Mary Esther Wells (May 13, 1943 – July 26, 1992) was an American singer who helped to define the emerging sound of Motown in the early 1960s.
Along with the Supremes, the Miracles, the Temptations, and the Four Tops,
Wells was said to have been part of the charge in black music onto
radio stations and record shelves of mainstream America, "bridging the
color lines in music at the time."[1]
Mary Esther Wells was born near Detroit's Wayne State University on May 13, 1943, to a mother who worked as a domestic, and an absentee father. One of three children, she contracted spinal meningitis
at the age of two and struggled with partial blindness, deafness in one
ear and temporary paralysis.
During her early years, Wells lived in a
poor residential Detroit district. By age 12, she was helping her mother
with house cleaning work.[2] She described the ordeal years later:
"Daywork they called it, and it was damn cold on hallway linoleum. Misery is Detroit linoleum in January—with a half-froze bucket of Spic-and-Span."[2]
—Mary Wells
Wells used singing as her comfort from her pain and by age 10 had
graduated from church choirs to performing at local nightclubs in the
Detroit area. Wells graduated from Detroit's Northwestern High School at the age of 17 and set her sights on becoming a scientist, but after hearing about the success of Detroit musicians such as Jackie Wilson and the Miracles, she decided to try her hand at music as a singer-songwriter.
In 1960, 17-year-old Wells approached Tamla Records founder Berry Gordy
at Detroit's Twenty Grand club with a song she had intended for Jackie
Wilson to record, since Wells knew of Gordy's collaboration with Wilson.
However, a tired Gordy insisted Wells sing the song in front of him.
Impressed, Gordy had Wells enter Detroit's United Sound Studios to
record the single, titled "Bye Bye Baby".
After a reported 22 takes, Gordy signed Wells to the Motown subsidiary
of his expanding record label and released the song as a single in
September 1960; it peaked at No 8 on the R&B chart in 1961, and
later crossed over to the pop singles chart, where it peaked at number 45.
Wells' early Motown recordings reflected a rougher R&B sound than
the smoother style of her biggest hits. Wells became the first Motown
female artist to have a Top 40 pop single after the Mickey Stevenson-penned doo-wop song, "I Don't Want to Take a Chance",
hit No. 33 in June,1961.
In the fall of that year, Motown issued her
first album and released a third single, the bluesy ballad "Strange
Love". When that record bombed, Gordy set Wells up with the Miracles' lead singer Smokey Robinson.
Though she was hailed as "the first lady of Motown", Wells was technically Motown's third female signed act: Claudette Rogers, of Motown's first star group the Miracles,
has been referred to by Berry Gordy as "the first lady of Motown
Records" due to her being signed as a member of the group, and in late
1959 Detroit blues-gospel singer Mable John
had signed to the then-fledging label a year prior to Wells' arrival.
Nevertheless, Wells' early hits as one of the label's few female solo
acts did make her the label's first female star and its first fully
successful solo artist.
Success
Wells' teaming with Robinson led to a succession of hit singles over
the following two years. Their first collaboration, 1962's "The One Who Really Loves You", was Wells' first smash hit, peaking at No. 2 on the R&B chart and No. 8 on the Hot 100.
The song featured a calypso-styled soul production that defined Wells' early hits. Motown released the similar-sounding "You Beat Me to the Punch"
a few months later. The song became her first R&B No. 1 single and
peaked at No. 9 on the pop chart.
The success of "You Beat Me to the
Punch" helped to make Wells the first Motown star to be nominated for a Grammy Award when the song received a nod in the Best Rhythm & Blues Recording category.
In late 1962, "Two Lovers"[3]
became Wells' third consecutive single to hit the Top 10 of Billboard's
Hot 100, peaking at No. 7 and becoming her second No. 1 hit on the
R&B charts. This helped to make Wells the first female solo artist
to have three consecutive Top 10 singles on the pop chart. The track
sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.[4]
Wells' second album, also titled The One Who Really Loves You,
was released in 1962 and peaked at No. 8 on the pop albums chart,
making the teenage singer a breakthrough star and giving her clout at
Motown. Wells' success at the label was recognized when she became a
headliner during the first string of Motortown Revue
concerts, starting in the fall of 1962. The singer showcased a rawer
stage presence that contrasted with her softer R&B recordings.
Also in 1963, Wells recorded a session of successful B-sides that arguably became as well known as her hits, including "Operator",
"What Love Has Joined Together", "Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right" and
"Old Love (Let's Try It Again)". Wells and Robinson also recorded a duet
titled "I Want You 'Round", which would be re-recorded by Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston.
In 1964, Wells recorded "My Guy".
The Smokey Robinson song became her trademark single, reaching No. 1 on
the Cashbox R&B chart for seven weeks and becoming the No. 1
R&B single of the year. The song successfully crossed over to the
Billboard Hot 100, where it eventually replaced Louis Armstrong's "Hello, Dolly!" at No. 1, remaining there for two weeks. The song became Wells' second million-selling single.[4]
To build on the song's success, Motown released a duet album recorded with fellow Motown singing star Marvin Gaye, Together. The album peaked at No. 1 on the R&B album chart and No. 42 on the pop album chart, and yielded the double-sided hits "Once Upon a Time" and "What's the Matter With You Baby".
"My Guy" was one of the first Motown songs to break on the other side of the Atlantic, eventually peaking at No. 5 on the UK chart and making Wells an international star. Around this time, the Beatles
stated that Wells was their favorite American singer, and soon she was
given an invitation to open for the group during their tour of the United Kingdom,
thus making her the first Motown star to perform in the UK.
Wells was
only one of three female singers to open for the Beatles, the others
being Brenda Holloway and Jackie DeShannon. Wells made friends with all four Beatles and later released a tribute album, Love Songs to the Beatles, in mid-decade.
