365: One Animated Film, Shot One Second a Day, Over One Year

in Animation | January 14th, 2015

Back in Sep­tem­ber, we high­light­ed an ani­ma­tion that humor­ous­ly imag­ined David Bowie and Bri­an Eno’s col­lab­o­ra­tion on the song, “Warsza­wa,” which even­tu­al­ly appeared on the album, Low. The car­toon was cre­at­ed by The Broth­ers McLeod, and they’re now back with an ani­ma­tion called “365 — One Year, One Film, One Sec­ond a Day.” The title pret­ty much says it all. But if you want more back­ground infor­ma­tion, here’s how Vimeo frames the clip: “Greg [McLeod] ani­mat­ed one sec­ond of ani­ma­tion every day for the 365 days of the year 2013. There was no sto­ry­line, script or sto­ry­board. The ideas come from things read, seen or expe­ri­enced on the day, with a lit­tle artis­tic license for good mea­sure.” The result you can watch above. Also find dai­ly stills from the project on Face­book.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

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George Lucas Shoots a Cinema Verité-Style Documentary on Francis Ford Coppola (1969)

in Film | January 14th, 2015

In 1968, years before Amer­i­can Graf­fi­ti, Raiders of the Lost Ark and, shud­der, the Star Wars pre­quels, George Lucas was a strug­gling film­mak­er with a cou­ple of exper­i­men­tal films movies under his belt. His short Elec­tron­ic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB took first prize at the Nation­al Stu­dent Film Fes­ti­val, but he had yet to make the plunge into fea­ture films. So he did what many oth­er artists and cre­ative types did in the past – he glommed onto a more suc­cess­ful friend.

The friend in this case was Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, who by 1968 had already direct­ed three fea­tures and was start­ing pro­duc­tion of his lat­est movie, The Rain Peo­ple. Lucas talked his friend into let­ting him shoot a behind-the-scenes doc­u­men­tary about the pro­duc­tion. The result­ing doc, Film­mak­er –A Diary By George Lucas, is a fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­ment of the ear­ly days of New Hol­ly­wood and the strug­gles of get­ting an inde­pen­dent movie made. You can watch it above.

Shot in a ciné­ma vérité mat­ter, Lucas cap­tures Cop­po­la at his most charm­ing, cre­ative and pas­sion­ate – deal­ing with the stu­dios over the phone, con­sult­ing with a baby-faced James Caan on set and strug­gling to shoot a scene while bat­tling the stom­ach flu. He was even forced to shave his trade­mark beard so as not to upset any of the local anti-hip­py con­stab­u­lar­ies. The film shows Cop­po­la mak­ing up the film as he went along. At one point, he re-writes a scene to incor­po­rate an actu­al local parade. Film­mak­er makes an inter­est­ing con­trast with that oth­er Cop­po­la doc­u­men­tary, Hearts of Dark­ness, made on the set of Apoc­a­lypse Now. Here he’s filled with a youth­ful vig­or that in Hearts, deep in the jun­gles of the Philip­pines, has trans­formed into half-mad ego­ma­nia. Of course, the shoot for Rain Peo­ple was­n’t any­where near as epic or dis­as­trous as Apoc­a­lypse.

On set, Lucas shot and record­ed sound for the doc all by him­self and gen­er­al­ly made him­self as unob­tru­sive as pos­si­ble. “George was around in a very qui­et way,” recalled Rain Peo­ple pro­duc­er Ron Col­by. “You’d look around and sud­den­ly there’d be George in a cor­ner with his cam­era. He’d just kind of drift around.”

The movie proved to be valu­able for Lucas’s con­fi­dence as a film­mak­er. He lat­er described mak­ing the movie as “more ther­a­py than any­thing else. “At night, after pro­duc­tion had wrapped for the day, Lucas would go off to write the script to his first fea­ture THX-1138.

Film­mak­er final­ly pre­miered in 1977, the year that Lucas released Star Wars and com­plete­ly stepped out from the shad­ow of his friend and men­tor Cop­po­la.

