Official U.K. Albums Chart results from Sunday the 16th to Saturday the 22nd of February 1975
Cut-off for sales figures was up to the end of Saturday the 15th of February
Results counted from Sunday the 16th,
and published on Wednesday the 19th of February 1975.
The Beatles
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
At No.47, on “The Top 50 UK Albums Chart”, the week of my 3rd Birthday, is The Beatles with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
The sum of all parts…
…seriously will not rest for John, Paul, George and Ringo. That was evident last year when, during my 2nd birthday rundown, I met up with the Red and Blue albums for the first time, but this year, slap bang in the middle of this decade, the desire to revisit their past has grown to the point that it could be paralleled to be as deafening as the screams that used to greet them wherever they appeared a decade ago.
Now I could gush…
…all over this album as many have already done, but what’s the point? The story of this album has been played to death even more than the album itself, and I really don’t intend to go with the flow of all those countless others. What I will say is that, just like everyone else that first experienced this LP, and for whatever reason they did so, over the years it too became part of my DNA, to the point that (and I think many others will agree with me), not only do the tracks become unconsciously and intrinsically familiar, but so do the parts inbetween. When one song ends, I know exactly what’s coming next, the silence between each track I most probably know down to the smallest fraction of a second. Think about it. I’m willing to guess that there are many out there who could time it to perfection the moment when “She’s Leaving Home” ends, and “Being For The Benefit of Mr Kite” begins. You know who you are. For me, it also has to be played in two complete movements, as it was intended when the final sequence was laid down to stay that way forever.
All that familiarity…
…to this album though came much much later for me. At this point in my life, at the age of 3, I knew absolutely bugger all about it; and I will also confess, I’d never heard of The Beatles either. Yes, I’d heard songs on the radio, mainly from their period in the middle of the sixties, but I never knew who they were. I didn’t think to ask, I used to just like hearing a track from something like Rubber Soul. No one ever said to me who it was performing, and I never remember the DJ saying who it was either. I was probably just being busy doing whatever 3-year olds do in the mid seventies and being comfortable enough to let their music sink into my happy place.
This group were long over by the point when I even emerged into the world in 1972, and all of them seemed happy in their own spheres. So why now? Why does this milestone in their ex-band’s career turn up now? It’s not like it’s a big anniversary for the album. It had originally been released less than 8 years before, but there are clues; and one of them I mentioned at the very beginning.
At the point…
…when I first entered into this life, there was still a big fallout continuing from the members of the band, although it was beginning to subdue. Fast forward to my last birthday, and it seems the four of them were, in some shape or form, beginning to become a lot more comfortable with the whole legacy which had, for the first few years of the seventies, felt like the biggest thorn in their sides. They’d all recently collaborated on Ringo’s last album, albeit separately, with even Klaus‘ cover artwork a loose pastiche of this very LP. Paul had at last found real vindicated success on his own terms with Wings‘ last release, and John was finally arising from his lost weekend, and he had even appeared back on stage again recently to the biggest, most thunderous applause, after he became a surprise guest of Elton John at Madison Square Garden, just a couple of short months ago.
In fact he assisted in singing one his songs on that stage from this very album, and it is one I was actually familiar with, but not how The Beatles recorded it, more like I knew of Elton’s cover of it; and that brings me quickly onto the second part of the reason I think this album is back in the chart. Elton himself.
Late last year,..
…Elton John had released his own very elaborate extended take of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, which first indirectly captured my imagination for their music. However, (and I confess I have done this myself), there would have been countless others out there who steadfastly would judge and say that his version wasn’t a patch on the original and would have gone out to either buy another copy of this LP for themselves, or given it to one for their own children to prove to them that music was much better in their day, not like this modern rubbish.
So coupling this new attention for the old stuff, and the lads now getting on a lot better with each other, especially now their last manager had finally got the boot, it was undeniable that at this point in the middle of the decade, the Fabs just maybe could give their anticipatory and excitable followers the one thing they had been quietly yearning for, for past few years. They could possibly get back together again. So with rumours running rife that Paul had once again met up with John, and Ringo quite literally getting a lot of help from his friends, the past seemed to be once again catching up to them, with the biggest hint yet that everybody just wanted them all back again, just like the old days.
The album..
…had of course first entered the chart on the 28th of May 1967. That first placement came in at No.8, and it wouldn’t get that far down the chart again until the following February in 1968.
For the next twenty-three weeks after its release it sat proudly at the top of the chart, slipping only once it was well into November that first year, leaving the Top 10 in March 1968, and eventually finishing its initial run after the 25th of May.
The first time it would return to the charts would be barely a month before Abbey Road would release, and that return would only last a week at No.38 in the late summer; and that would be it for its time in the 1960s.
As the new decade dawned, so the album appeared once more in January and into February, and then it came back again at the end of February, and then again in March. In fact it turned up back in the charts ten times in total over the course of that year. No doubt in the growing response to the band’s official split.
It would show up 5 further times during the following year of 1971, and in 1972 it would appear a further nine times with some durations lasting a week or two, and others lasting over a month.
1973 shows it turning up mainly for lone one-week stays, apart from one three-week stint; and it is last year in 1974 in which it really begins to come back again, spending eighteen weeks in the chart throughout those 12 months.
It turns up once again on the 29th of December which takes it into this year, before it drops away again after the 11th of January, although it’s back again on the 19th for a week before dipping out, and then dipping back in again, for this week in February.
From here…
…it leaves again, returning at the end of March for another week, before making one more appearance for a week in the middle of August, and that’s it for 1975.
There will be lots more appearances as the years pass by, and eventually, at some point in the future, we will cross paths once again. So for now I will leave it here to carry on it’s psychedelic journey, and will meet it again for a good old catch up in due course.
Side 1
Side 2
Many thanks go to the following YouTube Channels for providing the chance to hear this music once again.
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