How 1 Song From The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’ Changed Amanda Palmer’s Life
The Beatles‘ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band might be the most influential album ever. One song spoke to Amanda Palmer before she even understood anything about the Fab Four. Would her art even be the same without Sgt. Pepper?
1 song from The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’ helped Amanda Palmer want to be a rock star
During a 2012 interview with The Quietus, Palmer discussed the importance of Sgt. Pepper to her. “Sgt Pepper’s was full of lyrics I could understand, stories I could follow, music that just made complete sense to me,” she said. “I understood all of it, and it took me into a world. I think that was the first time I really fell in love with a record.
“I loved ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ and ‘She’s Leaving Home,’ but one of my favorites was the opening track,” Palmer added. “What I really wanted — what I still want — was to feel like I was at some amazing happening. As a seven-year-old fantasizing about being a rock star, which I was just starting to do, every time I listened to that opening track, I imagined that somewhere there’s this group of people in this psychedelic wonderland listening to The Beatles. I didn’t have any clue who The Beatles were or what they meant, I didn’t have any f****** context. I just knew that if there was a party, this was the one I wanted to be at.”
How The Beatles were similar to Amanda Palmer
There are more connections between “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and Palmer. “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” blends elements of old (the horn sections) and new (the tune’s hard rock riffs). Beyond that, it has a whimsical air about it. It’s no surprise that Palmer felt she was listening to otherworldly music when she heard the track.
Palmer’s music also straddles the line between the old and the new, embracing a modern moral outlook and soundscapes that could have come from the Weimer Republic. Whimsy is a big part of Palmer’s appeal. She gets a lot darker than most of the material on Sgt. Pepper, but that speaks to the fact that she also draws a lot of influence from the alternative rock scene of the 1990s. Considering that she’s performed numerous covers, perhaps Palmer should take a crack at “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
How ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club band’ took over the world
Sgt. Pepper became The Beatles’ longest-running No. 1 album in the United States. It reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for 15 weeks, lasting on the chart for 495 weeks in total. It outperformed all of The Beatles’ studio albums with the exception of Abbey Road.
“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band” became a more modest hit. It wasn’t released as a single in the 1960s. However, it became a single in 1978 to promote the movie Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band, starring the Bee Gees. The tune reached No. 71 on the Billboard Hot 100 and spent seven weeks on the chart. Perhaps the track would have become a bigger hit if it was a single in the 1960s.
“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band” and it put Palmer on the path to rock stardom.
