Sgt.Pepper special on PBS

Great special, a must see. Agree with bdp24 though. While Sgt Pepper can certainly stand on it's own merits as a seminal moment in pop music the fact that the influence of Brian Wilson and his pet sounds project was not mentioned as a profound influence on  Lennon/McCartney/Sgt Pepper is quite surprising. Not to neglect the contributions of George, too often the unsung Beatle.

What makes the omission more puzzling is that Pet Sounds/Beach Boys were bigger in England than in the US, rivaling the Beatles in the UK at the time.  How could he not have known about this connection?

Amazing perspective just how things were done.

Who'da thunk how complex some of our beloved songs were?

How  about that last sustained note of "Day in the Life" or better yet, "Within you without you"?

Sir George and the fab 4 were just ahead of the times. Maybe credit LSD for some creativity?

I thought the program was mostly good--I question whether, at this point, they were still mixing 3 tracks down to 1 (I’d like to see an example of that on any song from the LP), but there were a lot of good new factoids and the rest seemed right on the money. I liked that they went deep with a few tracks rather than trying to cover them all.

A column in the latest issue of "the absolute sound" discusses this subject and acknowledges that Brian Wilson was exploring creative multilayering in the making of "Good Vibrations" around the same time as the Beatles were crafting "Sgt Peppers LHCB." What I found interesting was the statement that "Paul McCartney would say years later that (Frank Zappa’s) Freak Out inspired the Beatles to stretch out creatively on their influential 1967 concept album Sgt Peppers’ LHCB." Frank Zappa...who knew?