Sgt Pepper’s Musical Revolution with Howard Goodall: (BBC Two Saturday 4 November 2023)

Sgt Pepper’s Musical Revolution with Howard Goodall: airs Saturday 4 November 2023 on BBC Two.

What is this episode about

On June 1, 1967, 50 years ago this week, The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and forever altered the course of popular music. Composer Howard Goodall investigates the album’s continued revolutionary and formative impact in this documentary. Howard dissects Sgt. Pepper by using outtakes and studio conversations between the band that have never been heard outside of Abbey Road. He dissects and reconstructs the music to reveal its inner workings, drawing unexpected parallels to music from the past millennium in the process.

The creation of Sgt. Pepper coincided with a turning point in The Beatles’ professional lives. Sick of the screaming mayhem of live shows, they made what was widely considered to be a career-ending decision in August 1966 and stopped touring permanently. Instead, they spent an unprecedented five months in December that year on Abbey Road with their creative partner, producer George Martin. What they created didn’t require a live reenactment. The Beatles made excellent use of this leeway, transforming the recording studio from a place where bands went to quickly record their live sound into an audio laboratory and a springboard for their inventiveness. Howard reveals how they and George Martin’s crew built the album layer by layer, sound by sound, creating a blueprint for virtually every rock band that came after them.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released in June 1967, after the media had essentially gone dark on the band’s activities. It was an instant hit, becoming not only one of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed albums of all time, but also the unofficial anthem of the Summer of Love. It proved that a ‘pop music’ album is more than just a collection of radio-friendly singles that clock in at under three minutes in length. It consistently ranks as one of the top albums in terms of impact.

This documentary by Howard Goodall demonstrates how the ambitious nature of Sgt. Pepper’s overall concept, composition, arrangement, and recording techniques makes it stand out.

Produced with unheard-of access to The Beatles’ photographic archive, this is a visually and sonically immersive look into one of the most seminal and far-reaching periods in modern music.

Originally broadcast Saturday 3 June 2017.

When can we see the episode

Sgt Pepper’s Musical Revolution with Howard Goodall: airs Saturday 4 November 2023 at 11:10pm on BBC Two

Featured Image Credit: BBC Two