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The Best Album of All Time - Semi final - Sgt Peppers v Exile On Main Street

Which is the better album?

  • The Beatles - Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band

    Votes: 11 61.1%

  • The Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street

    Votes: 7 38.9%
  • Total voters
    18
  • Poll closed .
milo

milo

Jack L. Jones
beatles-sgt-peppers-album-001.jpg


Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. Released on 1 June 1967, it was an immediate commercial and critical success, spending 22 weeks at the top of the albums chart in the United Kingdom and 15 weeks at number one in the United States. Time magazine declared it "a historic departure in the progress of music" and the New Statesman praised its elevation of pop to the level of fine art.[1] It won four Grammy Awards in 1968, including Album of the Year, the first rock LP to receive this honour.

In August 1966, the Beatles permanently retired from touring and began a three-month holiday from recording. During a return flight to London in November, Paul McCartney had an idea for a song involving an Edwardian era military band that would eventually form the impetus of the Sgt. Pepper concept. Sessions for the Beatles' eighth studio album began on 24 November in Abbey Road Studio Two, with the original intention to record an album of material that was to be thematically linked to their childhoods. Among the first tracks recorded for the project were "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane", but after pressure from EMI the songs were released as a double A-side single; they were not included on the album.

In February 1967, after recording "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", McCartney suggested that the Beatles should release an entire album that would represent a performance by the fictional Sgt. Pepper band. This alter ego group would give them the freedom to experiment musically. During the recording sessions, the band endeavoured to improve upon the production quality of their prior releases. Knowing they would not have to perform the tracks live, they adopted an experimental approach to composition, writing songs such as "With a Little Help from My Friends", "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "A Day in the Life". The producer George Martin's innovative recording of the album included the liberal application of sound shaping signal processing and the use of a 40-piece orchestra performing aleatoric crescendos. Recording was completed on 21 April 1967. The cover, depicting the band posing in front of a collage of celebrities and historical figures, was designed by the English pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth based on a sketch by McCartney.

Sgt. Pepper is regarded by musicologists as an early concept album that advanced the use of extended form in popular music while continuing the artistic maturation seen on the Beatles' preceding releases. It has been described as one of the first art rock LPs, aiding the development of progressive rock, and credited with marking the beginning of the Album Era. An important work of British psychedelia, the multigenre album incorporates diverse stylistic influences, including vaudeville, circus, music hall, avant-garde, and Western and Indian classical music. In 2003 the Library of Congress placed Sgt. Pepper in the National Recording Registry, honouring the work as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[2] That same year Rolling Stone magazine ranked it number one in its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. As of 2014 it has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best selling albums of all time. The music scholar David Scott Kastan described it as "the most important and influential rock and roll album ever recorded".[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sgt._Pepper's_Lonely_Hearts_Club_Band

[video=youtube;1T5fqLBhZgo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T5fqLBhZgo[/video]

Sgt Peppers got to the semi final by beating Second Toughest of the Infants in the first round and Dummy in the last sixteen and Thriller in the quarters.

v

ExileMainSt.jpg


Exile on Main St. is a double album by English rock band The Rolling Stones. It was released on 12 May 1972 by Rolling Stones Records. The album's music incorporates rock and roll, blues, soul, country, and gospel genres.[2]

Although it originally received mixed reviews,[2] Exile on Main St. has been ranked on various lists as one of the greatest albums of all time.[3]

The 2010 remastered version of the album was released in Europe on 17 May 2010 and in the United States on 18 May 2010, featuring a bonus disc with 10 new tracks.[4]

Exile on Main St. was written and recorded between 1968 and 1972. Mick Jagger said "After we got out of our contract with Allen Klein, we didn't want to give him [those earlier tracks]," as they were forced to do with "Brown Sugar" and "Wild Horses" from Sticky Fingers. Many tracks were recorded between 1969 and 1971 at Olympic Studios and Jagger's Stargroves country house in England during sessions for Sticky Fingers.[5]

By the spring of 1971 the Rolling Stones had spent the money they owed in taxes and left Britain before the government could seize their assets. Mick Jagger settled in Paris with his new bride Bianca, and guitarist Keith Richards rented a villa, Nellcôte, in Villefranche-sur-Mer, near Nice. The other members settled in the south of France. As a suitable recording studio could not be found where they could continue work on the album, Richards' basement at Nellcôte became a makeshift studio using the band's mobile recording truck.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exile_on_Main_St.

[video=youtube;t2vvCsLAW2I]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2vvCsLAW2I[/video]

Exile on Main Street saw off Angel Dust in the first round, Fun House in the last sixteen and the Queen is Dead in the quarter final.
 
Neither. Derek & Clive Live. Seriously, though. can you possibly answer this answer this?
 
Peppers for me.

Excellent from start to finish, stays interesting but also manages to make each song different from the last
 
Exile comfortably for me.

Sometimes experimenting with your sound is a good thing for a band. Obscurity for the sake of it is just silly. The best thing the Beatles ever did was con people into thinking they were still making music at that point. They were better when they were a 60s One Direction.

Plus Paul McCartney is in the Bono/Sting category of cvnt.
 
scaramanga said:
Exile comfortably for me.

