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

Walk into any gui­tar store, any­where in the world, and you’re like­ly to hear the strains of one, or both, of two songs: Guns n’ Ros­es’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine” and Led Zeppelin’s “Stair­way to Heav­en.” (Some gui­tar shops sup­pos­ed­ly banned the lat­ter sev­er­al years ago.) Why are these so pop­u­lar with bud­ding play­ers? Per­haps it’s because they have two of the most mem­o­rable gui­tar intros in rock his­to­ry.

But only one of those intros might be lift­ed almost whole­sale from anoth­er song, at least if you ask the estate of Randy Cal­i­for­nia. Heirs of the late gui­tarist and co-founder of the band Spir­it have claimed for years that the del­i­cate acoustic melody that opens Zeppelin’s song came direct­ly from California’s tune “Tau­rus.” The law­suit is ongo­ing, and maybe not with­out some mer­it.

But all that aside (and what song, after all, doesn’t at least ref­er­ence anoth­er?), “Stair­way” is a phe­nom­e­nal piece of song­writ­ing, with its Celtic folk under­tones and orches­tral crescen­dos. So how, apart from some bor­row­ing, did Zep­pelin gui­tarist Jim­my Page come to write it? You can hear the sto­ry from the man him­self above. Page talks about the use of recorders in the song’s “exposed acoustic” intro to give it a “slight­ly medieval feel.” Giv­en the num­ber of Lord of the Rings ref­er­ences in Robert Plant’s lyrics, this seems only fit­ting. Mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist bass play­er John Paul Jones came up with the idea for the recorders, Page tells us, and played them him­self. (Page would have gone with “the tex­ture of elec­tric piano”).

Page offers many oth­er fas­ci­nat­ing tid­bits on the moody, lay­ered “Stair­way.” To hear what it sound­ed like at first, before the sto­ried album version’s cav­ernous pro­duc­tion, lis­ten to the ear­ly acoustic demo above. Page and Plant com­posed the rudi­ments while vaca­tion­ing in Wales at a cot­tage called Bron Yr Aur (now a famous pil­grim­age site for fans). Record­ing ses­sions took place in 1970 and 71 at Bas­ing Street Stu­dios in Lon­don and Headley Grange in Hamp­shire, where the band lived at the time. Zep­pelin debuted “Stair­way” live at Belfast’s Ulster Hall on March 5, 1971, with Page play­ing his many parts on a Gib­son dou­ble-necked gui­tar. You can hear that first per­for­mance, and the some­what tepid audi­ence response, in the muf­fled record­ing below.

Accord­ing to John Paul Jones, the crowd was “all bored to tears wait­ing to hear some­thing they knew.” Nonethe­less, “Stair­way to Heav­en” became the band’s “most request­ed song ever played on Amer­i­can radio” and was “includ­ed at every sub­se­quent Zep­pelin show.” Though it may be the most over­played song of all time, “Stair­way” has cer­tain­ly earned it sta­tus as a rock ‘n’ roll mile­stone. As Page says at the top, the record­ing cap­tures the band in their most inspired moment, a time when they did “noth­ing but eat, sleep, and make music.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘Stair­way to Heav­en’: Watch a Mov­ing Trib­ute to Led Zep­pelin at The Kennedy Cen­ter

Delet­ed Scene from Almost Famous: Mom, “Stair­way to Heav­en” is Based on the Lit­er­a­ture of Tolkien

Zep­pelin Took My Blues Away: An Illus­trat­ed His­to­ry of Zeppelin’s “Copy­right Indis­cre­tions”

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

When our favorite musi­cians leave us, whether they die young or live to ripe old age, we’re guar­an­teed to keep dis­cov­er­ing new mate­r­i­al from them. Some­times this hap­pens through the ques­tion­able remix­ing of their unfin­ished work, and the results can be dis­ap­point­ing, if not down­right dis­re­spect­ful. More often, we’re treat­ed to hours of rough demos, home and con­cert record­ings, and alter­nate takes. And while these may not always live up to the pol­ished stu­dio ver­sions, they nonethe­less open intrigu­ing win­dows into the cre­ative process of artists we love and admire.

In the case of Kurt Cobain, we’ve heard for a cou­ple of years about unre­leased demos for a solo album the Nir­vana front­man sup­pos­ed­ly had in the works before his sui­cide in 1994. What might it have sound­ed like?