An alter­na­tive ver­sion can be found on Youtube here. Oth­er great films can be found in our rich col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Via Devour/Kit­bashed

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Star Wars Bor­rowed From Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Great Samu­rai Films

Frei­heit, George Lucas’ Short Stu­dent Film About a Fatal Run from Com­mu­nism (1966)

Watch the Very First Trail­ers for Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back & Return of the Jedi (1976–83)

Joseph Camp­bell and Bill Moy­ers Break Down Star Wars as an Epic, Uni­ver­sal Myth

Hun­dreds of Fans Col­lec­tive­ly Remade Star Wars; Now They Remake The Empire Strikes Back

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Allen Ginsberg Sings the Poetry of William Blake (1970)

in Music, Poetry | January 14th, 2015

There was once a time, if you can believe it, when Allen Gins­berg could take the poet­ry of William Blake, sing it in a record­ing stu­dio, and then MGM Records would release it as a long-play­ing album. I refer to the time, of course, of “the six­ties,” that half-myth­i­cal era that seems to have run from around 1966 to 1972. Smack in the mid­dle of the six­ties, thus defined, came this dis­tinc­tive release, Songs of Inno­cence and Expe­ri­ence by William Blake, tuned by Allen Gins­berg, record­ed in Decem­ber 1969 and released in 1970.

Songs_of_Innocence_and_of_Experience_copy_L_object_36_The_Tyger_1795

Every read­er famil­iar with Blake, of course, knows Songs of Inno­cence and of Expe­ri­ence as a book, an illus­trat­ed col­lec­tion of poems first self-pub­lished in 1789 and in 1794 re-issued and expand­ed as Songs of Inno­cence and of Expe­ri­ence Show­ing the Two Con­trary States of the Human Soul. This work of an 18th-cen­tu­ry poet cap­tured the imag­i­na­tion of the 20th-cen­tu­ry poet Gins­berg, and not just as read­ing mate­r­i­al; he came to believe that not only did Blake intend his words to be sung, but that he him­self could ren­der them faith­ful­ly in song — as well as play the piano and har­mo­ni­um in accom­pa­ni­ment.

You can hear hear the fruit of Gins­berg’s musi­cal-poet­ic recon­struc­tive labors at the top of the post, at the Inter­net Archive, or at PennSound, which not only offers each track indi­vid­u­al­ly but also its lyrics and some­times even links to the cor­re­spond­ing page from the orig­i­nal book at the William Blake Archive. When we think of six­ties-defin­ing albums, we think of Blonde on Blonde, Are You Expe­ri­enced?, Sgt, Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band, that sort of thing, and right­ly so, but a project like Songs of Inno­cence and Expe­ri­ence by William Blake, tuned by Allen Gins­berg speaks just as much to what became pos­si­ble in that artis­tic Cam­bri­an explo­sion of an era.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William Blake’s Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Illus­tra­tions of John Milton’s Par­adise Lost

Hear Allen Ginsberg’s Short Free Course on Shakespeare’s Play, The Tem­pest (1980)

Allen Ginsberg’s “Celes­tial Home­work”: A Read­ing List for His Class “Lit­er­ary His­to­ry of the Beats”

Allen Ginsberg’s Last Three Days on Earth as a Spir­it: The Poet’s Final Days Cap­tured in a 1997 Film

Allen Gins­berg Record­ings Brought to the Dig­i­tal Age. Lis­ten to Eight Full Tracks for Free

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Vladimir Nabokov Names the Greatest (and Most Overrated) Novels of the 20th Century

in Literature | January 14th, 2015

Just above, hear émi­gré Russ­ian nov­el­ist Vladimir Nabokov, author of Loli­ta read the open­ing sen­tences of that nov­el in both Eng­lish and Russ­ian, after offer­ing some brief com­ments on his rela­tion­ship to his for­mer native coun­try. Then, after a few min­utes of dis­cus­sion of a work that became incor­po­rat­ed into his Ada or Ardor: A Fam­i­ly Chron­i­cle, we get Nabokov the can­tan­ker­ous crit­ic. Or rather, Nabokov, the crit­ic of crit­ics. The author had lit­tle regard for crit­ics them­selves. In a Paris Review inter­view, he opines that the only pur­pose of lit­er­ary crit­i­cism was that it “gives read­ers, includ­ing the author of the book, some infor­ma­tion about the critic’s intel­li­gence, or hon­esty, or both.” In the filmed inter­view above (at the 3:24 mark), Nabokov points his lance at the inflat­ed pop­u­lar notion of “great books”:

I’ve been per­plexed and amused by fab­ri­cat­ed notions about so-called “great books.” That, for instance, Mann’s asi­nine Death in Venice, or Pasternak’s melo­dra­mat­ic, vile­ly writ­ten Doc­tor Zhiva­go, or Faulkner’s corn­cob­by chron­i­cles can be con­sid­ered mas­ter­pieces, or at least what jour­nal­ists term “great books,” is to me the same sort of absurd delu­sion as when a hyp­no­tized per­son makes love to a chair.

