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TL;DR:

  • “Penny Lane” was meant for The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
  • The Beatles’ producer didn’t think the title track from Sgt. Pepper was anything special.
  • The title song became a double A-side single alongside “With a Little Help From My Friends.”
A standing copy of The Beatles' 'Sgt. Pepper'
The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’ | MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images / Contributor

The Beatles‘ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was originally going to feature “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever.” The band’s producer, George Martin, said the title track of Sgt. Pepper wasn’t anything special. Subsequently, he discussed how that song changed the course of the album.

‘Penny Lane’ and ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ were left off The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’

The book The Beatles: Paperback Writer includes an excerpt from Martin’s 1979 book All You Need Is Ears. In it, Martin discusses how the album Sgt. Pepper came together. The songs “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever” were originally supposed to be part of the album.

Subsequently, The Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, said the band needed a new single. Martin decided the band should release “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever” as a double A-side single, as those were the two best songs the band wrote for the album. He felt that combo was the best single the band ever did. Ultimately, neither song appeared on Sgt. Pepper.

George Martin didn’t like the song ‘Sgt. Pepper’ much but he liked the impact it had on the album

Martin revealed what happened next. “We started work again in February 1967, and the boys began bringing in the various songs they had written,” he said. “But [the song] ‘Sgt. Pepper’ itself didn’t appear until halfway through making the album. It was Paul’s song, just an ordinary rock number and not particularly brilliant as songs go. 

“Nor was there anything difficult or special about the recording of it,” he added. “But when we had finished it, Paul said, ‘Why don’t we make the album as though the Pepper band really existed, as though Sgt. Pepper was making the record? We’ll dub in effects and things.’ 

“I loved the idea, and from that moment it was as though Pepper had a life of its own, developing of its own accord rather than through a conscious effort by The Beatles or myself to integrate it and make it a ‘concept’ album,” he continued.

Related

1 Song From The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’ Changed the English Language

The song became a single alongside The Beatles’ ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’ in the United Kingdom

The song “Sgt. Pepper” was never a single in the United States, so it never charted on the Billboard Hot 100. The tune appeared on the album of the same name, which reached No. 1 for 15 of its 233 weeks on the Billboard 200.

In the United Kingdom, “Sgt. Pepper” became a double A-side single with “With a Little Help From My Friends.” The Official Charts Company says the tunes reached No. 63 and stayed on the chart for three weeks. On the other hand, Sgt. Pepper hit No. 1 for 28 weeks. It spent a total of 277 weeks on the chart.

Martin liked the concept behind Sgt. Pepper even if he wasn’t enamored with its title track.

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