Sometimes experimenting with your sound is a good thing for a band. Obscurity for the sake of it is just silly. The best thing the Beatles ever did was con people into thinking they were still making music at that point. They were better when they were a 60s One Direction.

Plus Paul McCartney is in the Bono/Sting category of cvnt.
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A strange opinion. Sgt Peppers is a pure pop album (it was McCartney's baby whereas it's predecessor was Lennon's and far stranger), the only track on the album that I would describe as being remotely experimental in terms of songwriting is a Day In The Life which for me is the album's high point and amongst the Beatles best work.

You've made this comment comparing the Beatles with modern boy bands before. I think that it shows a lack of understanding of the musical landscape in the early sixties. If the Beatles were the One Direction of 1963, who were the credible British acts?

Sir Thumbs Aloft is a **** of the first order though, so no arguments there.
 
milo said:
A strange opinion. Sgt Peppers is a pure pop album (it was McCartney's baby whereas it's predecessor was Lennon's and far stranger), the only track on the album that I would describe as being remotely experimental in terms of songwriting is a Day In The Life which for me is the album's high point and amongst the Beatles best work.
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I think that parts of the lyrics and the way songs clash, reprise, the 'concept' element etc are all quite experimental for the time. Much of what they did on that album hadn't really been done before. I'd certainly agree that their best work was behind them at this point.

milo said:
You've made this comment comparing the Beatles with modern boy bands before. I think that it shows a lack of understanding of the musical landscape in the early sixties. If the Beatles were the One Direction of 1963, who were the credible British acts?
Click to expand...

I don't think the comparison is between credible and not - my favourite music from that era all came from a factory run by Berry Gordy where almost nobody wrote their own music.

It's more the soulless nature of what they produced. Every now and then Lennon would make a bit of a point and they took that as depth. It all just sounds a little empty to me.

I think if you follow the path of good music from the old blues sound that Elvis tried to steal through to the rock sound of Led Zep in the late 60s and early 70s, the Beatle aren't on that line. The Stones most certainly are.

milo said:
Sir Thumbs Aloft is a **** of the first order though, so no arguments there.
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Anyone who make Bono seem tolerable must be!
 
scaramanga said:
I think that parts of the lyrics and the way songs clash, reprise, the 'concept' element etc are all quite experimental for the time. Much of what they did on that album hadn't really been done before. I'd certainly agree that their best work was behind them at this point.
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I wouldn't say that the songs clash, obviously there is the reprise of Sgt Peppers but it only happens the once. The experimental element of the album for me would be the use of orchestration and the production both of which I think are successful.

There is lyrical experimentation but again, I would say that this is successful.

scaramanga said:
I don't think the comparison is between credible and not - my favourite music from that era all came from a factory run by Berry Gordy where almost nobody wrote their own music.

It's more the soulless nature of what they produced. Every now and then Lennon would make a bit of a point and they took that as depth. It all just sounds a little empty to me.

I think if you follow the path of good music from the old blues sound that Elvis tried to steal through to the rock sound of Led Zep in the late 60s and early 70s, the Beatle aren't on that line. The Stones most certainly are.
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I love Motown too. Motown was obviously a huge influence on the Beatles and in time, the Beatles were a huge influence on Motown. I think that there is a lot of soul in the Beatles records. Ignoring the number of soul records that they covered and helped popularise here, I think that there are many of their own compositions that have bags of soul. What the Beatles did not do much of was pastiche of other artists, so even when they were playing rhythm and blues they still sounded like themselves.

I think that you have missed a couple of stages out in your history of rock. Obviously the Beatles were a huge influence on the Stones but the band that I think is missing from your list is the Kinks, who arguably would not have happened (or at least have sounded very different) without the Beatles.

I also do not agree with the linear progression of music that you choose. What was great about the fifties, sixties and seventies is how diverse music became. If you just see the sixties as a straight line between Elvis and Led Zep then you are missing out on most of the good stuff released in that period. I am sure that in a very short period of time we could come up with a list of hundreds of artists that do not fit on that line and are still great.

I'd like to defer to Lemmy for a moment

“...the Beatles were hard men too. Brian Epstein cleaned them up for mass consumption, but they were anything but sissies. They were from Liverpool, which is like Hamburg or Norfolk, Virginia--a hard, sea-farin' town, all these dockers and sailors around all the time who would beat the **** out of you if you so much as winked at them. Ringo's from the Dingle, which is like the f***ing Bronx. The Rolling Stones were the mummy's boys--they were all college students from the outskirts of London. They went to starve in London, but it was by choice, to give themselves some sort of aura of disrespectability. I did like the Stones, but they were never anywhere near the Beatles--not for humour, not for originality, not for songs, not for presentation. All they had was Mick Jagger dancing about. Fair enough, the Stones made great records, but they were always s**t on stage, whereas the Beatles were the gear.”


― Lemmy Kilmister, White Line Fever: The Autobiography​


scaramanga said:
Anyone who make Bono seem tolerable must be!
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Jagger is just as much of a **** as McCartney.
 
I was on the fence with this one, slightly edging towards voting for Exile but the rockist, the Beatles aren't a serious band because girls liked them argument has convinced me to vote for Sgt Peppers. I love Exile, it is an album I listen to a lot but Sgt Peppers high points are higher.
 
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