WASHINGTON 鈥� It鈥檚 been 50 years since listeners were introduced to Billy Shears, Lovely Rita, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and the rest of the cast of characters that make up 鈥淪gt. Pepper鈥檚 Lonely Hearts Club Band,鈥� the album that cemented the Beatles鈥� reputation and expanded minds about what rock & roll, and the record album itself, could be.
Meredith Rutledge-Borger, curator of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, in Cleveland, told 草莓传媒 that the album 鈥渞eally changed the way we listen to music.鈥�
鈥淪gt. Pepper鈥� was 鈥渙ne of the first albums that was conceived as a single piece, as a concept album,鈥� Rutledge-Borger said.
It took nine months to record and cost roughly $1 million, which is considered relatively normal these days but contrasts sharply with the group鈥檚 debut album, 鈥漃lease Please Me,鈥� which was recorded in about 13 hours, Rutledge-Borger pointed out.
The outlay of time and money was 鈥渦nheard of,鈥� Rutledge-Borger said, and the packaging of the album reflected that. 鈥淭hey put that much investment into making the music, so of course they were going to make an incredibly extravagant packaging for it.鈥�
The gatefold cover was revolutionary for the time, with the front depicting a collection of pop-culture icons from Marilyn Monroe to James Dean to wax figurines of the Beatles themselves, as well as less-known figures such as Karl Marx, James Joyce and sculptor H.C. Westermann. Rutledge-Borger argued that the military-style uniforms the Fab Four wore, reflective of the marching-band alter ego the Beatles created for the album, constituted a foreshadowing of the kind of garb pop stars have worn ever since, most notably Michael Jackson.
Taken all together, Rutledge-Borger said, the record 鈥渒ind of reinvented albums as a work of art. It changed the way that people thought about rock musicians, and it changed the way that those musicians thought about themselves. Instead of just being pop stars who were writing silly love songs, they became artists creating art.鈥�
She added that the Hall of Fame has the 鈥渓argest artifact-driven exhibit of Beatles items in the world,鈥� including the original lyric manuscript for 鈥淟ucy In the Sky With Diamonds.鈥� The collection also has three articles of clothing, including the jacket Lennon wore on the worldwide broadcast of 鈥淎ll You Need is Love,鈥� which wasn鈥檛 on 鈥淪gt. Pepper鈥� but was recorded at the same time and 鈥渞eally captured the essence of the Summer of Love,鈥� Rutledge-Borger said.
The popularity and the critical stature of 鈥淪gt. Pepper鈥� has waxed and waned over the years. In 1998, a of musicians, DJs and journalists named 鈥淪gt. Pepper鈥� the worst album of all time. in 2007 called it 鈥渋f not the worst, then certainly the most overrated album of all time. 鈥� Hearing someone say 鈥楽gt. Pepper鈥� is the greatest album ever made is like hearing someone say the Mona Lisa is the world鈥檚 greatest painting.鈥�
And on Monday, that though 鈥淪gt. Pepper鈥� was “a good pop record,鈥� she added that the case for its significance reflected 鈥渢he point when rock stopped being the music of girls and started being the music of men.”
鈥淸I]t helped cement this notion that music for girls is silly and music for men is artistically significant. It鈥檚 a notion that is doubly appalling because history shows, time and time again, that聽girl-tastes are the ones that are ahead of the curve,鈥� she wrote, citing disco as the clearest recent example.
Rutledge-Borger said one of the Beatles themselves agreed at one point: 鈥淔or a while John Lennon kind of badmouthed it, talking about how it wasn鈥檛 all that. And it influenced a lot of critics, 20 or 30 years after the record was released, to kind of downgrade it.鈥�
Still, she said, 鈥�50 years on, I think we can appreciate it for the masterpiece that it is, that really changed our culture.鈥�
草莓传媒鈥檚 Neal Augenstein contributed to this report.
