June 21 – Turntable Talk 27 : Beatles Spiced Up Album Visuals

Welcome back to Turntable Talk! This is our 27th round, believe it or not. By now all our regular readers know how this goes, but for any new readers, first off, welcome! I hope you find it interesting and check back from time to time here – new posts go up daily and we run the ‘Turntable Talk’ feature usually once a month. And second, briefly, on Turntable Talk we have a number of guest columnists from other music sites, sounding off on one particular topic. We have an index of past topics, with the final one of each in the link, others could be found going back day by day from each of those.

This month, our topic is a little different – Art Rock. No, we’re not digging into obscure rock that somehow seems a tad too experimental for the masses, but the actual art of music. In specific, album art and packaging. Of course, that was a bigger deal when vinyl ruled… that big 12” square canvas that was a record cover let a lot of imaginations and artistic talents run wild! It created an initial impact. Even the Grammy Awards noticed that; since 1959 they’ve given out an annual award for Best Album Cover or Recording Packaging. Frank Sinatra won the first one; since then The Beatles Revolver and Sgt. Pepper, Chicago’s X, Supertramp’s Breakfast in America, Linda Ronstadt’s Get Closer and the Rolling Stones Tattoo You are among the many winners. Thus, we’ve asked our contributors to highlight an album which had packaging they found exceptional.

Today we hear from Max at Power Pop Blog. It’s been rumored his favorite album of all-time is The Beatles (White Album)… will that strikingly plain, unmarked cover win his fancy?

I’ll never forget buying the Sgt Pepper album. I bought it in 1977, 10 years after it was released, and I played it constantly. I remember opening it and finding this cool sheet of cardboard that contained a cutout mustache, paper pins, Sgt stripes, a cool photo of the Beatles, and Sgt Pepper himself! Thinking back…it’s cool that they included these 10 years after the release date. Here is what a 10-year-old Max found in the album. I wore that mustache for days.

I would venture to say that Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band is probably the most famous album by anyone. Personally, I never thought it was their best, but I know many Beatles fans who do think that. If they had added “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane” (which most bands would have done) and maybe dropped “Lovely Rita” and “When I’m 64”, then I would have probably considered it the best. Now, after saying that…I like both of those songs, don’t get me wrong. “ Lovely Rita” as a 10-year-old caught my attention. I think Revolver is very hard to beat and that is their best album artistically…personally as most of you know I have a soft spot for “The White Album” and that is my personal #1.

Sgt. Pepper’s is their most ambitious artistic statement, I think, but I listen to Revolver more often, I think it has higher replay value to me anyway. That is like comparing a great work of art by your favorite painter – you love both but see something else in one so it’s very subjective. As far as packaging… now that is where Sgt Pepper knocks it out of the park.

For really the first time on a massive scale, an album was like a work of art. The Beatles standing as Sgt Pepper’s band with a massive audience behind them. Beside them includes the younger Beatles and behind includes everyone from WC Fields to Lenny Bruce. John wanted Jesus and Hitler on the cover but was talked out of it by Sir Joesph Lockwood, the chairman of EMI.

It was designed by artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth. The cover features the band members dressed in colorful, military-style outfits standing in front of a collage of life-sized cardboard cutouts of famous people. Surrounding The Beatles are cutouts of various cultural icons, artists, actors, musicians, and other notable figures. Some of these include Bob Dylan, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Karl Marx, and Oscar Wilde.

There are five people still alive who were on the cover as of right now. Bob Dylan (top right), Dion DiMucci (smiling blond guy above and to the left of Lennon), Larry Bell (between Lennon and Starr), and obviously Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.

The cover cost approximately £25,000 ((equivalent to £573,000 in 2023)) to produce, which was a significant amount for an album cover at the time. In comparison, most album covers in the 1960s typically cost around £50. The high cost was due to the elaborate design, the custom-made costumes, the creation of the collage with life-sized cutouts, and the use of wax figures borrowed from Madame Tussauds.

The Beatles recorded their debut album Please Please Me in a remarkably short amount of time. The entire recording process for the album took approximately 9 hours and 45 minutes of studio time. Now let’s fast forward five years from 1962 to 1966-67. The Beatles used up to 700 hours of recording time to record Sgt Pepper. The reason why is because they wanted more tracks than just four. They connected two four-track machines together and recorded the album. That wasn’t done all of the time, and they experimented as they went. This album is one of the most important in music history if only because of the newer recording techniques and how far music advanced because of it.

Going off different memories of the albums by people who were there by the time. Some of them said that all you had to do was walk down a UK street and you would hear it from the windows. It was massively popular and peaked at #1 on the Billboard Album Charts, #1 in Canada, and #1 in the UK in 1967. It also peaked at #1 on the Billboard CD charts in 1987 when it was re-released.

The following year The Band changed the course of music in some ways. they released Music From The Big Pink and influenced a generation. Bands started to play more earthy, more roots-oriented music. The Beatles did that by recording the rootsy “White Album”.

To close out…Sgt. Pepper was a game changer. Not one single was released from the album…it does need to be listened to as a whole.