Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band

 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by the British rock band "The Beatles". Recorded over a 129-day period beginning on December 6, 1966. The album was released on June 1, 1967 in the United Kingdom, and the following day in the United States. Sgt. Pepper is often described as The Beatles' magnum opus and has been acclaimed as one of the most influential albums of all time by prominent critics and publications. It was ranked the greatest album of all time by Rolling Stone magazine in 2003.
 The Sgt. Pepper album featured a new direction for the Beatles, using more instrumental effects, as well as departing from the music they were best known for at the time. This album took music into an entirely new area of expression, and experimentation, which gave a boast to the slightly waning popularity of the band at the time. This "waning" in popularity was not much of an issue given the meteoric heights they had reached early in their career.

 It is also worth noting, (whether factual or not), that this may have been the definitive moment in Beatles history, where the band became fully aware of their status in the music world, and thus began to explore this "total artistic freedom" .

The well known cover of this album contains many images, and two that were painted out. Hover your mouse pointer over the images for descriptions.

 Following the last track on the album is an extremely high-pitched tone (15 kHz), too high-pitched for many adults to hear, but audible to dogs, other animals, and most younger listeners. The high tone was inserted, as was John Lennon’s intention, to irritate the listener’s dog. The tone was only inserted on the first 5000 copies of the LP , but was included on all copies of the later CD release.

The 15 kHz tone is followed by a loop of random Beatles studio chatter, spliced together with sections played both normally and in reverse. Lasting for a few seconds with the last syllables being mastered into the final "run-out" groove of the vinyl record,  it created a snippet of gibberish that repeated ‘endlessly’ on manual turntables until the listener removed the needle from the record. This ending to the Sgt. Pepper LP was included in British releases, but not in the original American version; it was included on the 1980 "Rarities" compilation LP, as "Sgt. Pepper Inner Groove." The 1987 CD re-release simulates this effect by looping the track eleven times before fading out.

Parodies of the album cover have appeared now an then from other musicians, the most notable of which was Frank Zappa's, "We're Only In It For the Money".

 Frank Zappa accused the Beatles of capitalizing on the "flower power" movement for monetary gain, saying that he felt "they were only in it for the money." That criticism later became the title of the Mothers of Invention album (We're Only in It for the Money), which mocked Sgt. Pepper with a similar album cover. Originally planned as the cover, it was instead used on the inside of the album. Featuring Zappa and his bandmates in drag, it was a parody of the cover of Sgt. Pepper's, showing Zappa and the band standing before a Sgt. Pepper-like collage and fronted by a watermelon lettered "Mothers" mocking the flower lettering on Sgt. Peppers.

Other parodies that are noteworthy come from the group "Rutles" and the long running "Simpsons series".

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