Would "Sgt. Pepper's" be a better album if.....

I never cared for "psychedelic" music. LSD ruined Rock 'n' Roll!

LSD probably ruined a lot of things but I think true rock and roll as seen in the late 1950’s while still lots of fun was too limited to have a long lifespan hence all the directions rock/pop music went in subsequently, which I view as a good thing delivering a much broader range of musical styles to choose from. That’s progress. Sgt. Pepper was perhaps as much responsible for this as any single album release ever. Hence its fame. Music and recording still holds up pretty well.

While we're talking about changing Sgt.  Pepper, the Taj Mahal (not the dead Trump casino) could use a few improvements as well.   I would not want to live there.

I don't listen to much psychedelic music anymore but I think there are some great examples of psychedelic songs that still sound good today.  It's probably true that the lesser examples of the genre are more embarrassing than those of some other styles, but every category of music has its hits and misses.  Personally, I think rock peaked some years later, around 1973.  While it still survives and produces some worthy recordings there hasn't been much in the way of revolutionary sounds since then.  There are a lot of nice re-treads and mish-mashes.

Psychedelic music is somewhat of a misnomer since the music is not necessarily linked to drug use, probably very seldom, or even a drug lifestyle nor would the group or singer had to have taken LSD or any other drug to write or play psychedelic music. Maybe to listen to the music, though. 😃 Exceptions perhaps are Morrison and Joplin who performed with bottle in hand frequently and Carlos Santana who ingested LSD just prior to Santana’s set at Woodstock. Whaaaat! Yes, I know alcohol is not considered a psychedelic.😁 Of course the Stones’ Something Happened to me Yesteday was most definitely about taking LSD. 😳

I was being a little tongue-in-cheek, deliberately and intentionally provocative. I love "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "A Day In The Life", and they most likely came to be as a result of ingesting. Brian Wilson’s Smile definitely did. In "psychedelic", I was referring to the more pompous and self-consciously "high-art", grandiose practitioners of the style.