hand, | 0:43:39 | 0:43:41 | |
hates staying the same for any length of time. | 0:43:41 | 0:43:43 | |
Every Indian piece is built around one or more taal. | 0:43:50 | 0:43:55 | |
A taal is a pre-selected rhythmic pattern that recurs | 0:43:55 | 0:43:58 | |
every so often throughout the piece, a groove, you might call it. | 0:43:58 | 0:44:02 | |
Taal are made up of a sequence of beats - strong and weak. | 0:44:10 | 0:44:13 | |
They're then strung together in long, additive lines, | 0:44:13 | 0:44:16 | |
potentially requiring huge reserves of random access memory from | 0:44:16 | 0:44:20 | |
the players, since none of these long strings of numbers | 0:44:20 | 0:44:23 | |
are written down. | 0:44:23 | 0:44:25 | |
What's more, most of these rhythmic sequences | 0:44:25 | 0:44:27 | |
change speed, or laya, during the course of the piece. | 0:44:27 | 0:44:30 | |
The simple teen taal, for example - the closest relative of the | 0:44:32 | 0:44:35 | |
Western four beats to the bar standard - | 0:44:35 | 0:44:38 | |
is made up of four sets of four beats. | 0:44:38 | 0:44:40 | |
A variant of the teen taal begins Within You Without You. | 0:44:40 | 0:44:44 | |
MUSIC: Within You Without You by The Beatles | 0:44:44 | 0:44:50 | |
# We were talking... # | 0:44:54 | 0:44:57 | |
The taal soon becomes mischievously irregular. | 0:44:57 | 0:45:00 | |
George breaks up the four plus four plus four plus four pattern | 0:45:00 | 0:45:04 | |
by adding two groups of five, before turning back for the second verse. | 0:45:04 | 0:45:09 | |
The second verse ends with a group of five, | 0:45:11 | 0:45:14 | |
then a group of five and a half. | 0:45:14 | 0:45:15 | |
Both these verses upset the listener's expectation | 0:45:19 | 0:45:21 | |
of where the strong beats are meant to fall. | 0:45:21 | 0:45:24 | |
These kinds of divisions, by the way, are unheard of in Indian music | 0:45:24 | 0:45:28 | |
and Western pop music. | 0:45:28 | 0:45:29 | |
They are entirely of George's own making. | 0:45:29 | 0:45:32 | |
# We were talking... # | 0:45:35 | 0:45:37 | |
Another crucial factor in the song which clearly shows it was | 0:45:38 | 0:45:41 | |
designed all along to be a musical adventure in two worlds, | 0:45:41 | 0:45:45 | |
East and West, is the shape of the vocal line. | 0:45:45 | 0:45:48 | |
George's use of melody in Within You Without You, | 0:45:50 | 0:45:52 | |
whilst choosing his notes from a modified Indian scale, | 0:45:52 | 0:45:56 | |
is, in truth, closer to a Western model of making a tune, | 0:45:56 | 0:45:59 | |
because there is relatively little ornamentation in it. | 0:45:59 | 0:46:02 | |
This is what the song might have sounded like as interpreted | 0:46:02 | 0:46:06 | |
by a classical Indian singer. | 0:46:06 | 0:46:08 | |
# We were talking | 0:46:09 | 0:46:13 | |
# Talking | 0:46:18 | 0:46:21 | |
# Talking | 0:46:26 | 0:46:30 | |
# We were talking | 0:46:34 | 0:46:38 | |
# About the space between us all | 0:46:38 | 0:46:44 | |
# And the people... # | 0:46:44 | 0:46:47 | |
It's recognisably the same song, | 0:46:49 | 0:46:51 | |
but quite different from what's on the record. | 0:46:51 | 0:46:53 | |
And no wonder. Because he wasn't trained to sing in this | 0:46:53 | 0:46:56 | |
highly ornamented style, and guessing perhaps that the | 0:46:56 | 0:46:59 | |
Western audience wasn't quite ready to hear it yet, | 0:46:59 | 0:47:02 | |
George shaped instead a more straightforward tune, | 0:47:02 | 0:47:05 | |
only loosely based on an Indian scale. | 0:47:05 | 0:47:07 | |
Hidden in the Abbey Road Masters is a fascinating insight into how | 0:47:10 | 0:47:13 | |
he coaches his Indian musicians to combine their native techniques | 0:47:13 | 0:47:17 | |
with his half-Eastern, half-Western melody. | 0:47:17 | 0:47:20 | |
