It’s Getting Better All the Time: 50 Years of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

I was probably around 12 years old when I got my first copy of the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band LP, perhaps just a little earlier.

That’s the age -- 12 -- of the protagonist in my new novel Obsessica. Have had some more readers and a couple of very nice reviews over on Amazon since the last time I brought it up over here. I’m actually in the middle of getting the ebook version together, and also have some other plans to promote it a little more going forward -- more on that soon.

I was chatting with someone about the book and stumbled into an observation about 12-year-olds. It’s an idea that might well have come from the narrator of Obsessica, who is writing as an adult about something he experienced when he was that age.

“We’re all 12, really, or thereabouts,” I said. “That is, there’s a point in there somewhere before we’ve grown up when we become who we end up being, and no matter how much we change after that we can’t really leave behind that first-finished-draft of ourselves.”

If that’s true, it matters that I was around 12 when I first listened to and loved Sgt. Pepper.

Later I would learn more about the Beatles, reading books and like many engaging in a kind of protracted study of every little detail of their history, including all things Sgt. Pepper. But well before that more intellectual engagement took place came the deep impression caused by many, many listenings back when I was a kid -- back when the record, like other things I experienced, inevitably became part of who I am.

I love the songs. All of them. And the idea. During their first few years of recording and performing, the Beatles provided a kind of template for the whole concept of a “band” (at least in the realm of popular music). Then with Sgt. Pepper they invented a fictional version of themselves to enable even greater experimentation.

They were already larger than life by then. But Sgt. Pepper was an even greater revelation -- about what the Beatles could do, and about what could be done by others, too.

In the title song, Sgt. Pepper is a character described as having “taught the band to play.” Like a mentor or muse or something. Which, of course, is what the album has served as for countless bands and musicians and people who yearn to be creative in other ways.

People talk about it being a “concept album” which it is. To me the analogue is a short story collection like Dubliners, Winesburg, Ohio, Nine Stories, or What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Different episodes, different characters, different moods, all connected by common thematic threads relating a particular ethos and vision emanating from the artist.

Sgt. Pepper features a variety of characters and voices and perspectives, complemented by the many different styles -- rock, blues, music hall, psychedelic, vaudeville, classical, traditional Indian, avant-garde -- all made to fit inside so-called “pop” formats.

The variety was more than enough to stimulate my still forming brain, with the record almost feeling like one “novelty” song after another. It’s rocking and relaxing, moving and melodramatic, catchy and complex, funny and frightening.

I suppose it’s true that an impressionable 12-year-old probably experiences these things more deeply than a cynical adult. But there I was, listening to Sgt. Pepper over and again on the stereo console, ensuring that decades later I’d still be thinking these thoughts and feeling these feelings when listening again.

I’ve written here about the Beatles many times before, including telling the story of my father playing the Red and Blue albums on eight-track player that came with an old Plymouth Valiant, and going with Vera to see the Cirque du Soleil show Love, and going to see Cheap Trick perform the whole of Sgt. Pepper, also in Las Vegas.

And (I must not omit) describing the card game I invented last year called “Sgt. Pepper,” a Badugi variant. Here are the complete rules:

Pulling out my Sgt. Pepper LP today, I’m finding tucked inside a copy of the fan mag The Beatles Monthly, dated June 1987. Yes, I’m old enough to remember when it was twenty years ago today the Beatles released their album that begins with the lyric “it was twenty years ago today.”

And now it’s fifty years ago today, the LP being released in the U.K. on June 1, 1967 and in the U.S. the next day. And everyone is listening to and talking about Sgt. Pepper and acting like kids again.

And I’m setting the needle down to listen -- again -- knowing even before the orchestra starts warming up that it’s guaranteed to raise a smile.

Travel Report: LAPT9 Panama, Day 3 -- Playing Sgt. Pepper

The penultimate day of the Latin American Poker Tour Panama Main Event was a quick one, with the players getting from 32 down to eight by early evening, permitting us to get away early enough to enjoy a leisurely dinner at the Sortis Hotel, Spa & Casino.

Sergio, Will, and I went back over to the Score Sports Bar for our meal, which was leisurely indeed with another lengthy wait for the dishes. During that interim I pulled out my Beatles deck of cards -- a recent gift from Vera -- and dealt a few hands of a game I’m inventing called “Sgt. Pepper.”

It’s a Badugi variant and is still in beta, although I’ll tell you instead of needing four different suits in your hand to make a Badugi, all that’s required is to have a single, lonely heart among the four cards -- the other three can be anything else -- to make what I’m calling a “Fab Four.”

One rule Sergio introduced which I like is that if two players happen to hold the same hand, the one with the lowest heart wins.

Meanwhile, when a player stands pat, that’s choosing to “Let it Be.” I want to introduce another twist allowing a player to swap hands with an opponent, a move announced with the phrase “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” although I’m not sure as yet when and under what circumstances that will be allowed.

I’m not too eager to introduce lots of wild cards into the came, although perhaps it might be worth my getting some advantage “When I’m Sixty-Four.” Perhaps there could be variants of Sgt. Pepper -- “Eight Days a Week” (in which eights are wild) or “Revolution 9” (where nines are) or “Sun King” (making kings the best card to have, not the worst).

Having a three-card hand and drawing to a Fab Four is called “Fixing a Hole.” A “Cry Baby Cry”-ing call after the third draw that turns out to be a loser is referred to as “I Should Have Known Better” (or, if it’s a particularly bad call, “I’m a Loser”). And when someone folds to your bet rather than calling, that’s a “You Won’t See Me.”

Like I say, the game is still being developed, so I welcome any ideas. I’d like to say in the end I was able to invent Sgt. Pepper with a little help from my friends.