Well, it might have sound­ed some­thing like Cobain’s wife’s band, Hole—or at least like their song “Old Age,” released that same year with the sin­gle “Vio­let.” Cobain wrote the song and record­ed his own acoustic demo, which you can hear at the top. Dis­sat­is­fied, he gave it away to Court­ney Love. Just above, hear anoth­er acoustic home demo, “Do Re Mi,” that Hole co-founder Eric Erland­son told Fuse offers a hint of what might have been.

Until, if ever, the actu­al record­ings of Cobain’s planned solo album come out, we can only spec­u­late. But whether or not the noto­ri­ous­ly intro­vert­ed singer would approve, we do have many more acoustic demos and home record­ings of songs we know and songs we prob­a­bly don’t. Many of these appear on the Nir­vana box set With the Lights Out, which, in addi­tion to con­tain­ing “Old Age” and “Do Re Mi,” has acoustic ver­sions of In Utero’s “Rape Me,” “Pen­ny­roy­al Tea,” and “All Apolo­gies” (above).

What you won’t hear on the box set is the song above, “Cre­ation,” a home demo Cobain made in the late eight­ies, using a 4‑track recorder to mix his vocals with a bassline and drum­ming on suit­cas­es. This track appears on an unof­fi­cial 4 CD boot­leg set called Nir­vana: The Cho­sen Rejects along­side a good many demo tracks from Cobain’s first band, the obnox­ious­ly-named Fecal Mat­ter, which he formed with future Melvins drum­mer Dale Crover in Aberdeen, Wash­ing­ton.

“Cre­ation” presages the dron­ing, rhyth­mic melod­i­cism that became the hall­mark of Cobain’s Nir­vana song­writ­ing. But as for that sad­ly abort­ed solo album, it seems the singer may have been mov­ing into some very eclec­tic ter­ri­to­ry indeed. Cobain, says Erland­son, “was head­ed in a direc­tion that was real­ly cool. It would have been his White Album.” Alas.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nir­vana Plays in a Radio Shack, the Day After Record­ing its First Demo Tape (1988)

Nirvana’s Home Videos: An Inti­mate Look at the Band’s Life Away From the Spot­light (1988)

Hear Dave Grohl’s First Foo Fight­ers Demo Record­ings, As Kurt Cobain Did in 1992

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

We have a thing for the ear­ly days of The Ramones.

Exhib­it A: We’ve fea­tured footage of one of their ear­li­est live shows per­formed at CBGB in 1974. And then comes anoth­er from 1977.

Exhib­it B: We’ve also dug up raw demo record­ings from their debut album (1975).

Now Exhib­it C: It’s a no-bs press release that announced the arrival of the band, and what it’s all about. Writ­ten by Tom­my Ramone (the drum­mer who died last sum­mer, but only after out­liv­ing all of the oth­er orig­i­nal band mem­bers), the one-pager describes The Ramones suc­cinct­ly: “The Ramones are an orig­i­nal Rock and Roll group of 1975, and their songs are brief, to the point and every one a poten­tial hit sin­gle.” And with a lit­tle bit of humor. “The Ramones all orig­i­nate from For­est Hills and kids who grew up there either became musi­cians, degen­er­ates or den­tists. The Ramones are a lit­tle of each. Their sound is not unlike a fast drill on a rear molar.”

You can click the press release above to read it in a larg­er for­mat. Or read the tran­script below.

The Ramones are not an oldies group, they are not a glit­ter group, they don’t play boo­gie music and they don’t play the blues. The Ramones are an orig­i­nal Rock and Roll group of 1975, and their songs are brief, to the point and every one a poten­tial hit sin­gle.

The quar­tette con­sists of John­ny, Joey, Dee Dee, and Tom­my Ramone, John­ny, the gui­tarist, plays with such force that his sound has been com­pared to a hun­dred how­itzers going off. Joey, the lead singer, is an arch vil­lain whose lanky frame stands threat­en­ing cen­ter stage. Dee Dee is Bass gui­tar and the acknowl­edged hand­some one of the group, and Tom­my is the drum­mer whose pul­sat­ing play­ing launch­es the throb­bing sound of the band.

The Ramones all orig­i­nate from For­est Hills and kids who grew up there either became musi­cians, degen­er­ates or den­tists. The Ramones are a lit­tle of each. Their sound is not unlike a fast drill on a rear molar.

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Relat­ed Con­tent

Hear The Ramones’ Raw Demo Record­ings For Their Debut Album (1975)

Hear Joey Ramone Sing a Piece by John Cage Adapt­ed from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake

Pat­ti Smith Plays Songs by The Ramones, Rolling Stones, Lou Reed & More on CBGB’s Clos­ing Night (2006)