Today’s DOTD - Drink Of The Day - is a Brandy Alexander cocktail, inspired by the anniversary of the U.S. release of the iconic Beatles record Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Today’s DOTD was infamously John Lennon’s favorite drink - which we’ll tell you about in a little bit. First? The story behind Sgt. Pepper.
Behind Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
While this legendary album was released on June 1, 1967 in England, the U.S. had to wait until June 2, 1967 to be able to get the record.
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was the band’s eighth album, and for many. became the soundtrack to the infamous “Summer of Love” in 1967. The appeal of the album and its music has proven to be timeless, though.
The album itself was also a bit of a stress release for the band, after the chaos of the previous period of their lives.
That immediate previous period included the Revolver album, which was completed on June 21, 1966 & released on August 5, 1966 - just in time for the band to fly off on yet another tour. The Revolver tour was difficult. Crammed into one month, August of 1966, the tour consisted of 19 performances, 17 in the U.S. and 2 in Canada, to large audiences in open-air stadiums.
The tour was plagued by backlash regarding the controversy of John Lennon’s remark about the Beatles being “more popular than Jesus”, death threats, and the band’s own dissatisfaction with the noise levels and their ability to perform live. Their speaking out against the Vietnam War added further controversy to the visit. That tour would also be their last in North America, with their last concert in the United States held at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on August 29, 1966.
Once the busy schedule of touring was behind them, more time could be spent writing and recording. Work began on recording the Sgt. Pepper’s album in late 1966, and between November 1966 and April 1967 they spent over 400 hours in the studio - a far cry from their days in 1963, with their debut album Please Please Me. Of course, the music of Sgt. Pepper’s was much more complex and now that touring was over, there was no need to consider what could be reproduced in front of a live audience.
In the studio, The Beatles encouraged their producer George Martin to achieve “the impossible” and in turn, Mr. Martin and his audio engineers would find innovative ways of realizing “the impossible” despite still using only four-track equipment.
At one stage, prior to the release of Sgt. Pepper’s, it was thought that both ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ would also be included on the album. But when these two were released as a double A-side single in February 1967, that idea was abandoned, because the band’s policy at the time was to leave previously released singles off new albums.
For the fourth time in the UK, no single was lifted from the album and for the first time, this also held true in the U.S. The album was also not banded, meaning each track ran into the next, and wasn’t separated, encouraging the listener to play the album all the way through, pausing only to turn the disc over.
Not only was the music different from what The Beatles had delivered in the past, in new, exciting, and colorful, so too was the way the album was delivered. The glossy double vinyl album sleeve featured the guys in their Sgt. Pepper uniforms surrounded by images of people they either admired or were interested in, while on the back of the sleeve there were the lyrics to all the songs. Inside each side of the album sleeves were other surprises, including a card featuring various cut-outs, and in the initial pressings at least, the paper inner sleeve, which bore a psychedelic design.
In Britain, the album hit number #1, and between June 1967 and February 1968 it spent a total of 27 weeks at the top of the charts, including during an initial chart run of 148 weeks. All of this, in spite of a BBC radio ban on playing the song “A Day In The Life.”
In the U.S., the album was released in exactly same way as in Britain… well almost. The high-pitched tone and the garbled speech embedded in the UK run-out groove did not appear on the American release. However, the album still enjoyed a fifteen week stay at the top of the U.S. Top 200 album charts during its initial chart run of 88 weeks.
In 1968, the album won four Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, the first rock LP to receive this honor. In 2003, Sgt. Pepper’s was inducted into the U.S. National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” It has topped several critics’ and listeners’ polls for the best album of all time, including those published by Rolling Stone magazine. The album has sold more than 32 million copies, and remains one of the best-selling albums of all time, worldwide.
All of that is clearly a reason to salute this iconic album with today’s Drink Of The Day, a Brandy Alexander cocktail. But first, as promised, the story behind today’s DOTD…
