Still my favorite album of all time. It really was remarkable for its time, and remarkable in its staying power after all these years. I hear those tuning notes, the audience sounds, and then the opening crashing chords, and I am transported back to high school all over again.

Sorry, I'm from the "Dark Side of the Moon" generation.

It's hard for me to adequately describe how the word pictures and unfamiliar instruments and moods and album art broadened us...adults, teens and children, too.

My recollection is that the album appeared June, 1967, making this 48th yr anniversary. My brother was graduating from high school that night. He bought it on the way home from school and he and I were mesmerized. I was ending my 8th grade yr, full of anticipation for high school. Let's just say that we were threatened with great bodily harm if our listening pleasure made us late.

The word "twee" hadn't been invented yet, but it encapsulates how I felt about SgtP at the time. I haven't changed my mind.
There's a couple of good songs on it, but I prefer Benny Hill's version of Brit Music Hall.

I was a high school kid dumpster diving behind the local discount department store in the summer of '67. Pulled out a bag that contained the Sgt. Pepper album plus Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow, and the Buffalo Springfield album. All three LPs were unopened. Cool score.

JWM

It WAS 48 years, Karmas..... Fixed now.

Math is hard.

Meh. I'm with Smitty -- "Sgt. Pepper" is not a *bad* album by any means, and I heard it a lot when I was growing up (I was born in '62), but the album that got my attention was Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon". I don't know why, really -- it just reached out and grabbed me, for some reason. I had it on 8-track, and it would play over and over and over again as I worked my way through Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, circa 1981. To this day, I can't open the books without hearing the album, or hear the album without being transported to Middle Earth.

Hale Adams
Pikesville, People's still-mostly-Democratic Republic of Maryland

June 19th, 1974, I was working on a concrete construction job in SW FLA in the screamin hot sun and not enjoying it. Lunchtime, sitting in my Camaro eating a sub and drinking a beer with DSOTM on the Craig stereo and at a certain point I said, "Fuck this shit.", threw the sub out the window, fired up the ride and laid rubber and never went back. The next day I joined the army.

Nov 1974, I'm sitting in a squad bay at my first permanent duty station in Wildflecken Germany and DSOTM was playing LOUD from a big Pioneer stereo. A roomate walked in and handed me a lit bowl of black and white hash and unlike jethro klintin I inhaled deeply, several times. Then set back with a stupid grin on my mug mesmerized with the 6' colorful streamers coming out of the front of the speakers.

Me and DSOTM have a long history, Same with SPLHCB, and it continues.....

Some of the music from back in that time frame triggers unpleasant memories for me.
It's not all good. I guess that's why I like polka music.
Never sadness or negativity or dysfunction. No sedition or anarchy or profanity or glorification of crime and drug use.
Won't hear no polkas on the boom boxes, uh uh. All in all happy music, happiness being something which we can use more of these days.
Experts agree that polka people have divorce rates far below the national norms.

Its overrated like all Beatles stuff but a good album anyway.

I am proud to say that I never bought a Beatles album, nor do I feel any nostalgia for the period. Not that I wouldn't mind being younger for other reasons.

Much to the horror of my peers, I never was much of a Beatles fan. After they broke up, I liked some of George Harrisons stuff, but even then...I'm like Chasmatic, those days were not pleasant for me. I still will listen to something now and then, but it often brings back very unpleasant memories.

I was always a Stones man myself. The Beatles? Meh. I found I had a natural immunity to Beatlemania, which I think helped me better appreciate those relatively few songs of theirs that I did like.

Well, I'll speak up as a Beatles fan...

While I think Sgt. Pepper's is a good album, I'm more impressed with the engineering on it than anything else. It sounds way too self-indulgent to my ears ("Look what we can do!"). Granted, it was some trip stuff for the times. But then I think "Revolver" (the British version, not the U.S. version) already covered the same ground regarding songwriting and performance, plus did it better. Not the usual outlook, I'm sure, but there it is.

Now...as a cultural item...that's completely different. I don't think Sgt. Pepper's can be overstated on that front.

My uncle Louie "Letsgo" Lozko, he raised bantam chickens.
Being a leader in his field, voted Bantam Chicken Rancher of the Year two years in a row by a panel of his peers he was always ahead of the curve.
It was his collaboration with dairy farmers that led to Big Dairy playing music when the cows were being milked.
He found that polka music achieved the best results with his chickens, as did classical music for the cows.
Acid rock had no place in any of those music programs.
Imagine being stuck on an elevator with "Yellow Submarine" being played over and over again.
As you read the words I bet you're humming a few bars of it to yourself.
If I pressed the issue and got it stuck in your head you'll have it on a short tape loop for hours.

Neil Diamond is the only known cure for Beatles music stuck in your cabeza.

Yo, chas....

This'll help clear out some of that racket....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA055XMwjOc

Rob, a dose of scatological and pretentious humor doesn't do it for me.

I'd rather see Amos & Andy or Bob and Ray.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRGIF0NtBEA

An interesting observation is that without the aid of psychotropic drugs and with the nearly fifty years passing of time the Beatles and many other groups lose their appeal.
I suppose grade schoolers might find the records amusing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U_NI8axBms
I sure don't want to turn the clocks back; the Age of Aquarius didn't do jack shit for me.

I came to the party late, not discovering this until the 70's.

It's still an astonishing record, but it's astonishing for the same reason the other Beatles' albums from '65 on are astonishing: the sheer musical variety contained therein.

I agree with dwinnorcal, Revolver covered much of the music previously.

And the author of this piece seems to be unfamiliar w/ the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" which was a concept album that had a great influence on Sgt. Peppers.

Though I like Sgt. Peppers, I agree that Revolver did cover much of the same music.
I read in an interview with John Lennon after the breakup that he thought Revolver and Rubber Soul were their best efforts.
For my money as regards music from that time, I'm a Cream fan. It was a good thing the Beatles had given up touring cause Cream would have blown them off of the stage.

"... Revolver and Rubber Soul were their best efforts."

I agree.

And Sgt. Rutters was even better http://www.rutles.org/rpix/srodcb.jpg

I agree with dwinnorcal, Revolver covered much of the music previously.