The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Tired of touring and freed from the need to play anything live, the Beatles spent the first months of 1967 inventing an imaginary band and letting it make the album they could never perform. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band arrived that June and became the soundtrack to the Summer of Love.

The record is a studio kaleidoscope. "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" drifts on Lennon's dream imagery, "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" was assembled from cut-up tapes of fairground organs, and George Harrison's "Within You Without You" is built around Indian classical instruments. McCartney's "She's Leaving Home" and "When I'm Sixty-Four" bring warmth and wit, and the album closes with "A Day in the Life," with its orchestral crescendos and final, seemingly endless piano chord.

Sgt. Pepper won the Grammy for Album of the Year and is still regularly named the most influential album in rock history. It redefined what an LP could be.

This edition features the 2017 stereo mix by Giles Martin and Sam Okell, created from the original four-track session tapes and made to match the original mono mix the band themselves oversaw. Presented in a gatefold jacket.