That Loli­ta reg­u­lar­ly tops such “great books” lists, such as the Mod­ern Library’s “100 Best Nov­els,” would hard­ly have impressed its author.

Nonethe­less, after his take­down of such ven­er­at­ed names as Thomas Mann, Boris Paster­nak, and the “corn­cob­by” William Faulkn­er, Nabokov doesn’t hes­i­tate to name his “great­est mas­ter­pieces of 20th cen­tu­ry prose.” They are, in this order:

1) James Joyce’s Ulysses

2) Kafka’s The Meta­mor­pho­sis

3) Andrei Bely’s St. Peters­burg

4) The first half of Proust’s fairy tale, In Search of Lost Time

So there you have it, from the mouth of the mas­ter him­self. Should you hang in there for the next clip, you will hear Nabokov read from his note­book titled “Things I Detest.” How seri­ous­ly we are to take any of this is hard to say—one nev­er real­ly knows with Nabokov.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vladimir Nabokov (Chan­nelled by Christo­pher Plum­mer) Teach­es Kaf­ka at Cor­nell

Vladimir Nabokov Mar­vels Over Dif­fer­ent “Loli­ta” Book Cov­ers

The Note­cards on Which Vladimir Nabokov Wrote Loli­ta: A Look Inside the Author’s Cre­ative Process

Vladimir Nabokov Cre­ates a Hand-Drawn Map of James Joyce’s Ulysses

Vladimir Nabokov’s Delight­ful But­ter­fly Draw­ings

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Buddhism 101: A Short Introductory Lecture by Jorge Luis Borges

in Literature, Religion | January 14th, 2015

In 1977, eru­dite Argen­tine writer Jorge Luis Borges deliv­ered a series of sev­en lec­tures in Buenos Aires on a vari­ety of top­ics, includ­ing Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy, night­mares, and the Kab­bal­ah. (The lec­ture series is col­lect­ed in an Eng­lish trans­la­tion enti­tled Sev­en Nights.) One of the lec­tures is sim­ply called “Bud­dhism,” and in it, Borges presents an overview of the ancient East­ern reli­gion. Borges had pre­vi­ous­ly made scat­tered ref­er­ence to Bud­dhist sub­jects in his writ­ing, though he cer­tain­ly nev­er devot­ed as much atten­tion to it as he did Catholi­cism or Judaism, a faith and her­itage he found end­less­ly fas­ci­nat­ing and admirable.

His por­trait of Bud­dhism, though much less in depth, is no less sym­pa­thet­ic. The lec­ture is adapt­ed, it seems, from a short book writ­ten the pre­vi­ous year, Qué es el Bud­is­mo?, a “clear and con­cise expla­na­tion of the reli­gion, its val­ue sys­tems, and how some of its prin­ci­pal teach­ings share some sim­i­lar­i­ties with oth­er faiths.” So writes the blog Vague­ly Bor­ge­sian, who also com­ment that Borges’ book—and by exten­sion the lecture—“rarely goes beyond what one might find on say a Wikipedia arti­cle on Bud­dhism.” That may be so, but—as we can see in this Eng­lish trans­la­tion of Borges’ lec­ture—the author does sev­er­al times dur­ing his sum­ma­ry offer some dis­tinct­ly Bor­ge­sian com­men­tary of his own. Below are just a few excerpts:

Buddism’s Tol­er­ance:

[Buddhism’s] longevi­ty can be explained for his­tor­i­cal rea­sons, but such rea­sons are for­tu­itous or, rather, they are debat­able, fal­li­ble. I think there are two fun­da­men­tal caus­es. The first is Buddhism’s tol­er­ance. That strange tol­er­ance does not cor­re­spond, as is the case with oth­er reli­gions, to dis­tinct epochs: Bud­dism was always tol­er­ant.

It has nev­er had recourse to steel or fire, has nev­er thought that steel or fire were per­sua­sive…. A good Bud­dhist can be Luther­an, or Methodist, or Calvin­ist, or Sin­toist, or Taoist, or Catholic; he can be a pros­e­lyte to Islam or Judaism, with com­plete free­dom. But it is not per­mis­si­ble for a Chris­t­ian, a Jew or a Mus­lim to be a Bud­dhist.

