The Beatles song recorded on the same day as the ‘Sgt Pepper’ photoshoot
The album cover for Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is a two-way mirror. It shows The Beatles in old-hat regalia, subverted by decidedly modern, dazzling technicolour. It shows an assortment of stars from the past, all presiding on an album that promised to change the future. And it shows that a lot of fun was being had on both sides, by the band and their fans alike.
It did so by celebrating culture in all of its guises at the precise moment that a new pop pinnacle was reaching fever pitch. The music and imagery had to reflect this rarified thinking of artful adulation. And so, Jann Haworth and Peter Blake, the duo tasked with bringing the visual side of the album to life, got to work.
“I suggested that they had just played a concert in the park. They were posing for a photograph, and the crowd behind them was a crowd of fans who had been at the concert,” Peter Blake told Spencer Leigh.
The mob of fans for this fantasy band were not quite ‘fans’ per se, but rather heroes that had helped to whisk them into existence in the first place. So, Blake asked the band for a list of their fantasy crowd. He made one too, along with the art dealer Robert ‘Groovy Bob’ Fraser. “The way that worked out was fascinating. John gave me a list, and so did Paul. George suggested only Indian gurus, about six of them, and Ringo said, ‘Whatever the others say is fine by me’ and didn’t suggest anyone.”
This offers a nuanced insight into how the Fab Four approached art in general. In many ways, the constitution of the cover is reflective of the constitution of the band. You had the antagonistic anti-heroes and figures of bold profundity like Alesiter Crowley, picked by John Lennon, reflective of his radicalism; you had Paul McCartney’s earnest folk heroes like Fred Astaire, stars of the people, beloved and endearing; then you had the spiritual focus and craftful discipline of George Harrison, staying in his lane and yet steadfastly present; while Ringo was happy to simply support the others and relinquish egoism.
Finally, there is the influence of others in the mix that The Beatles were always happy to accept, symbolic of the contributions made by the likes of George Martin, Billy Preston and everyone else they effectively handed the keys over to. In this regard, Sgt Pepper might not be their greatest ever album, though it depends who you ask, but it most likely is their most defining.
While this might be an oversimplified way of looking at The Beatles, and you could argue that it perpetuates tropes that didn’t necessarily always play out, there is an underlying grain of truth to it that makes the cover a fascinating artefact in a multitude of ways. It garishly stands as a piece of pop culture history that somehow not merely reflected a cornucopia of influences, but a mark of the interplay that made the Fab Four a uniquely tessellated force.
However, perhaps what the cover shows more than anything is the secret factor that elevated the band above any other: friendship. Not just friendship among the four members, either, but a degree of impersonal companionship we all feel with the art that helps to get us through the day. The record sleeve is a glowing, retina-damaging declaration of that, as is the statement song, ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’.
So, it seems terribly fitting that on the gruelling day that Michael Cooper shot the cover image at Chelsea Manor Studios on March 30th, 1967, the group made their way over to Abbey Road afterwards to finish up the Ringo-fronted song in a session that ran from 11pm right through until seven the next morning.
While it’s self-evidently a song about friendship, the subtle undertone, when combined with the backstory of the cover, is a reflection of how the band had become friends to many as well: culture can become adjacent to companionship. The Fab Four were not only honouring their heroes with this album cover and equally celebratory track, they were proclaiming a message about how powerful artists can be.
In essence, the modern Beatles listener can hear ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’ and not just think of Paddy and Paul down the pub, but of The Beatles themselves and the balm that they are providing in the very moment that you are listening to that track. In some ways, it’s a two-way mirror in that sense, with Ringo’s refrain not just indicting his bandmates, but also the likes of Bob Dylan, Stan Laurel, Bette Davis and everyone else they were honouring as life-affirming heroes.
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