Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band- it was 50 years ago oh boy.

Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band- it was 50 years ago oh boy.

It's time to turn the clock back folks, time for more fond reminiscences from years gone by. I know, I love wallowing in nostalgia. It's time for reflection and strolling down memory lane. It all seems such a long time ago now but 1967 was quite possibly the most momentous of all years. Everything seemed to happen that more or less defined the 1960s as an age of experimentation, ground breaking events, innovation and not a little tragedy and sadness. But then where would we be without sadness and disaster because invariably they do make their presence felt sooner or later.

But come on it's time for me to lighten up and look back at some of those historic events that were somehow destined to happen 50 years ago  whether we liked it or not. I think there must have been a point during the 1960s when we suspected that 1967 would become one of the most revolutionary of them all. Up until that moment London was still enjoying one of its most purple of patches, a time when the white heat of technology had reached boiling point, Carnaby Street was the place to be seen, most of the world would dance around a field in Woodstock with kaftans and a large chunk of the West End seemed to dress up in outlandish Beatles costumes, top hats and a multitude of peace loving colours.

Talking of the Beatles, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the remarkable Beatles album Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, surely one of the most ground breaking, innovative and stunningly imaginative records ever recorded. It was one of the most astoundingly spectacular pieces of music by any pop band in any generation. The history of the Fab Four has now slipped comfortably into legend and cultural folklore and to this very day the names of John, Paul, Ringo and George still echo through the years. They dominate dinner party conversations and there is a sense that although sadly only Paul and Ringo can tell their story the much missed John and George can still be recalled with feeling and tenderness.

On my way home from meeting up with friends, I couldn't help but notice that huge advertisement for Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band plastered all over a Tube railway station wall. For a moment I had to take a second look because I hand't a clue why it was there. Then it suddenly occurred to me. It was 50 years ago oh boy since the release of Sergeant Peppers and here it was remastered and digitalised for today's Blue Ray, high tech market where the sounds are crisper, cleaner and clearer than ever before.

 How long ago it seems since those halcyon days of vinyl, the crackling made by the needle on your record player and the lovely old Dansette. But now music has become the province of Spotify, Downloading, You Tube and music on your phone. It hardly seems possible and yet it's true. Who could have foretold the future when the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were battling it out for supremacy?

I was four when a group of lads from the heart of Liverpool took the world by storm. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr strolled into the world famous Abbey Road studios in London and produced the kind of music that pushed back all the boundaries and paved the way for new musical concepts, classically composed lyrics and hit singles by the hundreds. They would fly into America, conquering the hearts of millions of American teenagers and then selling out in outdoor concerts in front of crowds that once deafened them such was the magnitude of the noise.

But this year the world celebrates the release of Sergeant Peppers Lonely Heart Club Band an album with the most unforgettable of images and an album cover that will live long in our memory. Over the years and decades many an album has been illustrated with so many works of art it's hard to remember a time when the great artists and photographers weren't in gainful employment.

The design on Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band is a huge and affectionate homage to all of those celebrities, political and pop culture idols who had done so much to hold our imagination for so many years. It is a picture gallery of the great and good with so many cultural references that you could almost identify all of them. They were the heroes and villains, prolific geniuses and then the self destructive masochists who couldn't figure out where things had gone wrong for them.

There was Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Stan Laurel, Marilyn Monroe, Fred Astaire, Diana Dors, Tony Curtis, WC Fields, film stars by the many and those who embraced that generation of furious creativity and positive thinking. The whole album cover shows a mass of famous faces symbolically superimposed on top of each other blending almost seamlessly into the backdrop of the picture.

For most of us Sergeant Peppers was one gigantic artistic project which like the albums that had preceded it, became a phenomenal overnight success and sold rapidly on both sides of the Atlantic in no time at all. The Beatles, by this time, had achieved unprecedented levels of both fame, adulation, adoration, idolatry in some cases and, from time to time, notoriety. But now Paul, George, John and Ringo were as much a part of the English landscape as red post boxes, the Thames, the Lake District, and Buckingham Palace.

The title track of the album of Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band was a rousing, rip roaring, up tempo number with plenty of upbeat harmonies, tantalising trumpets that boomed and thumped resoundingly across the surface and structure of the song, a stomping, uplifting ditty full of life and increasing momentum as the song developed leaving the most pleasant of melodies on the ear.

'With a Little Help From My Friends' was similarly optimistic and uptempo, a tribute perhaps to all of the band's fans and those who remained so staunchly loyal and supportive through good and bad times. You feel sure that the Beatles were now at their happiest and 'With a Little Help From My Friends was a token of appreciation to both the tragic Brian Epstein and the tremendously gifted George Martin, a man of immense talents and a producer with a notable gift for ingenuity.

'Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds' has left most of us with conflicting stories about its origin but remains one of the most lyrical and poetic songs on the album. There are those who read between the lines of 'Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds and assume that LSD may well have been the underlying commentary for an altogether different agenda rather than any ordinary song about a girl who adored expensive jewellery or just simple childhood. But LSD is not a cynical reference to drugs since a song about drugs wouldn't have been looked upon favourably by the pure and puritanical BBC.

Then there was the marvellous the 'The Benefit of Mr Kite' one of the many Beatles songs that owed much to the band's enduring love affair with the circus and the fairground. At the half way point of 'The Benefit of Mr Kite' the Fab Four indulge wildly in those classic sounds of the fairground, a fusion of ferris wheels, banging drums, a riot of organs and all manner of weird and wonderful instruments that run like a silky thread through the song.

'When I'm Sixty Four' gets you right there because to a certain generation this is how they must have felt at the time. This is John, Paul, George, Ringo at their most romantic and sentimental, a sad and bittersweet song with its eyes firmly set on the future. Now of course the two remaining Beatles Paul and Ringo may well shut the door every evening and find that 64 has now been and gone and the twilight of their years has given them a wonderfully sober perspective on life.

'Getting Better All Time' implies that substantial progress and improvement in their touring had made everything so worthwhile. Perhaps they were just basking in the glow of their glorious achievements. It's a jolly, catchy and infectious song that while never quite the memorably mainstream song of other hit singles, still had a simple hook. and a heart warmingly appealing message to both their fans and the purists.

'A Day in the Life' was a splendidly triumphant and victorious song full of shade, light and colour. It is quite the most magnificent piece of music ever written down. It is a story told with vividly bright brush strokes, an oil painting, a colourful depiction of Northern England, Blackburn, Lancashire and a song that is emblematic of everything that was and still is community minded about Northern mill towns and belching industrial chimneys. You feel sure that Lowry would have loved 'A Day in the Life'.

And so there you have it. The 50th anniversary of Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club band is out now and available at all good record shops and online platforms. For those with the fondest soft spot for crackling vinyl this iconic album will remain lodged in our minds almost permanently. It is a great and epic composition, the realisation of one band's dream and the fruition of that dream. It may never be equalled in its sheer immensity, its soaring ambition and the richness of its lyricism.

Oh well I'm off to watch the FA Cup Final with my father in law. Once again it's Arsenal against Chelsea and a repeat of the 2002 Final. As a devoted and neutral Hammer he has my unqualified support. Football and music were almost made for each other. May the best team win but I do like Arsenal so here's to a Gunners victory.