On the His­tor­i­cal Exis­tence of the Bud­dha:

We may dis­be­lieve this leg­end. I have a Japan­ese friend, a Zen Bud­dhist, with whom I have had long and friend­ly argu­ments. I told him that I believed in the his­toric truth of Bud­dha. I believed and I believe that two thou­sand five hun­dred years ago there was a Nepalese prince called Sid­dhar­ta or Gau­ta­ma who became the Bud­dha, that is, the Awok­en, the Lucid One – as opposed to us who are asleep or who are dream­ing this long dream which is life. I remem­ber one of Joyce’s phras­es: “His­to­ry is a night­mare from which I want to awake.” Well then, Sid­dhar­ta, at thir­ty years of age, awoke and became Bud­dha. 

On Bud­dhism and Belief:

The oth­er reli­gions demand much more creduli­ty on our part. If we are Chris­tians we must believe that one of the three per­sons of the Divin­i­ty con­de­scend­ed to become a man and was cru­ci­fied in Judea. If we are Mus­lims we must believe that there is no oth­er god than God and that Moham­mad is his apos­tle. We can be good Bud­dhists and deny that Bud­dha exist­ed. Or, rather, we may think, we must think that our belief in his­to­ry isn’t impor­tant: what is impor­tant is to believe in the Doc­trine. Nev­er­the­less, the leg­end of Bud­dha is so beau­ti­ful that we can­not help but refer to it.

Borges has much more to say in the full lec­ture on Bud­dhist cos­mol­o­gy and his­to­ry. He con­cludes with the very respect­ful state­ment below:

What I have said today is frag­men­tary. It would have been absurd for me to have expound­ed on a doc­trine to which I have ded­i­cat­ed many years – and of which I have under­stood lit­tle, real­ly – with a wish to show a muse­um piece. Bud­dhism is not a muse­um piece for me: it is a path to sal­va­tion. Not for me, but for mil­lions of peo­ple. It is the most wide­ly held reli­gion in the world and I believe that I have treat­ed it with respect when explain­ing it tonight.

To learn more about Borges and Bud­dhism, see this arti­cle, and the watch the video above, a short intro­duc­tion to a lec­ture course giv­en by Borges’ friend Amelia Bar­ili at UC Berke­ley.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Jorge Luis Borges’ Favorite Short Sto­ries (Read 7 Free Online)

Borges Explains The Task of Art

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Daily Routines of Famous Creative People, Presented in an Interactive Infographic

in Creativity, Productivity | January 13th, 2015

creative people infographic
Click the image above to access the inter­ac­tive info­graph­ic.
The dai­ly life of great authors, artists and philoso­phers has long been the sub­ject of fas­ci­na­tion among those who look upon their work in awe. After all, life can often feel like, to quote Elbert Hub­bard, “one damned thing after anoth­er” — a con­stant mud­dle of oblig­a­tions and respon­si­bil­i­ties inter­spersed with moments of fleet­ing plea­sure, wrapped in gnaw­ing low-lev­el exis­ten­tial pan­ic. (Or, at least, it does to me.) Yet some peo­ple man­age to tran­scend this per­pet­u­al bar­rage of office meet­ings, com­muter traf­fic and the unholy allure of real­i­ty TV to cre­ate bril­liant work. It’s easy to think that the key to their suc­cess is how they struc­ture their day.

Mason Currey’s blog-turned-book Dai­ly Rit­u­als describes the worka­day life of great minds from W.H. Auden to Immanuel Kant, from Flan­nery O’Connor to Franz Kaf­ka. The one thing that Currey’s project under­lines is that there is no mag­ic bul­let. The dai­ly rou­tines are as var­ied as the peo­ple who fol­low them– though long walks, a ridicu­lous­ly ear­ly wake up time and a stiff drink are com­mon to many.

