The Beatles “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band” released on this date 50 years ago, June 1st, 1967 (Wiki says US release date is June 2nd but Allmusic places it on June 1st). This copy was my Aunt Jeanie’s so likely an original purchased in ‘67 (or close), gatefold. My parents still have their original, just as worn as this one, which I listened to practically right out of the womb. It had a skip about midway through “A Little Help From My Friends” and until I had my own (on CD and probably one of the first CD’s I ever purchased), I would sing the skip and got super-confused when I would hear the song without it. As a little girl, my favorite song was “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” picturing the song as a kind of carnival ride, me as Lucy traveling down a CandyLand-like landscape, the water in the river actually chocolate a la Willy Wonka.

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.