Former Motown sales chief Barney Ales described Wells' landmark success in 1964:
"In 1964, Mary Wells was our big, big artist, I don't think there's
any audience with an age of 30 through 50 that doesn't know the words to
My Guy."[1]
—(1992)
Leaving Motown
Ironically during her most successful year, Wells was having problems
with Motown over her original recording contract, which she had signed
at the age of 17. She was also reportedly angry that the money made from
"My Guy" was being used to promote the Supremes, who had found success with "Where Did Our Love Go".
Though Gordy reportedly tried to renegotiate with Wells, the singer still asked to be freed from her contract with Motown.
A pending lawsuit kept Wells away from the studio for several months,
as she and Gordy went back and forth over the contract details, Wells
fighting to gain larger royalties from earnings she had made during her
tenure with Motown.
Finally, she invoked a clause that allowed her to
leave the label, telling the court that her original contract was
invalid since she had signed while still a minor. Wells won her lawsuit
and was awarded a settlement, leaving Motown officially in early 1965,
whereupon she accepted a lucrative ($200,000) contract with 20th Century Fox Records.
Part of the terms of the agreement of her release was that she could
not receive any royalties from her past works with the label, including
use of her likeness to promote herself.
Career struggles
A weary Wells worked on material for her new record label while
dealing with other issues, including being bedridden for weeks suffering
from tuberculosis.
Wells' eponymous first 20th Century Fox release included the first
single "Ain't It The Truth", its B-side "Stop Taking Me for Granted",
the lone top 40 hit, "Use Your Head"
and "Never, Never Leave Me".
However, the album flopped, as did the
Beatles tribute album she released not too long afterwards. Rumors have
hinted Motown may have threatened to sue radio stations for playing
Wells' post-Motown music during this time.[5]
After a stressful period in which Wells and the label battled over
various issues after her records failed to chart successfully, the
singer asked to be let go in 1965 and left with a small settlement.
In 1966, Wells signed with Atlantic Records' subsidiary Atco. Working with producer Carl Davis, she scored her final Top 10 R&B hit with "Dear Lover",
which also became a modestly successful pop hit, peaking at No. 51.
However, much like her tenure with 20th Century Fox, the singer
struggled to come up with a follow-up hit, and in 1968 she left the
label for Jubilee Records, where she scored her final pop hit, "The Doctor", a song she co-wrote with then-husband Cecil Womack,
of the famed Womack family.
(Meanwhile, she had attempted a film
career, but only managed a bit part in 1967's "Catalina Caper".)
In
1970, Wells left Jubilee for a short-lived deal with Warner Music
subsidiary Reprise Records and released two Bobby Womack-produced
singles.
In 1972, Wells scored a UK hit with a re-issue of "My Guy",
which was released on the Tamla-Motown label and climbed to No. 14.[6]
Though a re-issue, Wells promoted the single heavily and appeared on the British TV show Top of the Pops for the first time. Despite this mini-revival, she decided to retire from music in 1974 to raise her family.
Comeback
In 1977, Wells divorced Cecil Womack and returned to performing. She was spotted by CBS Urban president Larkin Arnold in 1978 and offered a contract with the CBS subsidiary Epic Records, which released In and Out of Love in October 1981.
The album, which had been recorded in 1979, yielded Wells' biggest hit in years, the funky disco single, "Gigolo".
The song became a smash at dance clubs across the country. A
six-minute mix hit No. 13 on Billboard's Hot Dance/Club Singles chart
and No. 2 on the Hot Disco Songs chart. A four-minute radio version
released to R&B stations in January 1982 achieved a modest showing
at No. 69. It turned out to be Wells' final chart single.
After the parent album failed to chart or produce successful follow-ups, the Motown-styled These Arms
was released, but it flopped and was quickly withdrawn, and Wells' Epic
contract fizzled. The album's failure may have been due to light
promotion.
She still had one more album in her CBS contract, and in 1982
released an album of cover songs, Easy Touch, which aimed for the adult contemporary radio format.
Leaving CBS in 1983, she continued recording for smaller labels, gaining new success as a touring performer.
On the 21 April 1984 edition of American Top 40, Casey Kasem reported that Wells was attempting to establish a hot dog chain.
In 1989 Wells was celebrated with a Pioneer Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation during its inaugural year.
Final years
In 1990, Wells recorded an album for Ian Levine's Motorcity Records, but her voice began to fail, causing the singer to visit a local hospital. Doctors diagnosed Wells with laryngeal cancer.
Treatments for the disease ravaged her voice, forcing her to quit her
music career.
That same year, a benefit concert was held by fellow fan and Detroit R&B singer Anita Baker. Wells was also given a tribute by friends such as Stevie Wonder and Little Richard on The Joan Rivers Show.
In 1991, Wells brought a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Motown
for royalties she felt she had not received upon leaving Motown Records
in 1964 and for loss of royalties for not promoting her songs as the
company should have.
Motown eventually settled the lawsuit by giving her
a six-figure sum. That same year, she testified before the United States Congress to encourage government funding for cancer research:
"I'm here today to urge you to keep the faith. I can't cheer you on
with all my voice, but I can encourage, and I pray to motivate you with
all my heart and soul and whispers."[5]
—Mary Wells
Death
In the summer of 1992, Wells' cancer returned and she was rushed to the Kenneth Norris Jr. Cancer Hospital in Los Angeles with pneumonia.
With the effects of her unsuccessful treatments and a weakened immune
system, Wells died on July 26, 1992, at the age of 49.
Wells married twice: first, in 1960, to Detroit singer Herman
Griffin. The marriage of the teenage couple was troubled from the start
due to their age and Griffin's unhealthy control of Wells. They divorced
in 1963.