One school of thought for cre­at­ing is summed up by Gus­tave Flaubert’s max­im, “Be reg­u­lar and order­ly in your life, so that you may be vio­lent and orig­i­nal in your work.” Haru­ki Muraka­mi has a famous­ly rigid rou­tine that involves get­ting up at 4am and writ­ing for nine hours straight, fol­lowed by a dai­ly 10km run. “The rep­e­ti­tion itself becomes the impor­tant thing; it’s a form of mes­merism. I mes­mer­ize myself to reach a deep­er state of mind. But to hold to such rep­e­ti­tion for so long—six months to a year—requires a good amount of men­tal and phys­i­cal strength. In that sense, writ­ing a long nov­el is like sur­vival train­ing. Phys­i­cal strength is as nec­es­sary as artis­tic sen­si­tiv­i­ty.” He admits that his sched­ule allows lit­tle room for a social life.

Then there’s the fan­tas­ti­cal­ly pro­lif­ic Bel­gian author George Simenon, who some­how man­aged to crank out 425 books over the course of his career. He would go for weeks with­out writ­ing, fol­lowed by short bursts of fren­zied activ­i­ty. He would also wear the same out­fit every­day while work­ing on his nov­el, reg­u­lar­ly take tran­quil­iz­ers and some­how find the time to have sex with up to four dif­fer­ent women a day.

Most writ­ers fall some­where in between. Toni Mor­ri­son, for instance, has a rou­tine that that seems far more relat­able than the super­man sched­ules of Muraka­mi or Sime­on. Since she jug­gled rais­ing two chil­dren and a full time job as an edi­tor at Ran­dom House, Mor­ri­son sim­ply wrote when she could. “I am not able to write reg­u­lar­ly,” she once told The Paris Review. “I have nev­er been able to do that—mostly because I have always had a nine-to-five job. I had to write either in between those hours, hur­ried­ly, or spend a lot of week­end and predawn time.”

Above is a way cool info­graph­ic of the dai­ly rou­tines of 26 dif­fer­ent cre­ators, cre­at­ed by Podio.com. And if you want to see an inter­ac­tive ver­sion of the same graph­ic but with rollover bits of triv­ia, just click here. You’ll learn that Voltaire slept only 4 hours a day and worked con­stant­ly. Vic­tor Hugo pre­ferred to take a morn­ing ice bath on his roof. And Maya Angelou pre­ferred to work in an anony­mous hotel room.

via Thi­sis­Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dai­ly Habits of High­ly Pro­duc­tive Philoso­phers: Niet­zsche, Marx & Immanuel Kant

John Updike’s Advice to Young Writ­ers: ‘Reserve an Hour a Day’

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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50 Years of Changing David Bowie Hair Styles in One Animated GIF

in Music | January 13th, 2015

bowie hair 2

Last sum­mer we time trav­eled back to 1964 and showed you the very first TV appear­ance of David Bowie. Here, we found Bowie, only 17 years old, pre­sent­ing him­self as the spokesman for “The Soci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to Long-Haired Men.” Long hair was­n’t wide­ly accept­ed in the Eng­land of 1964, and, with a touch of humor, Bowie was tak­ing a stand. “I think we’re all fair­ly tol­er­ant, but for the last two years we’ve had com­ments like ‘Dar­ling!’ and ‘Can I car­ry your hand­bag?’ thrown at us, and I think it just has to stop now.”

Bowie’s obses­sion with hair nev­er went away. Cre­ative hair­styles would come and go through­out the years. And they’re all on dis­play in an ani­mat­ed gif, which Helen Green pub­lished on her Tum­blr last week to cel­e­brate the musi­cian’s 68th birth­day.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 17-Year-Old David Bowie Defends “Long-Haired Men” in His First TV Inter­view (1964)

David Bowie and Cher Sing Duet of “Young Amer­i­cans” and Oth­er Songs on 1975 Vari­ety Show

David Bowie Sings ‘I Got You Babe’ with Mar­i­anne Faith­full in His Last Per­for­mance As Zig­gy Star­dust

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Inside the Making of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band, Rock’s Great Concept Album

in Music | January 13th, 2015

The Bea­t­les’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Heart’s Club Band may or may not still be the “great­est rock album of all time,” but—as the pre­sen­ter in the doc­u­men­tary above remarks—it most cer­tain­ly is “an extra­or­di­nary mir­ror of its age.” The album also marks sev­er­al great leaps for­ward in stu­dio record­ing tech­niques and pop song­writ­ing, as well as pro­duc­tion time and cost. Sgt. Pepper’s took five months to make and cost 40,000 pounds. By con­trast, the first Bea­t­les album, Please Please Me, was record­ed live in a sin­gle day for a cost of about 400 pounds.

