M- RED WAX SGT PEPPER THE BEATLES + PEPPERLAND INSERT Psych LENNON McCARTNEY

$

121

   L I M I T E D   E D I T I O N   R E D   V I N Y L   +  P E P P E R L A N D   I N S E R T
OVER 40 YEARS AGO PARLOPHONE ORIGINAL OFFICIAL PRESSING
      ..|/\|...............................................|/\|..                                                      

               THE BEATLES

                 SGT PEPPER

**** Includes PEPPERLAND CUT OUTS INSERT and original printed inner sleeve...just as first released ...(note: the "Pepperland" cut outs are hard cardboard and not flimsy reissue)

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"Pepper was probably the one Beatle album I can say was my idea," Paul McCartney says.

"It was my idea to say to the guys, 'Hey, how about disguising ourselves and getting an alter ego, because we're the Beatles '. McCartney added: "I just listened to it and said to myself, 'God, I really love this album.' Still, today, it just sounds so fresh. It sounds full of ideas. These guys knew what they were doing. They're good. And they're inventive. I haven't heard anything for years that's as inventive. I don't really expect to."

After the Beatles stopped touring in 1966, they had time to explore in greater depth the possibilities of the recording studio with producer George Martin. The magnitude of the Beatles phenomenon was starting to encroach on the band - and their experience with psychedelic drugs made that phenomenon seem increasingly surreal. Apart from some relatively modest touches - the colorful uniforms, the opening theme song, the reprise near the end and Ringo's entertaining turn as "the one and only Billy Shears" in "With a Little Help from My Friends" - the alter egos make no discernible appearances on the album. But one look at the cover of "Sgt. Pepper" - festooned with the band's wildly eclectic gallery of heroes and with the wax figures of the youthful Fab Four standing next to their far more hirsute and serious-looking real-life counterparts - eloquently tells how greatly removed the group had grown from what they were. Under the guise of alter egos the Beatles had finally allowed their real selves to emerge.

Interestingly, however, the Beatles had freed themselves not merely to chronicle such weighty subjects as the joys of mind-expanding drugs, in "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," the paradoxical wisdom of Eastern religious philosophy, in "Within You Without You," or the sterile absurdity of mainstream values in the astonishing "Day in the Life." On the contrary, Sgt. Pepper is filled with sly inside jokes, broad music-hall humor and completely gratuitous novelties. It is not only the Beatles' most artistically ambitious album but their funniest.

Take, for example, the dog whistle - which humans can't hear - buried on the album's second side. And the famous "Inner Groove" - the snippet of pointless conversation that sticks in the album's run-out groove and that was not included in the original American version of "Sgt. Pepper" - has an equally zany genesis. Around the time of "Sgt. Pepper's" release, McCartney explains, "a lot of record players didn't have auto-change. You would play an album and it would go, 'Tick, tick, tick,' in the run-out groove - it would just stay there endlessly. We were whacked out so much of the time in the Sixties - just quite harmlessly, as we thought, it was quite innocent - but you would be at friends' houses, twelve at night, and nobody would be going to get up to change that record player. So we'd be getting into the little 'tick, tick, tick,': 'It's quite good, you know? There's a rhythm there.' These are minor points, perhaps, in the context of the enormous achievement of "Sgt. Pepper". But such fun-loving experimentalism - born of the optimistic determination to blow away anything that "stops my mind from wandering where it will go" - is "Sgt. Pepper's" best legacy for our time.

• Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (2:02)

  Recorded: February 1, 1967 at Abbey Road, London, England with overdubbing February 2, March 3, and March 6, 1967
  John Lennon - lead guitar, background vocal
  Paul McCartney - lead vocal, bass guitar
  George Harrison - lead guitar, background vocal
  Ringo Starr - drums
  George Martin - organ
  Session musicians - four horns
• With a Little Help From My Friends (2:44) Recorded: March 29, 1967 at Abbey Road, London, England with overdubs added March 30, 1967
  John Lennon - background vocal
  Paul McCartney - bass guitar, piano, background vocal
  George Harrison - tambourine
  Ringo Starr - lead vocal, drums
• Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds (3:29) Recorded: March 1, 1967 at Abbey Road, London, England with overdubs added March 2, 1967
  John Lennon - lead vocal, lead guitar
  Paul McCartney - bass guitar, Hammond organ, harmony vocal
  George Harrison - sitar, harmony vocal
  Ringo Starr - drums
• Getting Better (2:48) Recorded: March 9, 1967 at Abbey Road, London, England with overdubbing March 10, March 21 and March 23, 1967
  John Lennon - lead guitar, background vocal
  Paul McCartney - lead vocal, bass guitar, background vocal
  George Harrison - lead guitar, tamboura, background vocal
  Ringo Starr - drums, bongos
  George Martin - piano strings
• Fixing a Hole (2:36) Recorded: February 9, 1967 at Regent Sound Studio, London, England with overdubbing February 21, 1967 at Abbey Road, London, England
  John Lennon - maracas, background vocal
  Paul McCartney - lead vocal, bass guitar, lead guitar, harpsichord
  George Harrison - lead guitar, double-tracked lead guitar solo, background vocal
  Ringo Starr

