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“Each song on the sprawling double album The Beatles is an entity to itself, as the band touches on anything and everything it can. This makes for a frustratingly scattershot record or a singularly gripping musical experience, depending on your view, but what makes the so-called White Album interesting is its mess. Never before had a rock record been so self-reflective, or so ironic; the Beach Boys send-up “Back in the U.S.S.R.” and the British blooze parody “Yer Blues” are delivered straight-faced, so it’s never clear if these are affectionate tributes or wicked satires. Lennon turns in two of his best ballads with “Dear Prudence” and “Julia”; scours the Abbey Road vaults for the musique concrète collage “Revolution 9”; pours on the schmaltz for Ringo’s closing number, “Good Night”; celebrates the Beatles cult with “Glass Onion”; and, with “Cry Baby Cry,” rivals Syd Barrett. McCartney doesn’t reach quite as far, yet his songs are stunning – the music hall romp “Honey Pie,” the mock country of “Rocky Raccoon,” the ska-inflected “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” and the proto-metal roar of “Helter Skelter.” Clearly, the Beatles’ two main songwriting forces were no longer on the same page, but neither were George and Ringo. Harrison still had just two songs per LP, but it’s clear from “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” the canned soul of “Savoy Truffle,” the haunting “Long, Long, Long,” and even the silly “Piggies” that he had developed into a songwriter who deserved wider exposure. And Ringo turns in a delight with his first original, the lumbering country-carnival stomp “Don’t Pass Me By.” None of it sounds like it was meant to share album space together, but somehow The Beatles creates its own style and sound through its mess.”

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The album hit #1 in the US and was nominated for a Grammy in 1968. Side A of Magical Mystery Tour contains songs from the movie, including the title track and the crazy, surrealistic and amazing “I Am the Walrus.” The B-side is a collection of Beatles’ singles from 1967, each one a perfectly crafted pop song, richly layered, experimental and melodic: “Hello, Goodbye,” “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Penny Lane,” “Baby, You’re a Rich Man” and “All You Need Is Love.”

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In early June 1987 there was a big deal about it being the 20th anniversary of Sgt. Peppers release. Just shy of 16 at that time, I was all punk and snarly but still enamored with the record, more fascinated now with its psychedelic imagery and insinuations (i.e. “Lucy,” “Within You Without You,” “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!”). Someone in the media declared ‘87 as the new “Summer of Love” – it really wasn’t – but I ran with that, got a little hippie in my punkdom and committed my one and only act ever of graffiti on the bathroom stall of Tom’s, a local fast food chain in Appleton, WI, writing “Summer of Love” with a peace symbol and some Beatles’ lyrics. (My friends and I, not surprisingly, were repeatedly banned from the downtown Tom’s over the years. It’s now a bar called Basil’s and the bathrooms are relocated so no evidence remains.)

The importance of Sgt. Peppers is monumental –  it has been described as one of the first art rock LPs, jumpstarted the development of progressive rock and marks the beginning of the Album Era. It spent 27 weeks at #1 in the UK and 15 weeks in the US. It won four Grammys and in 2003 the Library of Congress included it in the National Recording Registry. It’s still one of the best-selling records of all-time.

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