The band decid­ed to make such invest­ments in the stu­dio after becom­ing fed up with con­stant tour­ing. In addi­tion to the gru­el­ing sched­ule, John Lennon had alien­at­ed many of the band’s reli­gious Amer­i­can fans with the flip­pant “more pop­u­lar than Jesus” remark. And in the Philip­pines, they failed to turn up for an event put on by Fer­di­nand Mar­cos, offend­ing both the dic­ta­tor and his wife; they “bare­ly escaped with their lives,” we’re told above. Fur­ther­more, ampli­fi­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy being what it was at the time, there was no pos­si­bil­i­ty of the band’s sound on stage com­pet­ing with the vol­ume of scream­ing fans in the sta­di­um crowds, and they found them­selves near­ly drowned out at every show.

They retreat­ed somewhat—Harrison to India to work with Ravi Shankar, Lennon to Spain to work with film­mak­er Richard Lester—until they were ral­lied by Paul McCart­ney, whom Ringo calls “the worka­holic” of the band. Hav­ing firm­ly decid­ed to leave the road behind for good, says McCart­ney, they “very much felt that it could be done bet­ter from a record than from any­where else,” that “the record could go on tour.” Record­ing began on Novem­ber 24, 1966 with “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er,” a track that didn’t even appear on the album, but on its fol­low-up, Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour.

We’re treat­ed in the doc­u­men­tary to the orig­i­nal record­ing of the song, with com­men­tary from George Mar­tin, who explains that record­ing tech­nol­o­gy at the time was “in a prim­i­tive state,” only just enter­ing the mul­ti­track stage. Lim­it­ed to four tracks at a time, engi­neers could not sep­a­rate each instru­ment onto its own indi­vid­ual track as they do today but were forced to com­bine them. This lim­i­ta­tion forced musi­cians and pro­duc­ers to make firm deci­sions about arrange­ments and com­mit to them with a kind of dis­ci­pline that has gone by the way­side with the ease and con­ve­nience of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy. Mar­tin talks at length about the mak­ing of each of the songs on the album, patient­ly explain­ing how they came to sound the way they do.

As a musi­cian and occa­sion­al engi­neer myself, I find that the heart of the doc­u­men­tary is these moments with Mar­tin as he plays back the record­ings, track by track, enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly recount­ing the pro­duc­tion process. But there’s much more here to inspire fans, includ­ing inter­views with the clas­si­cal musi­cians who played on the album, sto­ries from Paul, George, and Ringo about the writ­ing and devel­op­ment of the songs, and even an inter­view with reclu­sive Beach Boy and stu­dio wiz­ard Bri­an Wil­son about his Pet Sounds, an exper­i­men­tal pre­cur­sor and inspi­ra­tion for Sgt. Pepper’s. We do not hear much about that famous album cov­er, but you can read all about it here.

For Paul McCart­ney, “the big dif­fer­ence” Sgt. Pepper’s made was that pre­vi­ous­ly “peo­ple played it a bit safe in pop­u­lar music.” The Bea­t­les “sud­den­ly real­ized you didn’t have to.” Over the next few months, they cob­bled togeth­er their per­son­al influ­ences into a glo­ri­ous pas­tiche of rock, pop, bal­ladeer­ing, vaude­vil­lian show tunes, psy­che­del­ic stu­dio exper­i­men­ta­tion, tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing jin­gles, and Indi­an and sym­phon­ic music—creating the world’s first con­cept album. Noth­ing like it had ever been heard before, and it may not be too much of a stretch to say that near­ly every pop record since owes some debt, how­ev­er small, to Sgt. Pepper’s, whether by way of the song­writ­ing, the con­cep­tu­al inge­nu­ity, or the stu­dio exper­i­men­ta­tion. To see the influ­ence the album had on a hand­ful of pop­u­lar Eng­lish musi­cians forty years lat­er, watch the BBC tele­vi­sion spe­cial above, pro­duced in hon­or of the album’s for­ti­eth anniver­sary and fea­tur­ing bands like Travis, the Mag­ic Num­bers, and the Kaiser Chiefs cov­er­ing the album in its entire­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er Demos: The Mak­ing of a Bea­t­les Clas­sic (1966)

The Bea­t­les: Unplugged Col­lects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)

The Mak­ing (and Remak­ing) of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, Arguably the Great­est Rock Album of All Time

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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