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
14. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Documentary

John Lennon – lead, harmony and background vocals; lead, rhythm and acoustic guitars; Hammond organ and piano; bass guitar; handclaps, harmonica, tape loops, sound effects and kazoo; tambourine and maracas
Paul McCartney – lead, harmony and background vocals; lead electric and acoustic guitars; bass guitar; piano and Hammond organ; handclaps, vocalizations, tape loops, sound effects and kazoo
George Harrison – lead, rhythm, acoustic and bass guitars; sitar; lead, harmony and background vocals; tamboura; harmonica and kazoo; handclaps; maracas
Ringo Starr – drums, congas, tambourine, maracas, handclaps and tubular bells; lead vocals; harmonica and kazoo; final piano E chord

Additional musicians and production team

Neil Aspinall – tamboura and harmonica
Geoff Emerick – recording and mixing engineer; tape loops and sound effects
Mal Evans – counting, alarm clock and final piano E chord
Matthew Deyell – tambourine
George Martin – producer and mixer; tape loops and sound effects; harpsichord (on "Fixing a Hole"), harmonium, Lowry organ and glockenspiel (on "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!"), Hammond organ (on "With a Little Help from My Friends"), and piano (on "Getting Better" and the solo in "Lovely Rita"); final harmonium chord.

Four French horns on "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", arranged and conducted by Martin and McCartney; string section and harp on "She's Leaving Home", arranged by Mike Leander and conducted by Martin; harmonium, tabla, sitar, dilruba, eight violins and four cellos on "Within You, Without You", arranged and conducted by Harrison and Martin; clarinet trio on "When I'm Sixty Four", as arranged and conducted by Martin and McCartney; saxophone sextet on "Good Morning, Good Morning", arranged and conducted by Martin and Lennon; and forty-piece orchestra (strings, brass, woodwinds and percussion) on "A Day in the Life", arranged by Martin, Lennon and McCartney and conducted by Martin and McCartney

Recorded at Abbey Road Studios, London, England, between 6 December 1966 – 21 April 1967

Produced by George Martin.

Original Release Date: June 1 1967. Reissue: September 9 2009.

Record Label: EMI

On the 9th September, 2009, The Beatles entire catalog becomes available to the world as a collection of re-mastered 'digipack' CDs. A newly produced mini-documentary on the making of each album is included as a QuickTime file for those who dare to bring shame upon their families by listening to such wonderful albums via a computer!

The team at Abbey Road Studios in London have been busy... apparently the entire project took four years to complete with the primary objective being to get the highest quality transfer from the original analog recordings that was simply not possible back in 1987 when the first CD collection became available. Oh and it does matter folks!

You see I have never felt comfortable with the analog to digital recordings from the late eighties for a number of reasons; artwork from the vinyl collection wasn't really up to the original quality. The recordings themselves kinda sounded a little masked... a little hazy if you like, but all of that seems to have been sorted well and truly and I'm taking Sgt Pepper as my first example of how much better the actual sound really is after that four year slog at Abbey Road!

As I said, the re-masters are available from the 9th September but I was lucky enough to receive an advance copy of Sgt Pepper.. originally released on June 1st 1967 and I absolutely could not wait to get to that moment when I could lie back with the headphones... decent headphones I might add and travel straight back to the sixties... to North West London... to Abbey Road Studios with John, Paul, Ringo, and George sharing the same room with George Martin messing about at the mixing desk.

Within the CD's revised digipack packaging, there's the super cool Sgt Pepper booklet including detailed historical and recording session notes. The QuickTime documentary contains archival footage, rare photographs and studio chat from The Beatles, offering a unique and very personal insight into the studio atmosphere at the time.

So... I have to say that Sgt Pepper has been reviewed a million times... each guitar riff and vocal breath has been scrutinized, magnified, and published the world over... over and over... but this review is about making a few things clear..

John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison had to have known that they were working on something tremendously special. George Martin was particularly musically ambitious, accommodating, and approachable to ideas that many other producers of the time would have needed medication to get their heads around. Sgt Pepper was genius, over 11 million sales agrees with the statement but perhaps more importantly many millions of people from all walks of life since 1967 willfully allowed themselves to become familiar with that genius and all the research in the world insistently points to how much Sgt Pepper's influence changed the face of popular music for the better... forever!

For me personally, the album is flawless in it's invention on the whole but also in terms of the highly skilled songwriting, adventurous musicianship, unparalleled recording techniques, and superb production and sound engineering. Overdubbing was essentially being baptized here and lessons learned from the previous album Revolver, were now being more carefully crafted for this project with exceptional results!

The track list at the top of this page is there for those of you who have been in a musically restrictive coma so I am not going to do a track by track review but I am going to point out that the re-mastering process worked brilliantly. Drums are sharper and incredibly real (as opposed to being incredibly digital). Vocals are so clear and 'close up' that you could swear your holding the mike to these guys! Paul's bass playing is amazing as is George's guitar and sitar work... the songs are just pure genius... soundtracks to our lives stuff... and George Martin and the sound guys back in 1967 deserve bigger crowns than perhaps the average person would give credit for.

On the individual Beatle quotes spread throughout the universe following the album's release and particularly around the bands break up in 1970, if I were you I would take with a pinch of salt. John knew what he was doing as did George, Paul, and Ringo ... as the Beatles they were making history, as friends, they were having a laugh and enjoying the huge freedoms available to them as recording artists that had previously been bound by expectations and exploitations. Sgt Pepper was their turn; their album and it just so happened that we all fell through the floorboards not long after carefully placing the 12 inch black vinyl first release on the turntables that were also turning us on as John had mentioned in 'a day in the life'.

Peter Blake did not have a Mac or a PC when he put together the artwork; the thinking behind the packaging could not be spared from the genius of the music because this was going to be the first gatefold sleeve EVER! This album would contain a complete set of lyrics and THAT was unheard of... even the recorded dog whistle made sure pets were not left behind by the magic of this monumental musical tsunami. In 1967, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was going to blow us all away and it kept doing it for many many years since and it's just done it to me again some 40 years later!

Colin Lynch