GEORGE SINGS WITHIN YOU WITHOUT YOU IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGE | 0:47:22 | 0:47:27 | |
-INDIAN MUSICIAN: -I think I prolong too much over here. Isn't it? | 0:47:38 | 0:47:42 | |
-GEORGE: -OK, shall we try from the beginning? | 0:47:42 | 0:47:45 | |
Just take it, Geoff, just in case. | 0:47:45 | 0:47:47 | |
Within You Without You is a hybrid in its melody | 0:47:48 | 0:47:51 | |
and its architecture, an amalgam of two cultures. | 0:47:51 | 0:47:55 | |
But practically everything on Sgt Pepper | 0:47:55 | 0:47:57 | |
is a hybrid of some kind. | 0:47:57 | 0:47:59 | |
Not least the final extraordinary track, A Day In The Life. | 0:47:59 | 0:48:03 | |
In The Life Of, take one. | 0:48:03 | 0:48:04 | |
Have the mic on the piano, quite low. | 0:48:04 | 0:48:07 | |
Just keep it like maracas, you know. | 0:48:07 | 0:48:10 | |
You know those old pianos. | 0:48:10 | 0:48:11 | |
# Sugar Plum Fairy, Sugar Plum Fairy. # | 0:48:24 | 0:48:27 | |
A Day In The Life's status as the emotional and artistic climax | 0:48:36 | 0:48:40 | |
of Sgt Pepper almost single-handedly answers the question - | 0:48:40 | 0:48:44 | |
why is this record considered by musicians to be such a landmark? | 0:48:44 | 0:48:49 | |
It was written before most of the other material on the album, | 0:48:49 | 0:48:52 | |
and yet it manages to prefigure some many of the project's | 0:48:52 | 0:48:56 | |
overall themes. | 0:48:56 | 0:48:57 | |
-JOHN: -# Well, I just had to laugh. # | 0:48:58 | 0:49:01 | |
It encompasses the everyday realism of ordinary life, | 0:49:03 | 0:49:07 | |
deadpan commentary intertwined with psychedelia, | 0:49:07 | 0:49:10 | |
experimentation with recording technology, | 0:49:10 | 0:49:13 | |
use of classical orchestration, | 0:49:13 | 0:49:14 | |
modulations in key and tempo, | 0:49:14 | 0:49:17 | |
use of sound effects, | 0:49:17 | 0:49:18 | |
avant-garde techniques, | 0:49:18 | 0:49:20 | |
and third and first-person narrative juxtaposed. | 0:49:20 | 0:49:23 | |
A Day In The Life is Sgt Pepper in miniature, and then some. | 0:49:23 | 0:49:27 | |
# I read the news today, oh boy. # | 0:49:31 | 0:49:34 | |
The song was suggested by a newspaper article | 0:49:37 | 0:49:39 | |
about the death in a car crash of a young aristocrat, a friend of | 0:49:39 | 0:49:42 | |
the Beatles. | 0:49:42 | 0:49:43 | |
# And though the news was rather sad. # | 0:49:43 | 0:49:46 | |
And a story about a scandalous 4,000 potholes identified | 0:49:46 | 0:49:49 | |
in Blackburn, Lancashire. | 0:49:49 | 0:49:51 | |
Perhaps only the Beatles could have turned these fragments | 0:49:51 | 0:49:54 | |
of reportage into a modern classic. | 0:49:54 | 0:49:57 | |
# I saw the photograph | 0:49:57 | 0:49:59 | |
# He blew his mind out in a car. # | 0:50:02 | 0:50:05 | |
The song begins deceptively simply, | 0:50:07 | 0:50:10 | |
but listen to Ringo's anything but simple syncopated interjections, | 0:50:10 | 0:50:14 | |
played on tom-toms. | 0:50:14 | 0:50:15 | |
# A crowd of people stood and stared | 0:50:15 | 0:50:18 | |
# They'd seen his face before | 0:50:20 | 0:50:23 | |
# Nobody was really sure if he was from the House of Lords. # | 0:50:23 | 0:50:27 | |
In playing like this, Ringo isn't fulfilling the traditional role | 0:50:29 | 0:50:32 | |
of rock or pop drummer as of 1967. | 0:50:32 | 0:50:35 | |
The tom-tom fills he introduces are actually a lot more like | 0:50:35 | 0:50:39 | |
the way percussion works in classical music. | 0:50:39 | 0:50:42 | |
He's not laying down the pulse, he's punctuating it. | 0:50:42 | 0:50:45 | |
# But I just had to... # | 0:50:48 | 0:50:50 | |
This already gives us a sense of disorientation, | 0:50:50 | 0:50:53 | |
