Sold Date: March 7, 2020
Start Date: February 26, 2020
Final Price: £23.00 (GBP)
Bid Count: 13
Seller Feedback: 1558
Buyer Feedback: 88

The Beatles ‎ "Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band"  Parlophone ‎PMC 7027  UK 1st press
Mono Vinyl, LP, housed in a  "psychedelic' inner sleeve" with a "Garrod & Lofthouse Patents pending" laminated gate-fold cover. The LP  has a  'cut-out' card insert (full-colour, single-sided, with printed signatures of Blake/Haworth at foot). The album has  black and yellow Parlophone logo label with silver text: "The Gramophone Co." in the radial text and "Sold in the U.K. Subject To Resale Price Conditions, See Price Lists" across label at centre, with "Made in Gt. Britain" at foot.
The vinyl has a few superficial scuffs, but played through beautifully on my elderly stereo - no hop, stick or jump. It is housed in its original 'psychedelic' inner sleeve, which is split along one seam. The gate-fold sleeve has some ring-wear front and back, but has no rips or writing. The spine is quite worn and only partially legible. The 'cut-outs' card insert is intact and in great shape. Matrix / Runout  Side 1 : XEX 637-1 AHA 4 Matrix / Runout  Side 2 : XEX 638-1 ARL 7
"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" is the Beatles' eighth studio album. Released on 26 May 1967 in the United Kingdom and 2 June 1967 in the United States, it spent 27 weeks at number one on the UK Albums Chart and 15 weeks at number one on the Billboard Top LPs chart in the US. It was lauded by critics for its innovations in production, songwriting and graphic design, for bridging a cultural divide between popular music and high art, and for reflecting the interests of contemporary youth and the counterculture. 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. During a return flight to London in November, Paul McCartney had an idea for a song involving an Edwardian military band that formed the impetus of the Sgt. Pepper concept. Sessions began on 24 November at EMI Studios with two compositions inspired by the Beatles' youth, "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane", but after pressure from EMI, the songs were released as a double A-side single and left off the album.
In February 1967, after recording the title track, McCartney suggested that the album represent a performance by the fictional Sgt. Pepper band. This alter ego group further inspired the band to experiment artistically. During the recording sessions, there was no thought of reproducing the songs in concert, and the band were free to continue the technological experimentation marked by their previous album "Revolver", this time without an absolute deadline for completion. With producer George Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick, the group approached the studio as an instrument, colouring much of the recordings with sound effects and tape manipulation, as exemplified on "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" and "A Day in the Life". Recording was completed on 21 April 1967. The cover, which depicts the Beatles posing in front of a tableau of celebrities and historical figures, was designed by the pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth.
"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. An important work of British psychedelia, the album incorporates a range of stylistic influences, including vaudeville, circus, music hall, avant-garde, and Western and Indian classical music. It is described as one of the first art rock LPs, a progenitor to progressive rock, and the starting point of the album era. In 2003, the Library of Congress placed "Sgt. Pepper" in the National Recording Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In lists published in 2003 and 2012, Rolling Stone ranked the album as the greatest of all time. It is one of the best-selling albums of all time, with more than 32 million copies sold worldwide as of 2011, and remains the UK's best-selling studio album. Professor Kevin Dettmar, writing in The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature, described it as "the most important and influential rock-and-roll album ever recorded".