Despite rumors, she never dated fellow Motown singer Marvin Gaye, who would go on to have successful duet partnerships with Kim Weston, Tammi Terrell and Diana Ross after Wells had left Motown.
The marriage lasted until 1977 and produced three children. Wells began
an affair with another Womack brother, Curtis, during her marriage to
Cecil.
Her relationship with Curtis Womack was reportedly abusive. Wells
was a notorious chain smoker and went through bouts of depression
during her marriages.
Prior to divorcing Cecil and while dating Curtis,
she tried committing suicide
after word had leaked of her relationship with Curtis.
After the
botched suicide attempt, Wells sought other methods of what she called
"meditating", including using cocaine.
Over time, she developed a heroin habit.[8]
Her drug habit ceased after she became pregnant with Curtis' child.
After splitting from Curtis in 1990, Wells focused on raising her
youngest daughter until her cancer appeared.
Mary had four children:
sons Cecil, Jr. and Harry, and daughters Stacy and Sugar.
Awards and accolades
Though Wells has been eligible for induction to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame,
being nominated twice in 1986 and 1987, she has yet to achieve it.
She
earned one Grammy Award nomination during her career, and in 1999 the
Grammy committee inducted "My Guy" into the Grammy Hall of Fame,
assuring the song's importance.
Wells was given one of the first
Pioneer Awards by the Rhythm and Blues Foundation in 1989.
A year later,
the foundation raised more than $50,000 to help with her treatment
after her illness had wiped out all of her finances.
Source: Wikipedia.org
Somebody Come and Play in Traffic with Me! Earn as You Learn, Grow as You Go!
Somebody Come and Play in "Traffic" with me. If you would like to "Join" A Growing Biz Op! Here is Your Chance to get in an Earn While You Learn to Do "The Thing" with us all here at Traffic Authority.
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. Released on 1 June 1967, it was an immediate commercial and critical success, spending 27 weeks at the top of the albums chart in the United Kingdom and 15 weeks at number one in the United States.
Time magazine declared it "a historic departure in the progress of music" and the New Statesman praised its elevation of pop to the level of fine art.[1] It won four Grammy Awards in 1968, including Album of the Year, the first rock LP to receive this honor.
In August 1966, the Beatles permanently retired from touring and began a three-month holiday from recording. During a return flight to London in November, Paul McCartney had an idea for a song involving an Edwardian era military band that would eventually form the impetus of the Sgt. Pepper concept.
Sessions for the Beatles' eighth studio album began on 24 November in Abbey Road Studio Two with two compositions inspired from their youth, "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane", but after pressure from EMI, the songs were released as a double A-side single; they were not included on the album.
In February 1967, after recording "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", McCartney suggested that the Beatles should release an entire album that would represent a performance by the fictional Sgt. Pepper band.
This alter ego group would give them the freedom to experiment musically. During the recording sessions, the band endeavored to improve upon the production quality of their prior releases. Knowing they would not have to perform the tracks live, they adopted an experimental approach to composition, writing songs such as "With a Little Help from My Friends", "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "A Day in the Life".
Producer George Martin's innovative recording of the album included the liberal application of sound shaping signal processing and the use of a 40-piece orchestra performing aleatoric-crescendos. Recording was completed on 21 April 1967. The cover, depicting the band posing in front of a tableau of celebrities and historical figures, was designed by the British pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth based on a sketch by McCartney.
Sgt. Pepper is regarded by musicologists as an early concept album that advanced the use of extended form in popular music while continuing the artistic maturation seen on the Beatles' preceding releases. It has been described as one of the first art rock LPs, aiding the development of progressive rock, and credited with marking the beginning of the Album Era.
That same year Rolling Stone magazine ranked it number one in its list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". As of 2014 it has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums in history. Professor Kevin J Dettmar, writing in the Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature, described it as "the most important and influential rock and roll album ever recorded".[3]
We were fed up with being the Beatles. We really hated that fucking four little mop-top approach. We were not boys, we were men ... and thought of ourselves as artists rather than just performers.[4]
By 1966 the Beatles had grown weary of live performance.[5]
In John Lennon's opinion, they could "send out four waxworks ... and that would satisfy the crowds.
Beatles concerts are nothing to do with music anymore. They're just bloody tribal rites."[6] In June, two days after finishing the album Revolver, the group set off for a tour that started in Germany.[7] While in Hamburg they received an anonymous telegram stating: "Do not go to Tokyo.
Your life is in danger".[8] The threat was taken seriously in light of the controversy surrounding the tour among Japan's religious and conservative groups, with particular opposition to the Beatles' planned performances at the sacred Nippon Budokan arena.[8]
As an added precaution, 35,000 police were mobilized and tasked with protecting the group, who were transported from hotels to concert venues in armored vehicles.[9] The polite and restrained Japanese audiences shocked the band, because the absence of screaming fans allowed them to hear how poor their live performances had become.