of ground shifting under our feet. | 0:50:53 | 0:50:55 | |
# I'd love to turn you on. # | 0:50:57 | 0:51:02 | |
A Day In The Life started out not as one song, but two. | 0:51:06 | 0:51:10 | |
Two very different songs. | 0:51:10 | 0:51:11 | |
-PAUL: -# Woke up, fell out of bed | 0:51:21 | 0:51:23 | |
# Dragged a comb across my head. # | 0:51:23 | 0:51:26 | |
John came into the studio with the verse, Paul added a middle section | 0:51:26 | 0:51:30 | |
from a completely different song fragment of his own. | 0:51:30 | 0:51:33 | |
# I noticed I was late | 0:51:33 | 0:51:34 | |
# Found my coat and grabbed my hat | 0:51:35 | 0:51:38 | |
# Made the bus in seconds flat | 0:51:38 | 0:51:40 | |
# Found my way upstairs and had a smoke | 0:51:43 | 0:51:45 | |
# And somebody spoke and I went into a dream. # | 0:51:45 | 0:51:49 | |
HE PLAYS PIANO SOLO IN A DAY IN THE LIFE | 0:51:51 | 0:51:54 | |
John's matter-of-fact verse, with its laconic descending harmonies, | 0:51:58 | 0:52:03 | |
is set off to superb effect by Paul's urgent piano and bass driven | 0:52:03 | 0:52:06 | |
middle section. | 0:52:06 | 0:52:08 | |
But what was needed now was some way of segueing between the two | 0:52:08 | 0:52:11 | |
different elements. | 0:52:11 | 0:52:13 | |
And what they came up with was truly remarkable | 0:52:13 | 0:52:15 | |
and unprecedented in pop music. | 0:52:15 | 0:52:17 | |
Both Paul and John were extremely musically curious. | 0:52:31 | 0:52:35 | |
Paul, in particular, was fascinated with the experimental techniques | 0:52:35 | 0:52:39 | |
being forged by avant-garde composers, | 0:52:39 | 0:52:41 | |
like John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen. | 0:52:41 | 0:52:44 | |
One of the most radical of them was given the grand, if contradictory, | 0:52:44 | 0:52:48 | |
sounding name of aleatoric composition, | 0:52:48 | 0:52:51 | |
meaning creating music by chance. | 0:52:51 | 0:52:53 | |
Alea is the Latin word for dice. | 0:52:53 | 0:52:56 | |
The two orchestra glissando effects heard in the song | 0:52:58 | 0:53:01 | |
are created by an aleatoric method. | 0:53:01 | 0:53:04 | |
Paul and George Martin do it with a 40-piece orchestra, | 0:53:04 | 0:53:07 | |
telling the musicians to play the lowest note their instrument | 0:53:07 | 0:53:10 | |
is capable of, and then play whatever notes they like, | 0:53:10 | 0:53:13 | |
however they like, as long as they gradually raise their pitch, | 0:53:13 | 0:53:17 | |
and as long as they end up on one of the three notes | 0:53:17 | 0:53:20 | |
of an E major chord, | 0:53:20 | 0:53:21 | |
ideally at the very top of their instrument's range. | 0:53:21 | 0:53:24 | |
Nothing on Sgt Pepper, as we've seen, is quite what it seems, | 0:53:46 | 0:53:50 | |
which is true of its massive last chord. | 0:53:50 | 0:53:53 | |
If you play this E major chord on a piano... | 0:53:53 | 0:53:56 | |
HE PLAYS LOUD CHORD | 0:53:56 | 0:53:58 | |
Using its sustain pedal, its natural audibility lasts about | 0:54:02 | 0:54:06 | |
40 seconds, depending on what room you're in. | 0:54:06 | 0:54:09 | |
But all the time, it's dying away. | 0:54:09 | 0:54:11 | |
The final chord of A Day In The Life lasts 43 seconds, | 0:54:11 | 0:54:15 | |
and it is weirdly, unexpectedly alive for much of that time, | 0:54:15 | 0:54:20 | |
not dying away with anything like the speed of the natural version. | 0:54:20 | 0:54:24 | |
It carries on resonating. | 0:54:24 | 0:54:26 | |
Have you got your loud pedal down, Mark? | 0:54:26 | 0:54:28 | |
-Which one's that? -The right-hand one, far right. | 0:54:28 | 0:54:31 | |
Go on. | 0:54:32 | 0:54:33 | |
That's it. OK. | 0:54:36 | 0:54:38 | |
If you keep that on for the start, keep it on. | 0:54:38 | 0:54:40 | |
Take one. | 0:54:40 | 0:54:41 | |
