The Act You've Known for All These Years: A Year in the Life of Sgt. Pepper and Friends

I love this book - maybe the title is misleading, because it is not just about the Beatles and Pepper, but about the whole music scene in the UK and in the US in 1967 and thereabouts. Heylin writes in a very pleasurable way, and this is definitely not "yet another Beatle book" by people who want to explore the Beatle myth even further. Besides that, the edition itself is beautful: hardcover + dust jacket, and the font is in a size that is very comfortable to read. If you want a different take on the Beatles and the Sgt Pepper era, definitely go for it.

This is a much maligned book, mostly, I suspect, by outraged Beatle fans who have taken umbrage at Heylin's unwillingness to revere the Beatles' hallowed magnum opus properly. And okay, if you're after yet another book detailing the minutiae of Pepper then this isn't it, and the cover and title are somewhat misleading. But as an overview of the 1966/67 period, when it seemed to some that The Beatles were changing the world and to others that they'd lost their senses, it's a great book. Fans of Pink Floyd are more likely to find this interesting than fans of the Fab Four, though, and there lies its problem. It isn't really about Pepper. But as one fascinated by the period (I was 11 when Pepper hit the shops) I was engrossed. I was particularly interested in the contemporary reviews; not all people thought Pepper was the bees' knees at the time, but their views seem to have been airbrushed out of pop history.I recall a fine article by Pete Fowler in the early 70s, which looked at the top 100 best selling singles of the 60s. Fowler points out that though The Beatles early singles occupied four of the top five places, All You Need Is Love was at 53 and Eleanor Rigby at 59. "For all those who thought The Beatles were the saviours of rock" he wrote, "there were at least twice as many who thought John Lennon was going round the twist". Lennon himself dismissed much of Pepper: "it worked because we said it worked," he said. Heylin is doing no more than making similar comments; this is no mere hatchet job, and I wouldn't be without it!

Written to mark the 40th anniversary of the release of Pepper, but there are many books out there, so I'm reading it to mark the 50th... sorry, Clinton. It's often a very fascinating examination of the main musical developments of 1966-67, placing the story of Pepper in that context, and it is particularly strong on (selected) historiography, ie what writers have had to say about Pepper across the years (most interestingly, what was said immediately after its release, in fact).Heylin huffs and puffs, though, to make the thesis that Pepper is over-rated. This in itself is hardly an original notion. He wishes to posit the view that Bob Dylan and Pink Floyd (of Barrett vintage) are more musically and culturally significant. Unfortunately, after a reasonably articulate 250-or-so pages on this, the last 50 develop increasingly into the sort of 'I-think-this-so-it's-right-and-everyone-else-is-stupid' rant that mean you end the book reflecting on how childish Mr Heylin is, in his desperation to boost his own musical heroes and, indeed, his own music scholarship. I don't think I've ever read a rock book that is so anxious to denigrate the writings of others, widely read and regarded, like Mark Lewisohn, Ian MacDonald, and Philip Norman (whose 'Shout!' he describes on p.67 as 'wretched', in the same paragraph as he attributes 'Eight days a week' to McCartney, nyah!!). He also has many musical prejudices that ultimately get in the way of sober, measured analysis. Grateful Dead are 'a support act at best', 'made music for zombies'. He champions 'Pop', and doesn't like the fact that Pepper ushered in a period of musical experimentation - 'most of the Prog-Rock output that separates Pepper from Punk only serves to show that technological innovation is no substitute for use of the cranium'. If that sweeping dismissal is a bad case of baby and bathwater (come on, Clint, it's SO boring to keep banging on about how punk saved the world, etc etc), he manages perhaps the single most stupid piece of rock analysis I've ever read, that Brian Wilson's realisation of Smile 'smacks of filler ... and precious little sweet inspiration'. Really. Finally, whilst he actually mostly writes well, his habit of using song titles or phrases in the text point to a smug little man with an overwheening sense of his own self-importance. Ultimately then, the book is more about him than its material, and Pepper and its legacy deserved better.