On This Day: The Beatles release Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Monday, June 2, 2014

JUNE 1, 1967: The Beatles released their most critically acclaimed album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on this day in 1967.
The LP, in which the Liverpudlian band showcased a revolutionary new sound and the first ever concept album, instantly topped the charts in both Britain and America.

It also received huge critical praise, with Kenneth Tynan in The Times describing the release as ‘a decisive moment in the history of Western civilization’. The New Statesman claimed the album, which included the eponymous title track and Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, elevated pop into fine art. And in the U.S., Time magazine declared the rock LP, which was the first ever to win four Grammy Awards, a ‘historic departure in the progress of music’. To Paul McCartney, who was inspired to produce an album that was thematically linked to their childhoods, it told the world: ‘We were not boys, we were men.’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released ten months after The Beatles permanently retired from touring after being fed up by the hysteria that greeted them.