Having summarized and taken a look at 1966, some of
the music there, the singles, and the, the album, Revolver.
Let's head in to 19 67, The spring and summer
of 1967, as I call it, on the way to the Summer of Love.
Well we talked in the last video abou, how aft,
about how after that last concert in August of 1966,
the band decides to take a break and they return to recording in December
of 1966.
During that break, each of the guys gets involved in doing something to kind
of give them some change of pace from what they've been doing with the Beatles.
Remember how they've been, been working so hard up to this point, that they hardly
ever had a day off when they weren't doing some kind of a Beatles thing.
That's part of what that thing in the Philippines was about.
They didn't want to go to this reception for Imelda Marcos, because
they finally had a day off, and they wanted to be
able to relax. And not show up at some official event.
So, now they decided they're going to take some time off.
And just kind of relax a bit.
So what they ended up doing is John
acts in a movie directed by Richard Lester, must
still be on pretty good terms with Richard
Lester, this movie called How I Won the War.
Paul writes music for a television drama called The Family Way.
George studies Sitar with Ravi Shankar. And Ringo just kind of hangs out.
He goes to Spain with John, who's filming How
I Won the War, but that's kind of boring.
He comes back home. Just kind of does his Ringo thing.
The official decision now is, that the band's touring
days are over, and the studio is now their
principal workspace.
And the next album is going to be one that they determined is going to be
an album all the way through that they,
they have to make no concessions to live performance.
At all, it's an album that could never be played live.
This is the idea that's circulating.
So as a result of this turn to the studio,
the music becomes increasingly experimental,
although we've seen plenty of experimental
stuff up to this point.
And recording and production tend to be dominated by John and Paul.
Because now really, it's about taking a John song, or a
Paul song and sort of producing it out into the finished version.
And so for Ringo and George, there really are lesser roles for them.
And when a band is gigging all the time, all four members of the band like this,
like The Beatles you know, are constantly involved in everything that's going on.
But when you're recording, one guy's writing a song,
another guy's writing a song, and the other guys are
sort of sidemen to sort of help with the
arrangement and that kind of thing, it really does create.
A different kind of balance, not only of power but also of activity.
Ringo complains about, has complained about sort of
sitting around, you know, learning to play cards,
or drinking tea most of the time, when
Lennon and McCartney were working these tunes out.
So you're starting to see the first
inklings of the split that's to come, and it happens because the basis by
which these guys had been held together. Part of it, the life gigs, is now gone.
And there's a new dynamic in the studio, and it's not the same as it was before.
And maybe is not as satisfying for two of them, as it is for the other two.
Well, the singles we're looking at in this time
coming up to the summer of 1967 are Penny Lane.
I'm back with Strawberry Fields Forever these tunes were
actually recorded fairly early on in December of 1966.
As part of what was going to be an album about
their childhood and teen years and that kind of thing in Liverpool.
When I'm 64 is another song that had been recorded early on in December.
A song that goes back to Paul's earliest days as a songwriter.
But then, it turned out that the label wanted them
to release something as soon as possible, maybe in February.
And they didn't really have any singles for them because they
sort of made this dedication to this album project and so.
They ended up releasing Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields
as a kind of a double A sided single,
but then that threw the plans for the childhood
album kind of out the window, because their policy
was not to include singles on albums that would follow.
So the idea was that Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields probably
shouldn't be on the next album and so, that kind of changed.
So, we'll talk in a minute about how the,
how the concept changed from childhood to Sergeant Pepper.
So any way, Penny Lane, the Paul song, both of these
releases A and B-side or double A-side in February of 1967.
Penny Lane goes to number one in both the US and
the UK, and as I said before deals with childhood in Liverpool.
Penny Lane is a district that the guys a district
of Liverpool that the guys John and Paul lived in.
Here's a roundabout you can see still if you take the Beatle tour in Liverpool.
See the roundabout that he talks about, you
can see the barbershop, all these various kinds
of things are still there and something, you
can imagine what they're, what they would've looked like.
Liked to his kids back in the early 60s the last the
last half of the 50s.
It uses the familiar lyric structure that we've talked
about, of the sort of unfolding of of various
images, but let me just save that for the close up when we
get to it, and talk a little bit about that more in detail.
Strawberry Fields Forever, another sort of John song that deals another song
that deals with Liverpool, and the John song that goes with it.
I guess Strawberry Fields being kind of park, that John
use to play in, and was close to where he lived.
And again, I'm going to place that you can go visit
now in Liverpool and see what, what he is talking about.
Anyway, Strawberry Fields can be seen as kind
of an extension of Tomorrow Never Knows, but
again, that's another one that we'll spend some time on in a close up coming up.
So, let's, let's get back to that then.
All You Need Is Love, when we get to the summer of 1967 is the big single of the
Summer of Love, that's not on the Sergeant Pepper Lonely Hearts Club album.
And it was the album comes out, and the single just released with
the er, at the, about the same time as All You Need Is Love.
The album is released in June of' 67.
The single is released in July, and we'll talk a little
bit about that one when we get to the close-up as well.
The B side of that is Baby, You're a Rich Man, written together by John and Paul,
a song that maybe it reflects the idea that at one point as they
were retreating from point of retreat from
public view, they considered buying an island.
Like an island off the greek coast or something like that so they'd
have some place where they could go where nobody could get to them.
So as we look at the shape of the, of The Beatles
releases over the course of 1967 leading up to the fall of 67.
We get
Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane in February
we get the release of Sergeant Pepper
in June, we got the release of All You Need Is Love in July.
And so now let's take a minute, or take the next video, dedicate the
next video To looking at Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in some detail.
[BLANK_AUDIO]