6/1/07: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978)We could’ve hacked out a theme week if we hadn’t been lazy enough to shut down on Memorial Day. Anyway, today marks the 40th anniversary of the release of
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band—which,
as noted, pales next to what The Cyrkle had done back in 1966. The big date is really a reminder of the hype that brought us the original Summer of Love and the media’s craze for further 40th anniversaries.
By 1978, however, regular folks had learned that the Summer of Love was a Season of Stupidity. Consider the notoriously bad musical that marked the 11th anniversary of that Beatles classic back in 1978. Fresh off the success of
Saturday Night Fever and
Grease, producer Robert Stigwood decided that America wanted to hear George Burns narrate a dialogue-free film that took assorted Beatles tunes way too literally. The result was the box-office disaster of
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees star as the title act, and there’s a constant stream of cameos by actors who’d all like to see this film forgotten. It’s certainly only enjoyable as a painfully overblown epic. There’s still a good reason why
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band got such an exceptionally dismissive reception from the media. The PG production is a celebration of wholesomeness and a dismissal of all the crap sprung from the ’60s.
We first see the original Sgt. Pepper helping to end World War I. He’ll be dead by 1958, but the people of Heartland U.S.A. will cherish his memory. Frampton plays Pepper’s grandson Billy Shears, who revives the band with the help of the Henderson Brothers (them being the Brothers Gibb).
This leads to a complicated plot involving Shears and his pals having to reclaim his grandfather’s magical instruments. The bigger story, however, is a moralistic saga in the tradition of
The Wizard of Oz and
It’s A Wonderful Life. That’s established when the evil music moguls spirit Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band away from lovely Heartland and off to the polluted desolation of The City of Angels. The band’s descent into Hell is illustrated by a Henderson brother doing cocaine and Shears having—well, an actual vision of Hell just before he signs a big recording contract.
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band eventually learns the error of their ways, recovers the magical instruments, and return to save Heartland's innocence. It’s all a bizarre fantasy until Shears & Company have to face the Future Villain Band. The evil corporate rock creation—the antitheses of our heroes—is played by Aerosmith, and we’re looking at some real method acting.
Aerosmith’s cover of “Come Together” would be their last decent release until the ’80s, and you can see why in the ravaged faces of the entire band. (To be fair, bassist Brad Hamilton seems to be in decent shape. He’s always been Aerosmith’s secret weapon.)
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is an indictment of where the Summer of Love got us, and Aerosmith provides the documentary footage.
Things get even better. Billy Preston—himself no poster boy, but the closest that Stigwood could get to a Beatle—shows up at the end as the superfunky God-like incarnation of the original Sgt. Pepper. He brings Shears’ sweet girlfriend back from the dead, and then transforms all the evil corporate rock types into…
See,
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band wouldn’t be RightWingTrash if he turned them into peaceful hippies learning the error of their ways. This flashy God turns the evil corporate rock types into priests and nuns. Then there’s a big parade where a weird mix of celebrities march through Heartland (or maybe Pepperland), including more innocent types such as Connie Stevens, Johnny Rivers, Chita Rivera, and
Rick Derringer.
There’s Minnie Ripperton, too, and that pretty much makes this an important musical right there.
Make it your own: This one’s found cheap on
a bare-bones DVD, but you’ll wish there was a Special Edition after you’re done witnessing the weirdness. The soundtrack album also remains in print—although Donald Pleasance’s fine vocals aren’t on
the CD. At least you get an underheard turn by
Alice Cooper. And, unlike with the original vinyl soundtracks, the film’s curse has finally been lifted enough that most of the discs don’t come warped in the packaging.
And here’s
a fun listing of all those celebrities who are marching at film’s end.
