How Paul McCartney Came Up With the Title for The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is one of The Beatles’ best-selling albums, but also one of their most experimental. The fab four donned alter egos for the album, forming a fake band led by Sgt. Pepper. It was a bizarre concept from The Beatles, but Paul McCartney says the name for Sgt. Pepper’s came to him relatively quickly.
The Beatles created alter egos for ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’
The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. The album was experimental for its time and featured the group donning the identity of an Edwardian-era military band. The alter-ego concept came from Paul McCartney, who wanted to make an album that was more “freeing” and “liberating.” While the idea left George Harrison “cold” and “bored,” the other Beatles liked the idea, so the guitarist went along with the notion.
“I just talked to all the guys and said, ‘What do you think of this idea?’ They liked it, and I said, ‘It will mean, when I approach the mic, it’s not Paul McCartney. I don’t have to think this is a Paul McCartney song.’ So it was freeing. It was quite liberating,” McCartney said in an interview for his website. “So, you know, we didn’t keep that idea up all the time, but that was the basic idea that we would make something that was very free. Something that this other band might make, instead of doing something that we thought The Beatles ought to make.”
Paul McCartney came up with ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ for The Beatles after mishearing ‘salt and pepper’
Sgt. Pepper’s became a landmark cultural moment of the 1960s. The Beatles’ outfits on the artwork cover became iconic, along with the colorful and psychedelic sound that their fans embraced. While the concept took time to perfect, Paul McCartney said it didn’t take long for him to discover the name for Sgt. Pepper’s. The bassist was coming home on a trip with his roadie, Mal Evans, and misheard him when he asked for salt and pepper.
“What really happened was I was coming back from a trip abroad with our roadie, Mal Evans, just the two of us together on the plane. And we were eating and he mumbled to me, asked me to pass the salt and pepper. And I misheard him. He said “saltandpepper”. I go, “Sergeant Pepper?” I thought he said, “Sergeant Pepper”. I went, “Oh! Wait a minute, that’s a great idea!” So we had a laugh about it, then I started thinking about Sergeant Pepper as a character. I thought it would be a very interesting idea for us to assume alter egos for this album we were about to make.”
Shortly after discovering the name, McCartney began drawing what these characters might look like. He envisioned a scene where the fictional band received an award from “the Lord Mayor of some Northern town in a park.”
The album became one of the band’s best-selling records
While Paul McCartney devised a more experimental concept, it didn’t turn off The Beatles’ fans, as they turned out in droves to buy the group’s latest project in 1967. The album sold 2.5 million copies in its first three months, becoming the Beatles’ best-selling album at that time. It spent 27 weeks atop the Record Retailer chart in the U.K. and 15 consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. It’s still one of the best-selling albums of all time and continues to find success with remixes and remasters.