• She's Leaving Home (3:35) Recorded: March 17, 1967 at Abbey Road, London, England with vocals overdubbed March 20, 1967
  John Lennon - lead vocal, background vocal
  Paul McCartney - lead vocal, background vocal
  Session musicians - strings, harp

• Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite! (2:37) Recorded: February 17, 1967 at Abbey Road, London, England with overdubbing February 20, March 28-29 and March 31, 1967
  John Lennon - lead vocal, Hammond organ (main melody)
  Paul McCartney - bass guitar, lead guitar
  George Harrison - harmonica
  Ringo Starr - drums, harmonica
  George Martin - Wurlitzer organ (countermelody), piano
  Mal Evans - harmonica
  Neil Aspinall - harmonica
• Within You Without You (5:06) Recorded: March 15, 1967 at Abbey Road, London, England with overdubbing March 22, 1967 and April 3, 1967
  George Harrison - lead vocal, tamboura
  Neil Aspinall - tamboura
  Indian session musicians - dilruba, tamboura, tabla, swordmandel
  Session musicians - eight violins, three cellos
• When I'm Sixty-Four (2:37) Recorded: December 6, 1966 at Abbey Road, London, England with overdubs added December 8 and December 20-21, 1966
  John Lennon - lead guitar, background vocal
  Paul McCartney - lead vocal, bass guitar, piano, background vocal
  George Harrison - background vocal
  Ringo Starr - drums
  Session musicians - bass clarinet, two clarinets
• Lovely Rita (2:42) Recorded: February 23, 1967 at Abbey Road, London, England with overdubs added February 24, March 7 and March 21, 1967
  John Lennon - acoustic guitar, comb and paper, background vocal
  Paul McCartney - lead vocal, bass guitar, piano, comb and paper, background vocal
  George Harrison - acoustic guitar, comb and paper, background vocal
  Ringo Starr - drums
  George Martin - honky-tonk piano
• Good Morning, Good Morning (2:42) Recorded: February 8, 1967 at Abbey Road, London, England with overdubs added February 16, March 13 and March 28-29, 1967
  John Lennon - lead vocal, background vocal
  Paul McCartney - bass guitar, lead guitar and solo, background vocal
  George Harrison - lead guitar
  Ringo Starr - drums
  Sounds Incorporated - three saxophones, two trombones, French horn
• Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise) (1:19) Recorded: April 1, 1967 at Abbey Road, London, England
  John Lennon - lead vocal, lead guitar, maracas
  Paul McCartney - lead vocal, bass guitar
  George Harrison - lead vocal, lead guitar
  Ringo Starr - drums
• A Day in the Life (5:33) Recorded: January 19, 1967 (basic track) and February 10, 1967 (orchestral track) at Abbey Road, London, England with the final-chord ending overdubbed February 22, 1967
  John Lennon - lead vocal (first, second and last verses), acoustic guitar, lead guitar
  Paul McCartney - lead vocal (middle section), piano, conducts the forty-one-piece orchestra
  Ringo Starr - drums
  Lennon, McCartney, Starr, Mal Evans - three pianos (final chord)
  George Martin - harmonium
  Mal Evans - alarm clock
  Session musicians - forty-one-piece orchestra

The vinyl is

CONDITION: The Cover: rated: MINT  The laminated gatefold cover: All solid TOP COPY final collection worthy; vibrant original colors, a 4 sharp corners, flat & square... a GREAT example of a well cared for 40+ years ago RED VINYL Parlophone quality pressing  . There are no split seams, no bends, no writing ...

The Vinyl: glossy on both sides, visually rated M- TOP COPY pressed on dazzling transparent RED VINYL! immaculate collection keeper; expect playgrade to be in very CLEAN mint clear audio zones without distraction. Not with groove wear or bothersome surface noise ... This 40 year old TOP COPY is rarer than you might imagine !