By the time that they arrived in the Philippines, where they were threatened and manhandled by its citizens for not visiting the First Lady Imelda Marcos, the group had grown unhappy with their manager, Brian Epstein, for insisting on what they regarded as an exhausting and demoralizing itinerary.[10]
After their return to London George Harrison replied to a question about their long-term plans: "We'll take a couple of weeks to recuperate before we go and get beaten up by the Americans."[11]
His comments would prove prophetic, as soon afterwards Lennon's remarks about the Beatles being "more popular than Jesus" embroiled the band in controversy and protest in America's Bible Belt.[11] A public apology eased tensions, but a miserable US tour in August that was marked by half-filled stadia and subpar performances proved to be their last.[12] The author Nicholas Schaffner writes:
To the Beatles, playing such concerts had become a charade so remote from the new directions they were pursuing that not a single tune was attempted from the just-released Revolver LP, whose arrangements were for the most part impossible to reproduce with the limitations imposed by their two-guitars-bass-and-drums stage lineup.[13]
Upon the Beatles' return to England, rumors began to circulate that they had decided to break up.[14] Harrison informed Epstein that he was leaving the band, but was persuaded to stay on the assurance that there would be no more tours.[11]
The group then took a seven-week holiday, during which they focused on individual interests. Harrison traveled to India for six weeks to develop his sitar playing under the instruction ofRavi Shankar.[15]
In November 1966, during a return flight to London from Kenya, where he had been on holiday with Beatles' tour managerMal Evans, McCartney had an idea for a song that eventually formed the impetus of the Sgt. Pepper concept.[15]
In February 1967 McCartney suggested that the Beatles should record an entire album that would represent a performance by the fictional band.[20] This alter ego group would give them the freedom to experiment musically. He explained: "I thought, let's not be ourselves. Let's develop alter egos."[21] Martin remembered:
"Sergeant Pepper" itself didn't appear until halfway through making the album. It was Paul's song, just an ordinary rock number ... but when we had finished it, Paul said, "Why don't we make the album as though the Pepper band really existed, as though Sergeant Pepper was making the record? We'll dub in effects and things." I loved the idea, and from that moment on it was as though Pepper had a life of its own.[22]
In 1966, the American musician and bandleader Brian Wilson's growing interest in the aesthetics of recording and his admiration for both record producer Phil Spector's Wall of Sound and the Beatles' album Rubber Soul resulted in the Beach Boys' Pet SoundsLP, which demonstrated his production expertise and his mastery of composition and arrangement.[23][nb 1]
The author Thomas MacFarlane credits the release with influencing many musicians of the time, with McCartney in particular singing its praises and drawing inspiration to "expand the focus of the Beatles' work with sounds and textures not usually associated with popular music."[27]
He thought that his constant playing of the album made it difficult for Lennon to "escape the influence", adding: "It's very cleverly done ... so we were inspired by it and nicked a few ideas."[28] Martin stated: "Without Pet Sounds, Sgt. Pepper never would have happened ... Pepper was an attempt to equal Pet Sounds."[29][nb 2]
According to the musicologist Walter Everett, Sgt. Pepper marks the beginning of McCartney's ascendancy as the Beatles' dominant creative force. He wrote more than half of the album's material while asserting increasing control over the recording of his compositions.
He would from this point on provide the artistic direction for the group's releases.[35][nb 3] Sessions began on 24 November 1966 in Abbey Road Studio Two, the first time that the Beatles had come together since September.[38]
Afforded the luxury of a nearly limitless recording budget, they booked open-ended sessions that allowed them to work as late as they wanted.[39][nb 4] They began with three songs that were thematically linked to their childhoods: "Strawberry Fields Forever", "When I'm Sixty-Four" and "Penny Lane".[40] The first session saw the introduction of a new keyboard instrument called the Mellotron[41] whose keys triggered tape-recordings of a variety of instruments, enabling its user to play keyboard parts using those voices.[42]
McCartney performed the introduction to "Strawberry Fields Forever" using the flute setting.[41] The track's complicated production involved the innovative splicing of two takes that were recorded in different tempos and pitches.[43]
The EMIaudio engineer, Geoff Emerick, remembers that during the recording of Revolver, "we had gotten used to being asked to do the impossible, and we knew that the word 'no' didn't exist in the Beatles' vocabulary."[44] In Martin's opinion, Sgt. Pepper "grew naturally out of Revolver", marking "an era of almost continuous technological experimentation".[45][nb 5]
Music papers started to slag us off ... because [Sgt. Pepper] took five months to record, and I remember the great glee seeing in one of the papers how the Beatles have dried up ... and I was sitting rubbing my hands, saying "You just wait."[50]
"Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" were subsequently released as a double A-side in February 1967 after EMI and Epstein pressured Martin for a single.[51]
When it failed to reach number one in the UK, British press agencies speculated that the group's run of success might have ended, with headlines such as "Beatles Fail to Reach the Top", "First Time in Four Years" and "Has the Bubble Burst?"[52]
After its release, at Epstein's insistence the single tracks were not included on the LP.[53][nb 6] Martin later described the decision to drop these two songs as "the biggest mistake of my professional life".[55] Nonetheless, in his judgment, "Strawberry Fields Forever", which he and the band spent an unprecedented 55 hours of studio time recording, "set the agenda for the whole album."[56][nb 7]
He explained: "It was going to be a record ... [with songs that] couldn't be performed live: they were designed to be studio productions and that was the difference."[58][nb 8] McCartney's goal was to make the best Beatles album yet, declaring: "Now our performance is that record."[60]
Emerick recalls: "Because we knew that the Beatles wouldn't ever have to play the songs live, there were no creative boundaries."[61] On 6 December 1966 the group began work on "When I'm Sixty-Four", the first track that would be included on the album.[62]
This Studer J37 four-track machine was used to record Sgt. Pepper.[63]
Sgt. Pepper was recorded using four-track equipment. Although eight-track tape recorders were available in the US, the first units were not operational in commercial studios in London until late 1967.[64][nb 9]
As with previous Beatles albums, the Sgt. Pepper recordings made extensive use of the technique known as reduction mixing, in which one to four tracks from one recorder are mixed and dubbed down onto a master four-track machine, enabling the Abbey Road engineers to give the group a virtual multi-track studio.[66]
EMI's Studer J37 four-track machines were well suited to reduction mixing, as the high quality of the recordings that they produced minimized the increased noise associated with the process.[67]
Preferring to overdub his bass part last, McCartney tended to play other instruments when recording a song's backing track. This approach afforded him the extra time required to write and record melodic bass-lines that complemented the song's final arrangement.[68]
When recording the orchestra for "A Day in the Life", Martin synchronized a four-track recorder playing the Beatles' backing track to another one taping the orchestral overdub. The engineer Ken Townsend devised a method for accomplishing this by using a 50 Hz control signal between the two machines.[69]
Relatively new modular effects units were used, such as running voices and instruments through a Leslie speaker.[61] Several innovative production techniques feature prominently on the recordings, including direct injection, pitch control and ambiophonics.[71]
Another is automatic double tracking(ADT), a system that uses tape recorders to create a simultaneous doubling of a sound. Although it had long been recognized that using multi-track tape to record doubled lead vocals produced an enhanced sound, before ADT it had been necessary to record such vocal tracks twice, a task that was both tedious and exacting.
