That same summer, The Beatles release Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.. On the cover they are dressed in bright satin costumes holding musical instruments; they’re surrounded (in collage) by Marilyn Monroe, Karl Marx, Jayne Mansfield, Marlon Brando, and a host of others, placing themselves among, and in the center of, the major cultural influences of our time.
As an album, Sgt. Pepper is applauded by everybody. Once again Beatle music surpasses everything in popular music that had preceded it, including The Beatles’ own work. It ends with a song called “A Day in the Life.” The first time I heard it was over the radio as I was driving through Haight-Ashbury. The disc jockey had been hyperventilating for the previous twenty minutes. “I have here the latest from The Beatles! Stay where you are! This is going to Blow! Your! Mind! ! !” And over the airwaves came John: “I read the news today, oh boy…”
John sings about a man who “made the grade,” who “blew his mind out in a car.” The news was sad, but “I just had to laugh …” The second verse ends with “I’d love to turn you on,” the words sung with vibrato as if they were spinning; then the guitars drop out and the surge of an orchestra comes in, but it sounds strange, somehow different (it’s the tape being played backward), like a maddened swarm of bees that suddenly accelerate as if backed by some jet engine, and this sound just grows and swells until it peaks some thirty long seconds later with a high note, and then an alarm clock rings. Paul sings:
Woke up. fell out of bed.
Dragged a comb across my head. .
Found my way upstairs and had a smoke
And somebody spoke and I went into a dream
(“Had a smoke and went into a dream.” Right!) Then John’s voice again, after the word “dream,” singing in falsetto, high and drifty. Behind John an orchestra plays, all drifting. Out There. Then John sings the last verse, ending, “I’d love to turn you on…” (FROM AN AMERICAN STORY)
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