ABSTRACT
How robust should an interpretation be? As we change, grow, mature, should our interpretation of something which remains unchanging itself remain unchanged? Should it solidify, perhaps, as we reach adulthood? I first came to know Sgt. Pepper in the early 1970s as a heterogeneous, contingent collection of vibrant songs, some of which I knew well (‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, ‘She’s Leaving Home’), others of which I barely recognized (‘Within You Without You’, ‘Fixing a Hole’). At the time, somehow, I had gone to sleep between A Hard Day’s Night and the White Album. Not for me, then, the wonder of this new notion of a unified album, made particularly manifest by its packaging, since during this interval I became inducted into the world of the piano sonata (and of sets like Schumann’s Kinderszenen), and by the time I came to Sgt. Pepper, then Tarkus, In the Court of the Crimson King and Thick as a Brick constituted a far more substantial part of my world. I came upon the historical significance of Sgt. Pepper, then, from the outside.
