When Pete Townshend claimed ‘Sgt Pepper’ was a rip-off of a 1966 flop: “The Beatles copied us!”
It is easy to forget how quickly everything changed in the 1960s. The world was a Monday morning then, at some point in 1962, it suddenly turned into the last day of school.
When The Beatles blew up like a benevolent atomic explosion of creativity none other than the Prince of Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne, described the afterglow as akin to going to bed and the world is black and white “and then you wake up, and everything’s in colour.” That feels fairly apt given the technological advances that rendered the Fab Four technicolour.
However, The Beatles were not alone when it came to conjuring these Promethean feats of pop culture. They were joined at the forefront of rock ‘n’ roll at the height of the British Invasion by acts like The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, and The Who.
Each of these pioneers were angling for something new. As the LP rose to prominence, in part, thanks to an FCC ruling that prevented stations ‘simulcasting’ the same song on AM and FM frequencies, bands wondered what they could kick about with the extra legroom. Concept albums may well stretch back to the days of Woody Guthrie, but they were never really popularised in the conventional form until Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club.
The giant leap from the Fab Four in 1967 made a seismic mark, and helped to popularise the concept form. But it would seem that it was a record heavily inspired by The Who. All the best ideas are stolen, and The Beatles were the finest thieves in the business (they might have done many great things for Liverpool, but they did nothing to dismiss that unfortunate stereotype).
“That was on the album that preceded The Who Sell Out. And he told me they were thinking about doing similar things.”
Pete Townshend
As Pete Townshend told Rolling Stone in an interview regarding the influence of their rock opera ‘A Quick One, While He’s Away’, “The Beatles copied us! Paul McCartney came up to me at the Bag O’Nails [a music club in Soho, London], which we mention in the album artwork. He was always very, very sweet to me, I should say that first.”
Nevertheless, he went on to explain how he – a man famous for following the Eastern teachings of disavowing ego – in fact, underpins the most famous album in history. “But he said to me that he really loved our mini-opera,” he recalled, “which was called ‘A Quick One, While He’s Away.’ That was on the album that preceded The Who Sell Out. And he told me they were thinking about doing similar things.”
In the happening artistic melee of the ‘60s, everyone was in the same sphere of influence in a very direct sense. They were literally drinking in the same Bag O’Nails, there weren’t many of them then. Townshend declares that the progression of music towards concept records was only natural in this thriving environment where expansive ideas were all the rage.
“I think anybody that was even a little bit art school back then,” he went on to say, “A little bit adventurous – and, of course, the Beatles were encouraged to experiment to the max in the studio – would have thought about doing something which was a concept.” As he hinted, the Fab Four had recently given up on the road, and with hefty funds at their disposal, the lure of throwing the kitchen sink and a Moog synth at a truly epic LP was, largely, inevitable.
But even the inevitable requires an impetus, and Townshend claims the seed was sewn with the mini rock opera, ‘A Quick One, While He’s Away’. It’s an unconventional nine-minute “epic”, as Townshend calls it, tells the tale of a tangled affair that follow the near year-long disappearance of a lover.
But more important than the theme was the six distinct movements, featuring bloody cellos – and they don’t come cheap. Clearly, rock ‘n’ roll was edging towards a grander position within the arts. As Townshend told Mojo, “We were just about starting to tap into something that became a complete obsession for me. Which was that when we played a hard-driving rock ‘n’ roll and brought in this slightly evangelical, hippy, spiritual thing.”
You could say that The Beatles showcased another of their skills beyond theft with Sgt Pepper: timing. While A Quick one flopped for The Who, petering out at 67th in the US chart that they were trying to crack, the Fab Four’s plucking take on Townshend’s bright idea had sold 32m copies the last time anyone bothered to count in 2011.
The Who would go on to create a slew of concept records, including Tommy in 1969 which saw them delve into an epic journey of pinball and the metaphysical teachings of Meher Baba. In many ways, The Who are now the eponymous concept album band and thus, it is no doubt that anyone who followed in this immediate direction would have been influenced by their seminal works.
Townshend goes on to acknowledge the extent of their influence on The Beatles in this regard, describing their own work on The Who Sells Out, as being “weak and it needed a framework.”
Later adding, “But getting back to Sgt. Pepper, there isn’t much of a concept to that record. But to this day, whenever I sit down and get the vinyl out, stick it on, something always leaps out that I’ve never noticed before. So I think the same is true with Pet Sounds. Those two albums are seminal changes in what we all believed was going to be possible if you were in a band making records, just extraordinary leaps of faith that the audience would accept it.”
Clearly, in the case of Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club, that leap of faith paid off and then some! The record now resides as one of the most beloved and important in music history. In the fated chronology of rock ‘n’ roll, who knows how it would have sounded without the mini-opera in six movements that The Who boldly unleashed on the world in 1966, a year before The Beatles followed suit in scintillating fashion.
But one thing’s for sure, that rapid precession goes a long way to definition the spirit of the era, where a brief chat in a boozer was merely moments away from resulting in an historical masterpiece (even if in the cold light of day you can question whether Pepper is really that close to The Beatles’ best).
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.