ADT was invented by Townsend during the Revolver sessions in 1966 especially for the Beatles, who disliked tracking sessions and regularly expressed a desire for a technical solution to the problem. The process soon became a common recording practice in popular music.[72] Martin playfully explained to Lennon that his voice had been "treated with a double vibrocated sploshing flange ... It doubles your voice, John."[73]
Lennon realized that Martin was joking, but from that point on he referred to the effect as flanging, a label that was universally adopted by the music industry.[73] Another important effect was varispeeding.[61]
Martin cites "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" as having the most variations of tape speed on Sgt. Pepper. During the recording of Lennon's vocals, the tape speed was reduced from 50 cycles per second to 45, which produced a higher and thinner-sounding track when played back at the normal speed.[74]
Listening to each stage of their recording, once they've done the first couple of tracks, it's often hard to see what they're still looking for, it sounds so complete. Often the final complicated, well-layered version seems to have drowned the initial simple melody. But they know it's not right, even if they can't put it into words. Their dedication is impressive, gnawing away at the same song for stretches of ten hours each.[75]
In an effort to get the right sound, the Beatles attempted numerous re-takes of "Getting Better".
When the decision was made to re-record the basic track, Starr was summoned to the studio, but called off soon afterwards as the focus switched from rhythm to vocal tracking.[76]
Starr, who after the completion of his basic drum parts saw his participation limited to minor percussion overdubs, later lamented: "The biggest memory I have of Sgt. Pepper ... is I learned to play chess".[77]
For the album's title track, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", the recording of Starr's drum kit was enhanced by the use of damping and close-miking. The musicologist Ian MacDonald credits the new recording technique with creating a "three-dimensional" sound that – along with other Beatles innovations – engineers in the US would soon adopt as standard practice.[78]
Harrison used a tamboura on several tracks, including "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "Getting Better".[80]
The UK pressing of Sgt. Pepper was the first pop album to be mastered without the momentary gaps that are typically placed between tracks as a point of demarcation.[81] It made use of two cross-fades that blended songs together, giving the impression of a continuous live performance.[82][nb 10]
Although both stereo and monaural mixes of the album were prepared, the Beatles were minimally involved in what they regarded as the less important stereo mix sessions, leaving the task to Martin and Emerick.[84] Emerick recalls: "We spent three weeks on the mono mixes and maybe three days on the stereo."[85]
He estimates that they spent 700 hours on the LP, more than 30 times that of the first Beatles album, Please Please Me, which cost £400 to produce.[86] The final cost of Sgt. Pepper was approximately £25,000.[87] The album was completed on 21 April 1967 with the recording of random noises, including a dog whistle that was included on the run-out groove.[88]
When [Martin] was doing his TV programme on Pepper ... he asked me, "Do you know what caused Pepper?" I said, "In one word, George, drugs. Pot." And George said, "No, no. But you weren't on it all the time." "Yes, we were." Sgt. Pepper was a drug album.[92]
Concerns that some of the lyrics in Sgt. Pepper refer to recreational drug use led to the BBC banning several songs from British radio, such as "A Day in the Life" because of the phrase "I'd love to turn you on", with the BBC claiming that it could "encourage a permissive attitude towards drug-taking."[93]
Although Lennon and McCartney denied any drug-related interpretation of the song at the time, McCartney later suggested that the line was deliberately written to ambiguously refer to either illicit drugs or sexual activity.[94]
The meaning of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" became the subject of speculation, as many believed that the song's title was code for the hallucinogenic drug LSD.[95] The BBC banned the track on those grounds.[37] They also banned "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" because of the lyric, which mentions "Henry the Horse", a phrase that contains two common slang terms for heroin.[96]
Fans speculated that Henry the Horse was a drug dealer and "Fixing a Hole" was a reference to heroin use.[1] Others noted lyrics such as "I get high" from "With a Little Help from My Friends", "take some tea" – slang for cannabis use – from "Lovely Rita" and "digging the weeds" from "When I'm Sixty-Four".[97]
The author Sheila Whiteley attributes Sgt. Pepper 's underlying philosophy not only to the drug culture, but also to metaphysics and the non-violent approach of the flower power movement.[98] The musicologist Oliver Julien views the album as an embodiment of "the social, the musical, and more generally, the cultural changes of the 1960s".[99]
The American psychologist and counterculture figure Timothy Leary contends that the LP "gave a voice to the feeling that the old ways were over ... it came along at the right time" and stressed the need for cultural change based on a peaceful agenda.[100]
Its primary value – according to the professor Alan F. Moore – is its ability to "capture, more vividly than almost anything contemporaneous, its own time and place".[101] Whiteley agrees, crediting the album with "provid[ing] a historical snapshot of England during the run-up to the Summer of Love".[100]
Several scholars have applied a hermeneutic strategy to their analysis of Sgt. Pepper 's lyrics, identifying loss of innocence and the dangers of overindulgence in fantasies or illusions as the most prominent themes.[102]
Sgt. Pepper opens with the title track, starting with 10 seconds of the combined sounds of a pit orchestra warming up and an audience waiting for a concert, introducing the illusion of the album as a live performance.[104][nb 11]
