The Beatles

[dance2trance]

What is your personal opinion about this hypothetical? The Beatles' 'Sgt. Pepper....' was the setting sun which the entire world mistook for the dawn.

[waterboatman]

Call me thick if you wish, but I don't understand the question!

[Theland]

Same here.

[Mozz71]

Do you mean that while the world saw Sgt Pepper as a new beginning of prosperity and wonder, it actually ushered the start of the end of the optimism and hope of the hippy culture and a slow walk towards the anarchy or the late 70s and commercialism of the 80s?

No, not really. It's only a record. For all it's musical importance, it cannot change society.

[Theland]

Mozz, in that respect it was the death of one outlook and the enlightenment of another - LSD.

[aelmpvw]

//'was the setting sun which the entire world mistook for the dawn'//
Ringo, 'pardon?'

[Theland]

:-) ∆∆∆∆

[10ClarionSt]

I never bought Sgt Pepper. And I was an avid Beatles fan. I've still got the record they issued that contained a Christmas message from 1963. I bought all their records until Sgt Pepper. I hated all the pre plays that I heard from it. That was the end of The Beatles for me.

[fiction-factory]

If you mean were they actually going downhill rather than progressing, I disagree. It was just a change of direction. I loved both 'versions' of the Beatles. Not everything worked but they were experimenting and doing what they wanted rather than what producers and the public wanted them to do.. and some of their best stuff came in or after Sgt Pepper

[Mozz71]

//I never bought Sgt Pepper. And I was an avid Beatles fan. I've still got the record they issued that contained a Christmas message from 1963. I bought all their records until Sgt Pepper. I hated all the pre plays that I heard from it. That was the end of The Beatles for me//

Ironically, it was the more rock n roll, moptop Beatles i wasnt so kean on. The band were much more interesting and musically diverse once they starting taking drugs. She's Leaving Home is still one of my favourite Beatles' songs. Having said that, Rubber Soul is my favourite of their albums, so what do i know?

[Mozz71]

True Theland, but let's be honest, the original question is flawed, because every mew dawn has to be preceeded by a setting sun. In that context, Sgt Peppers can be both.

If you want a record which was a new dawn, Pet Sounds came out around the same time.

[Mozz71]

"Mew dawn" = when you wake up to the cat paddling your face because she wants breakfast.

[fiction-factory]

Anyway, it wasn't a sudden gigantic change from one style to another. Revolver for example from the year before already contained some elements of the new experimental style

[Mozz71]

Absolutely FF. In fact, The White Album was probably a bigger shift in style than Sgt Peppers was.

[fiction-factory]

Agreed.

[andy-hughes]

It's generally acknowledged that as soon as The Beatles were free from the constraints of writing and recording songs that they would have to reproduce on stage, they gratefully accepted their freedom, and simply used the studio as another instrument.

When you look at the musical minds that composed those pre-Pepper songs, its not hard to see that the freedom granted to them was the keys to the proverbial kingdom, they could do whatever they wanted, limited only by technology, and more often than not, they found ways to circumvent those limits anyway.

It was neither a 'setting sun' or a 'new dawn', it was one more step on the evolutionary progress of the greatest band that has ever lived.

[bhg481]

Like 10clarion, I never liked anything they did after then. I just felt they were taking the public for a ride, believing they could churn out anything and people would rave over it.

[fiction-factory]

^Or maybe they were just making the music they enjoyed making.

[andy-hughes]

And why not? It's not as if they had anything to prove.

[woofgang]

and then came the Beachboys, Phil Specter et al.

[Spicerack]

The Manson Family were the setting sun.