So how was this achieved? | 0:54:41 | 0:54:43 | |
First of all, listening carefully to the original tracks, | 0:54:43 | 0:54:46 | |
it's not just one keyboard playing the chord, but nine, | 0:54:46 | 0:54:49 | |
seven acoustic pianos, each with a subtly different tone | 0:54:49 | 0:54:53 | |
played by eight people - Paul and Ringo doubled up on one of them - | 0:54:53 | 0:54:57 | |
an electric organ and a harmonium. | 0:54:57 | 0:54:59 | |
One, two, three... | 0:55:01 | 0:55:03 | |
THEY PLAY FINAL CHORD OF A DAY IN THE LIFE | 0:55:03 | 0:55:06 | |
Take two. | 0:55:10 | 0:55:12 | |
The decaying tails of all seven pianos were recorded separately. | 0:55:12 | 0:55:16 | |
The mixing desk's faders could then operate like a volume pedal | 0:55:16 | 0:55:20 | |
on the dying chords, subtly raising them as they faded away. | 0:55:20 | 0:55:24 | |
Hence the extraordinary effect of the overall chord somehow | 0:55:24 | 0:55:27 | |
remaining alive. | 0:55:27 | 0:55:29 | |
FINAL CHORD OF A DAY IN THE LIFE | 0:55:29 | 0:55:31 | |
That elongated chord, like so much else on Sgt Pepper, | 0:55:57 | 0:56:01 | |
takes something we think is familiar and reinvents it, | 0:56:01 | 0:56:04 | |
as The Beatles reinvented their image and their sound, | 0:56:04 | 0:56:07 | |
in every groove of the LP. | 0:56:07 | 0:56:09 | |
But this wasn't innovation for the sake of it. | 0:56:09 | 0:56:12 | |
The whole project, beginning as it did with the blue suburban skies | 0:56:17 | 0:56:21 | |
of John and Paul's childhoods in Liverpool, | 0:56:21 | 0:56:24 | |
was the most human of endeavours. | 0:56:24 | 0:56:26 | |
# Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. # | 0:56:27 | 0:56:32 | |
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE | 0:56:32 | 0:56:34 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:56:37 | 0:56:38 | |
# We're Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band | 0:56:45 | 0:56:50 | |
# We hope you will enjoy the show | 0:56:50 | 0:56:53 | |
# Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band | 0:56:55 | 0:57:00 | |
# Sit back and let the evening go. # | 0:57:00 | 0:57:03 | |
The musical world was never the same again after Sgt Pepper. | 0:57:05 | 0:57:08 | |
That's not to say the Beatles and many other brilliant musicians | 0:57:08 | 0:57:12 | |
didn't go on to make yet more wonderful and abundant new music. | 0:57:12 | 0:57:16 | |
But the rules of the game had changed forever, | 0:57:16 | 0:57:19 | |
and very, very few works of art in history have that effect. | 0:57:19 | 0:57:22 | |
Our musical age, where genres mix and converge and interweave freely, | 0:57:22 | 0:57:28 | |
really begins with this album. | 0:57:28 | 0:57:30 | |
Being for the benefit for us all, you could say. | 0:57:30 | 0:57:34 | |
# I feel it, I feel it, I feel it | 0:57:52 | 0:57:53 | |
# Oh, baby, now I feel it, I feel it, I feel it | 0:57:53 | 0:57:57 | |
# Feeling free now | 0:57:57 | 0:57:58 | |
# Gotta be free now | 0:57:58 | 0:58:00 | |
# Gotta be free now. # | 0:58:02 | 0:58:03 | |
I think it'll probably be another day singing it. | 0:58:06 | 0:58:09 | |
I just heard it then, I was like, "Yeah!" | 0:58:09 | 0:58:11 | |
This is take eight and it's the choir for the end. | 0:58:13 | 0:58:16 | |
Choir? | 0:58:16 | 0:58:17 | |
Eight, OK. | 0:58:17 | 0:58:19 | |
Eight beats, then. | 0:58:19 | 0:58:20 | |
Just like, count eight. | 0:58:20 | 0:58:22 | |
As soon as you say... | 0:58:22 | 0:58:23 | |
THEY ALL HUM TOGETHER | 0:58:23 | 0:58:25 | |
-Come on, we'll all... -OK. | 0:58:29 | 0:58:31 | |
-Follow my lead. -What's the note? | 0:58:31 | 0:58:33 | |
THEY ALL HUM TOGETHER | 0:58:35 | 0:58:38 | |
One, two, three, four. | 0:58:38 | 0:58:41 | |
THEY ALL HUM TOGETHER | 0:58:41 | 0:58:44 |