The musicologist Kenneth Womack describes the lyric as "a revolutionary moment in the creative life of the Beatles" that bridges the gap – sometimes referred to as the Fourth wall – between the audience and the artist.[107]
He argues that, paradoxically, the lyrics "exemplify the mindless rhetoric of rock concert banter" while "mock[ing] the very notion of a pop album's capacity for engendering authentic interconnection between artist and audience".[107]
In his view, the mixed message ironically serves to distance the group from their fans while simultaneously "gesturing toward" them as alter egos, an authorial quality that he considers to be "the song's most salient feature."[107]
He credits the recording's use of a brass ensemble with distorted electric guitars as an early example of rock fusion.[107] MacDonald agrees, describing the track as an overture rather than a song, and a "shrewd fusion of Edwardian variety orchestra" and contemporary hard rock.[106][nb 12]
The musicologist Michael Hannan describes the track's unorthodox stereo mix as "typical of the album", with the lead vocal in the right speaker during the verses, but in the left during the chorus and middle eight.[109]
"Sgt. Pepper" was the first Beatles track that benefited from the production technique known as direct injection, which according to Womack "afforded McCartney's bass with richer textures and tonal clarity".[81][nb 13]
The song's arrangement utilizes a rock and roll orientated Lydian modechord progression during the introduction and verses that is built on parallelsevenths, which Everett describes as "the song's strength".[110]
McCartney acts as the master of ceremonies near the end of the "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" track, introducing Starr as an alter ego named Billy Shears.[81]
The song then segues into "With a Little Help from My Friends" amidst a moment of crowd cheer that Martin had recorded during a Beatles concert at the Hollywood Bowl.[112]
Womack describes Starr's baritone lead vocals as "charmingly sincere" and he credits them with imparting an element of "earnestness in sharp contrast with the ironic distance of the title track."[112]
Lennon and McCartney's call and responsebacking vocals ask Starr questions about the meaning of friendship and true love.[113][nb 15] In MacDonald's opinion, the lyric is "at once communal and personal ... touchingly rendered by Starr [and] meant as a gesture of inclusivity; everyone could join in."[116]
Womack agrees, identifying "necessity of community" as the song's "central ethical tenet", a theme that he ascribes to the album as a whole.[113] Everett notes the track's use of a major key double-plagal cadence that would become commonplace in pop music following the release of Sgt. Pepper.
He characterizes the arrangement as clever, particularly its reversal of the question and answer relationship in the final verse, in which the backing singers ask leading questions and Starr provides unequivocal answers.[117] The song ends on a vocal high note that McCartney, Harrison and Lennon encouraged Starr to achieve despite his lack of confidence as a singer.[118]
The recording utilises the sound of atamboura blended with a Lowrey organ, creating what Hannan regards as one of the album's "most unusual sound combination[s]".[119]
Despite widespread suspicion that the title of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" contained a hidden reference to LSD, Lennon insisted that it was derived from a pasteldrawing by his four-year-old son Julian. A hallucinatory chapter from Lewis Carroll 's 1871 novel, Through the Looking-Glass, inspired the song's atmosphere.[120]
McCartney confirms the existence of the drawing and Carroll's influence on the track, noting that although the title's apparent drug reference was unintentional, the lyrics were purposefully written for a psychedelic song.[121]
The first verse begins with what Womack characterizes as "an invitation in the form of an imperative" through the line: "Picture yourself in a boat on a river", and continues with imaginative imagery, including "tangerine trees", "rocking horse people" and "newspaper taxis".[122]
Martin describes the introduction's melody, which he regards as "crucial to the staying power of the song", as "a falling scale in the left hand, a rocking scale in the right."[123] In his opinion, the verse might have sounded monotonous if not for the juxtaposition "of that almost-single-note vocal against the inspired introductory notes", which he describes as "mesmeric, compelling".[124]
In Womack's view, with the merging of Lennon's lyrics and McCartney's Lowrey organ introduction "the Beatles achieve their most vivid instance of musical timbre".[125] The musicologist Tim Riley identifies the track as a moment "in the album, [where] the material world is completely clouded in the mythical by both text and musical atmosphere."[126]
According to MacDonald, "the lyric explicitly recreates the psychedelic experience".[95] Lennon explained: "It was Alice in the boat. She is buying an egg and it turns into Humpty Dumpty. The woman serving in the shop turns into a sheep and the next minute they are ... in a rowing boat and I was visualizing that.
There was also the image of the female who would someday come to save me – a 'girl with kaleidoscope eyes' who would come out of the sky. It turned out to be Yoko ... so maybe it should be 'Yoko in the Sky with Diamonds'."[127]
MacDonald considers "Getting Better" to contain "the most ebullient performance" on Sgt. Pepper.[128] Womack credits the track's "driving rock sound" with distinguishing it from the album's overtly psychedelic material; its lyrics inspire the listener "to usurp the past by living well and flourishing in the present."[122]
He cites it as a strong example of Lennon and McCartney's collaborative songwriting, particularly Lennon's addition of the line: "couldn't get much worse", which serves as a "sarcastic rejoinder" to McCartney's chorus: "It's getting better all the time".[129]
McCartney describes Lennon's lyric as "sardonic" and "against the spirit of the song", which he characterizes as "typical John".[130][nb 16] MacDonald characterizes the beginning of the track as "blithely unorthodox", with two staccato guitars – one panned left and one right – playing the dominant against the sub-dominant of an F majorninth chord, with the tonicC resolving as the verse begins.
