--- title: Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band: 50th Anniversary description: On the 50th anniversary of the classic album from The Beatles, TIME revisits a 1967 cover story about what made the album work. canonical: https://time.com/4712761/sgt-peppers-50th-anniversary/ author: Olivia B. Waxman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-06-01T13:30:21.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:42:14.800Z article:section: History og:title: How The Beatles Made 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' Work og:description: "Once we'd written the main bit of the music, we thought, now look, there's a little gap there; and we said oh, how about an orchestra?" og:url: https://time.com/4712761/sgt-peppers-50th-anniversary/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdb1f0bd94f58e711/6988bfdfcd1bbaf6d7704725/beatles.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: beatles og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How The Beatles Made 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' Work twitter:description: "Once we'd written the main bit of the music, we thought, now look, there's a little gap there; and we said oh, how about an orchestra?" twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdb1f0bd94f58e711/6988bfdfcd1bbaf6d7704725/beatles.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How The Beatles Made _Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band_ Work  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Jun 1, 2017 1:30 PM UTC  TIME  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Jun 1, 2017 1:30 PM UTC When the album _Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band_ hit stores 50 years ago, on June 1, 1967, the record with the [quirky cover photo](http://time.com/4713080/sgt-peppers-album-photo/) represented a big change in tone for [The Beatles ](http://time.com/4588308/moment-by-moment-john-loengard/)— and, in doing so, captured the changing spirit of a radical time. The group was “leading an evolution in which the best of current post-rock sounds are becoming something that pop music has never been before: an art form,” TIME wrote in a Sep. 22, 1967, [cover story](http://time.com/vault/issue/1967-09-22/page/78/) on the state of pop music.”‘Serious musicians’ are listening to them and marking their work as a historic departure in the progress of music — any music.” Here’s the magazine’s description of how the album came together: --- > “” --- All that work paid off artistically. Composer Ned Rorem told TIME that it made The Beatles “colleagues” of his, “speaking the same language with different accents,” and conductor Leonard Bernstein compared it to the classical work of Robert Schumann. It also paid off literally: according to TIME’s original report, the album sold 2.5 million copies in its first three months. Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band: 50th Anniversary ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4712761/sgt-peppers-50th-anniversary/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4712761/sgt-peppers-50th-anniversary/"},"headline":"How The Beatles Made Sgt. 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