Beatles fans recall listening to famed concept album

BROWNSVILLE — Fifty years ago on June 1, 1967, the Beatles changed music forever with the U.K. release of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

The U.S. release followed on June 2. The group’s songwriting achievements and innovations in the studio redefined pop music as art, spawning countless imitators and turning convention on its ear.

The album spent 15 weeks at No. 1 on the U.S. charts and 27 weeks at the top of the U.K. charts.

In 1968, “Sgt. Pepper’s” won four Grammys, including album of the year — a first for a rock LP. Considering the Beatles’ staying power, it’s hard to imagine a time when people will stop listening to the Fab Four or their 50-year-old masterwork.

The band and the album gain new converts every day around the world, though, unless you’re old enough to remember, it’s impossible to grasp the impact “Sgt. Pepper’s” had upon its release. We tracked down a few people who do remember.

Before he saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show on Feb. 9, 1964, Alan Hollander’s heroes were Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris of the New York Yankees, who Hollander worshipped as a poor kid in the Bronx. A drummer for longtime Rio Grande Valley classic rock band The Agency for the past 25 years, Hollander said his life was transformed at that instant.

“My heroes went from holding baseball bats to holding guitars,” he said. “I was being classically trained on piano, which was sort of a requirement in my house. I bought an electric guitar, learned to play it, grew my hair. It changed everything.”

Hollander listened as the Beatles evolved through “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Help!,” “Rubber Soul,” “Revolver” and then — “Sgt. Pepper’s.” He was 14 or 15 years old and already playing in a band. The bass player’s brother and band manager was named Izzy, and Izzy had a car with an AM radio.

“All you had back in those days was AM radio,” Hollander said. “They advertised on one of the New York stations that they were going to play it in its entirety. I remember sitting in his ‘57 Chevy or something like that, smoking cigarettes and listening to that thing in its entirety from beginning to end. It was like, ‘Oh my god, this is something that I’ve never heard before.’”

The next day he ran out to buy his own copy of “Sgt. Pepper’s,” saving a couple of bucks by buying the monophonic version. When Hollander realized the alarm clock at the end of “A Day in the Life” was missing, it was back to the record store to buy the stereo version, which included the alarm clock.

His feeling at the time was that “Sgt. Pepper’s” was a completely new musical phenomenon.

“To me it was almost unexplainable,” he said. “There are certain things that Dylan did, and certain things that the Beatles did, that are unexplainable in mortal terms, that human beings could figure that stuff out. It took the entire language and expanded it to the nth degree.”

Hollander cites George Harrison’s sitar-drenched “Within You, Without You,” a composition of “absolute beauty and deeply felt spirituality” that turned on a generation, he said. Hollander considers the album among the best rock LPs ever released, and no doubt the most influential.

“I don’t think anybody in the music world has been untouched by that album,” he said.

Hollander said “Sgt. Pepper’s” is still relevant, noting that his son, a jazz and rock musician and songwriter in San Antonio, and daughter, an electrical engineer and tap dancer, are both influenced by “Sgt. Pepper’s” and the Beatles.

“He can tell you every note in every song on that album,” he said. “One of the highlights of her life was seeing (Paul) McCartney in Houston years ago.”

George Ramirez, president of the Brownsville Society for the Performing Arts and founder of the Latin Jazz Festival, was a teenager growing up in Pasadena, Calif., when he saw the Beatles perform at the Hollywood Bowl in 1965. It was hard to hear the music over the screaming, though it was an engrossing experience nonetheless, he said.

Ramirez had always liked the Beatles. Their music was good. They were popular, and radical with their long hair. And then came “Sgt. Pepper’s.” Ramirez, like everyone else, was blown away.

“I knew at that time that I was never going to see them again,” he said. “That was the shocker: They went from a band of humans to a band of immortals. It was just a spectacular change, not just in the way they looked but in the way they sounded. No one had ever heard music like that. Not only was it different, but beautiful music.”

It wasn’t long before parents who were used to saying, “How can you listen to that stuff?” were whistling tunes from “Sgt. Pepper’s,” admitting that the Lads From Liverpool were something after all, Ramirez said. Even his uncle, Romulo Ramirez, longtime director of the National Opera of Mexico, was a fan.

“He absolutely loved the Beatles,” Ramirez said. “He was considered one of the top guys in opera.”

Ramirez rates “Sgt. Pepper’s” as the Beatles’ best album, adding, “that one is just one that changed us all, really.”

Gilbert Rendon, owner of the New York Deli, has a serious Beatles addiction, and also considers “Sgt. Pepper’s” the Beatles’ finest work. “A Day in the Life” is his favorite track on it.

Rendon was going to East Bakersfield High School in California when the album came out.

“The next day, that’s all they talked about,” he said. “The whole next week they talked about it. It was on the radio 24 hours a day almost. I’m not kidding, every radio station. There were people in line trying to buy it. That was just when the psychedelic thing was coming. It was incredible. Nobody had done anything like it before, not even close.”

Rendon credits legendary Beatles producer George Martin with much of the album’s excellence.

“I consider him the fifth Beatle, 100 percent, and I’m the sixth Beatle,” he said.

Rendon, who doesn’t like to use the word “awesome” since it’s overused to the point of meaningless, said “Sgt. Pepper’s” is worthy of the term. He has no doubt people still will be listening to the album 50 years from now.

“The wonderful part about it, it’s as popular now as it ever was,” Rendon said. “I think it’s still in the top 10 albums of all time. It just keeps going.”