The dominant, which acts as a drone, is reinforced through the use of octaves played on a bass guitar and plucked on piano strings.[131] McCartney's bass line accents non-roots on the recording's downbeat.[130]
Womack interprets the lyric to "Fixing a Hole" as "the speaker's search for identity among the crowd", in particular the "quests for consciousness and connection" that differentiate individuals from society as a whole.[129]
MacDonald characterizes it as a "distracted and introverted track", during which McCartney forgoes his "usual smooth design" in favor of "something more preoccupied".[132] He cites Harrison's electric guitar solo as serving the track well, capturing its mood by conveying detachment.[132]
McCartney drew inspiration for the song in part from his work restoring a Scottish farmhouse.[133] Womack notes his adaptation of the lyric: "a hole in the roof where the rain leaks in" from Elvis Presley's "We're Gonna Move".[134]
The song deals with McCartney's desire to let his mind wander freely and to express his creativity without the burden of self-conscious insecurities.[135][nb 17]
In Everett's view, the lyrics to "She's Leaving Home" address the problem of alienation "between disagreeing peoples", particularly those distanced from each other by the generation gap.[137]
McCartney's "descriptive narration", which details the plight of a "lonely girl" who escapes the control of her "selfish yet well-meaning parents", was inspired by a piece about teenage runaways published by the Daily Mail.[138]
It is the first track on Sgt. Pepper that eschews the use of guitars and drums, featuring a string nonet with a harp and drawing comparison with "Yesterday" and "Eleanor Rigby", which utilise a string quartet and octet respectively.[139][nb 18]
While Richard Goldstein's 1967 review in The New York Timescharacterizes the song as uninspiring, MacDonald identifies the track as one of the two best on the album. Moore notes that the writers judge the work from "opposing criteria", with Goldstein opining during the dawn of the counterculture of the 1960s whereas MacDonald – writing in 1995 – is "intensely aware of [the movement's] failings".[139]
Lennon adapted the lyric for "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" from an 1843 poster for Pablo Fanque's circus that he purchased at an antique shop in Kent on the day of filming the promotional film for "Strawberry Fields Forever".[142]
Womack praises the track's successful blending of a print source and music: "The interpretive power of the mixed-media application accrues its meaning through the musical production with which the group imbues the Ur-text of the poster."[143]
MacDonald notes Lennon's request for a "fairground production wherein one could smell the sawdust", an atmosphere that Martin and Emerick attempted to create with a sound collage that comprised randomly assembled recordings of harmoniums, harmonicas and calliopes.[144][nb 19]
MacDonald describes the song as "a spontaneous expression of its author's playful hedonism".[146] Everett thinks that the track's use of Edwardian imagery thematically links it with the album's opening number.[147]
After Martin decided that "Only a Northern Song" was not good enough for inclusion on Sgt. Pepper, Harrison wrote the Hindustani classical music-inspired "Within You Without You".[148] MacDonald describes the track as an "ambitious essay in cross-cultural fusion and meditative philosophy" that most commentators dismiss as boring, with critics characterizing the music as lacking "harmonic interest" and the lyric as "sanctimonious ... didactic and dated".[149][nb 20]
Moore defends the recording's reliance on melody at the expense of harmony as an entirely appropriate musical attribute for the genre. He characterizes the critical response as "extremely varied", noting that Goldstein identifies the track as one of the album's highlights and others see it as an apt summary of the material from the first side.[151]
MacDonald regards the song as a "distant departure" from the Beatles' sound and a "remarkable achievement" that represents the "conscience" of the LP.[152] Womack agrees, calling it "quite arguably, the album's ethical soul".[153] Maximizing the recording's "capacity for expressiveness", the track features a tempo rubato that is without precedent in the Beatles' catalog.[153] The pitch is derived from the eastern Khamaj scale, which is akin to the Mixolydian mode in the West.[154][nb 21]
The track ends with a burst of laughter that some listeners interpret as a mockery of the song, but Harrison explains: "Well, after all that long Indian stuff you want some light relief. It's a release after five minutes of sad music ... You were supposed to hear the audience anyway, as they listen to Sergeant Pepper's Show. That was the style of the album."[156][nb 22]
Martin used the moment of levity as a segue for what he describes as the album's "jokey track" – "When I'm Sixty-Four".[158]
MacDonald cites "When I'm Sixty-Four" as an example of the Beatles' versatility.
