Two perhaps tied together forever 1967 albums – The Beatles’ groundbreaking Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and The Rolling Stones’ supposed attempted copy of it, Their Satanic Majesties Request. And, to fill in the 2-hour primarily psychedelic playlist, the live side of Pink Floyd’s 1969 studio/live album Ummagumma. My thoughts on the albums appear after the track lists.
The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
1. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
2. With A Little Help From My Friends
3. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
4. Getting Better
5. Fixing A Hole
6. She’s Leaving Home
7. Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!
8. Within You Without You
9. When I’m Sixty-Four
10. Lovely Rita
11. Good Morning Good Morning
12. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)
13. A Day In The Life
The Rolling Stones – Their Satanic Majesties Request
1. Sing This All Together
2. Citadel
3. In Another Land
4. 2000 Man
5. Sing This All Together (See What Happens)
6. She’s A Rainbow
7. The Lantern
8. Gomper
9. 2000 Light Years From Home
10. On With The Show
Pink Floyd – Ummagumma (live album)
1. Astronomy Domine
2. Careful With That Axe, Eugene
3. Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun
4. A Saucerful Of Secrets
The easy established narrative about Pepper and Satanic Majesties is that The Rolling Stones were attempting – and failed – to copy The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album. That may well be but I’ve always quite honestly thought the two records, musically – and for what it’s worth this view is supported by some music critics – are quite different. And if either one was truly ‘psychedelic’ as was the thing at the time, 1967, an argument can be made that it was the Stones’ album rather than Pepper, if you really give each album a deep listen.
The Stones are doing some ‘weird shit’, certainly for them, in terms of their blues/rock/pop output to that point. It’s perhaps why Keith Richards later dismissed the album as ‘a load of crap’. I think he’s wrong about a record that came out December 8, 1967 and was originally to be called Cosmic Christmas which I think may have been a title opportunity missed, given the release date and content.
Granted, I’m a huge Rolling Stones fan but I never was into the notion that one had to like one band – Beatles or Stones – over the other. Why choose? They were/are both amazing.
Still, even as a Stones fan, I think Pepper is the better album. It’s consistent throughout as were most Beatles albums, although it’s interesting how perspective changes. I remember in my youth, I was 8 when Pepper was released, not very much liking She’s Leaving Home or George Harrison’s raga rock song Within You Without You. A friend of mine in high school said he lifted the needle on the vinyl record to move to the next track when Within You Without You came on and even by then a teenager, I could relate. Yet nearly 60 (!) years later I’ve long since embraced those tunes. Lovely Rita was dismissed by some critics as Paul McCartney lightweight stuff along with When I’m Sixty-Four but that intro to Lovely Rita just makes the song for me and the whole thing is good as is When I’m Sixty-Four. Good Morning Good Morning is another one, a John Lennon-penned tune. Album tracks most bands would kill for to have as singles. The whole record is remarkable.
Majesties is less consistent, often messy. I regularly listen to just six of its 10 tracks (which I suppose is not bad for any album) but when it’s good, it’s great. Great riff intro and ongoing throughout Citadel. Had it been released as a single people may have thought, hmm, another great Stones’ riff rocker, certainly the intro, and not even noticed they’d gone or tried to go ‘psychedelic’ on the parent album. 2000 Man (which KISS later covered), the spookily great in my opinion The Lantern, the hit single She’s A Rainbow, the Bill Wyman-penned and sung In Another Land with Mick Jagger on chorus “was this some kind of joke?” some suggested as being a dig at Wyman writing a song but it’s a good one . . . And the brilliant 2000 Light Years From Home (later covered by sludge/stoner/space rock/metal band Monster Magnet) which the Stones pulled out of mothballs and did live, with cool lighting effects, on the 1989-90 Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle North America/Europe tours.
It’s likely true that Satanic Majesties wouldn’t exist without Pepper. The Stones took cues from the Beatles, but it’s not a clone. Majesties is darker, murkier, and more unstable — a bizarro-world Pepper. And retrospective reviews, for whatever that is worth, continue to grow more positive. Some critics, in various books I own, have suggested Satanic Majesties is a path the Stones might have further pursued. We’ll never know but we do know they were always experimenting while retaining their unique stamp, witness later albums like Black And Blue with its funk/disco/salsa elements, then the hit disco single Miss You from the otherwise largely out and out rocking album Some Girls in 1978.
That leaves us with Pink Floyd and the live side of Ummagumma, which I remember my older brother by eight years bringing home when it came out. I liked the front cover of the band members changing positions in the ‘picture within a picture’ Droste effect and the back cover photo of the band’s instruments laid out, to look like a jet fighter, on an airport runway. Appropriate, since the band often headed into air/head space. Ummagumma, particularly the live album, is prime early Floyd perhaps lesser known to those who joined the Pink party with 1973’s The Dark Side Of The Moon blockbuster.