Sgt. Pepper and the Beatles: It Was Forty Years Ago Today

This collection looks at Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band from several directions on the fortieth anniversary of its release. The chapters take up how critics and musicians received the record, its cover, its lyrics and songwriting, and the way its form holds together as a single work.

Other chapters explore the album's links to psychedelia, its use of non-European and art music, its production and sound engineering, and the social setting of the 1960s. Contributors come from fields as varied as musicology, sociology, history, literature and cultural theory, so the record is read through several disciplines at once. It suits students and scholars of popular music, and fans who want a serious account of the album.

Edition note: first edition, published by Ashgate Pub Co in 2008, 190 pages, ISBN-13: 9780754662495. Part of the Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series.