He characterises the song as "aimed chiefly at parents", borrowing heavily from the English music hall style ofGeorge Formby, while invoking images of the illustratorDonald McGill's "seaside postcards".[62]
Its sparse arrangement includes chimes, clarinet and piano.[161] He notes that the track receives a "cool reception" from most younger listeners and Everett singles it out as a case of McCartney's "penchant for the audience-charming vaudeville ... that Lennon detested".[162]
McCartney wrote the tune in the late 1950s as an instrumental piece, and a version of it was occasionally performed by the Beatles during shows in Hamburg.[163] He revisited the composition in 1966, around the time of his father's 64th birthday.[154]
Moore characterises the song as a synthesis of ragtime and pop, noting that its position following "Within You Without You" – a blend of Indian classical music and pop – demonstrates the diversity of the album's material.[164]
McCartney requested the clarinets and asked that they be arranged "in a classical way", which according to Martin "got ... round the lurking schmaltz factor ... [and] gave added bite to the song, a formality that pushed it firmly towards satire."[165]
MacDonald notes that the song's inclusion amidst Sgt. Pepper 's "multi-layered psychedelic textures ... provid[es] a down-to-earth interlude".[62] Moore credits Martin's clarinet arrangement and Starr's use of brushes with establishing the music hall atmosphere, which is reinforced by McCartney's vocal delivery and the recording's use of chromaticism, a harmonic pattern that can be traced to Scott Joplin's "The Ragtime Dance" and The Blue Danube by Johann Strauss.[166]
Varispeeding was used on the track, raising the music's pitch by a semitone in an attempt to make McCartney sound younger.[167] Everett notes that the lyric's protagonist is sometimes associated with the Lonely Hearts Club Band, but in his opinion the song is thematically unconnected to the others on the album.[160]
Womack characterizes "Lovely Rita" as a work of "full-tilt psychedelia" that contrasts sharply with the preceding track.[168] He identifies the song as an example of McCartney's talent for "creating imagistic musical portraiture", but considers it to be among the album's weakest offerings, presaging what he describes as the "less effectual compositions" that the Beatles would record post-Sgt. Pepper.[168]
In his view, "the song accomplishes little in the way of advancing the album's journey toward a more expansive human consciousness".[168] Despite his reservations, he considers the track to be "irresistibly charming".[168]
Moore agrees, describing the composition as a "throwaway" while praising what he characterizes as its "strong sense of harmonic direction".[169] MacDonald describes the song as a "satire on authority" that is "imbued with an exuberant interest in life that lifts the spirits, dispersing self-absorption".[170]
"Good Morning Good Morning" was inspired by a television commercial for Kellogg's Corn Flakes, from which Lennon adapted a jingle as the song's refrain. The track utilizes the bluesy mixolydian mode in A, which Everett credits with "perfectly express[ing] Lennon's grievance against complacency".[171]
Lennon regarded the song as "a throwaway piece of garbage", and McCartney viewed it as Lennon's reaction to the frustrations of domestic life.[172] Womack praises the song's varied time signatures, including 5/4, 3/4 and 4/4, calling it a "masterpiece of electrical energy".[173]
MacDonald notes Starr's "fine performance" and McCartney's "coruscating pseudo-Indian guitar solo", which he credits with delivering the track's climax.[174] A series of animal noises are heard during the fade-out that are sequenced – at Lennon's request – so that each successive animal is large enough to devour the preceding one.[174]
Martin spliced the sound of a chicken clucking at the end of the track to overlap with a guitar being tuned in the next one, making a seamless transition between the two songs.[175]
"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)" serves as a bookend for the album and a segue to its finale. The hard-rocking song was written after the Beatles' assistant, Neil Aspinall, suggested that since "Sgt. Pepper" opened the album the fictional band should make an appearance near the end.[176]
The reprise omits the brass section from the title track and features a faster tempo.[177] MacDonald notes the Beatles' apparent excitement, which is tangibly translated during the recording.[176]
As the last chord of the "Sgt. Pepper" reprise plays, an acoustic guitar strumming offbeat quaversbegins, introducing what Moore describes as "one of the most harrowing songs ever written".[179]
"A Day in the Life" consists of four verses by Lennon, a bridge, two aleatoric orchestral crescendos and an interpolated middle part written and sung by McCartney. The first crescendo serves as a segue between the third verse and the middle part, leading to a bridge known as the "dream sequence", which features Lennon's vocalizations.[179]
In Martin's opinion, the "vocal wailings", which are treated with tape echo and slowly panned from right to left and back again before suddenly ending in the left speaker, contribute to the song's "reception as a 'marijuana dream'".[180]
The accompanying brass section loudly indicates the end of the sequence and the start of the fourth and final verse, after which the song enters the last crescendo before finishing with a piano chord that is allowed to fade out for nearly a minute.[181]
The idea to use an orchestra was McCartney's; he drew inspiration from the Avant-garde composers John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen.[182] The 24-bar crescendos feature forty musicians selected from the London and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras and tasked with filling the space with what Womack describes as "the sound of pure apocalypse".[183]
Martin notes Lennon's request for "a tremendous build-up, from nothing up to something absolutely like the end of the world".[184]Lennon recalled drawing inspiration for the lyrics from a newspaper: "I was writing the song with theDaily Mailpropped up in front of me at the piano ... there was a paragraph about 4000 [pot]holes inBlackburn, Lancashire".[185][nb 24]
He strongly disliked the sound of his own voice and often asked for generous amounts oftape echoto be added to his vocal in an effort to bury it deep in the mix. For "A Day in the Life", he wanted his voice to sound like Elvis Presley on "Heartbreak Hotel". Martin and Emerick obliged by adding 90 milliseconds of echo.[188]
Womack describes Starr's performance as "one of his most inventive drum parts on record", a part that McCartney encouraged him to attempt despite his protests against "flashy drumming".[183]The thunderous piano chord that concludes the track and the album was produced by recording Lennon, Starr, McCartney and Evans simultaneously sounding an E major chord on three separate pianos; Martin then augmented the sound with a harmonium.[189][nb 25]
Riley characterizes the song as a "postlude to thePepperfantasy ... that sets all the other songs in perspective", while shattering the illusion of "Pepperland" by introducing the "parallel universe of everyday life".[192]
MacDonald describes the track as "a song not of disillusionment with life itself, but of disenchantment with the limits of mundane perception".[193]According to him, it "remains among the most penetrating and innovative artistic reflections of its era", representing the Beatles' "finest single achievement".[194]
As "A Day in the Life" ends, a 15-kilohertz high-frequency tone is heard; it was added at Lennon's suggestion with the intention that it would annoy dogs.[195][nb 26]
This is followed by the sounds of backwards laughter and random gibberish that was pressed into the record's concentric run-out groove, which loops back into itself endlessly on any record player not equipped with an automatic needle return. Lennon can be heard saying: "been so high", followed by McCartney's response: "never could be any other way".[197][nb 27]
Source: Wikipedia.org
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