--- description: On the 50th anniversary of the classic album from The Beatles, TIME revisits a 1967 cover story about what made the album work. title: How The Beatles Made 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' Work image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdb1f0bd94f58e711/6988bfdfcd1bbaf6d7704725/beatles.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [History](/section/history/) ## History Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # How The Beatles Made _Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band_ Work  by [Olivia B. Waxman](/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Staff Writer Jun 1, 2017 1:30 PM CUT  TIME  by [Olivia B. Waxman](/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Staff Writer Jun 1, 2017 1:30 PM CUT 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/ "undefined") represented a big change in tone for [The Beatles ](http://time.com/4588308/moment-by-moment-john-loengard/ "undefined")— 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/ "undefined") 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. ```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. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Work","datePublished":"2017-06-01T13:30:21.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:42:14.800Z","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?\"","url":"https://time.com/4712761/sgt-peppers-50th-anniversary/","keywords":["Newsfeed","Music"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdb1f0bd94f58e711/6988bfdfcd1bbaf6d7704725/beatles.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Olivia B. Waxman","jobTitle":"Staff Writer","url":"https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdb1f0bd94f58e711/6988bfdfcd1bbaf6d7704725/beatles.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"beatles","caption":"","creditText":"TIME","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4712761/sgt-peppers-50th-anniversary/","name":"How The Beatles Made Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Work"}}]}] ```