It Was Fifty Years Ago But Hey...

It was fifty years ago today... but can we please forget it now? Sgt Pepper was an iconoclastic album. But, let's be honest, it wasn't as good as Revolver... or maybe even Rubber Soul... or even the White Album.

Every which way one turns there is Sgt Pepperami. There's an event in Brighton promising to play music from bands influenced by Sgt Pepper.... including Pink Floyd, Cream, the Doors and the Grateful Dead. Pink Floyd? Cream? The Doors? The Grateful Dead? The idea that these bands were influence by Sgt Pepper could only exist in the minds of those who weren't there in the Sixties.

None of these bands showed or needed any influence from Sgt Pepper... unless it was to go way beyond what the Beatles were doing.

Sgt Pepper seems to be being celebrated by people who have no idea what it was like to hear Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds for the first time in 1967. And if they weren't there, they'll never know...

And it's reasonably easy to predict what John Lennon would have said about celebrating Sgt Pepper fifty years on, isn't it?

Paying Tribute

The main point about tribute bands is that they tend to make money. They're easy to sell and easy to explain and the punters seem to love them. Who wants or needs original music? Or, in fact, music? The tribute band is not so much about music as about nostalgia – for an era you lived through, or for an era you wish you could have lived through. 

I once enquired about playing with an established Eagles tribute band – yes, I admit I did fancy the gigs and the money, and I confess that I really admire the Eagles – and was told that every drum break would have to be note for note the same as on the original records, because the audience would notice if it wasn't. It sounded a terribly sad experience for musicians and audience alike. Trainspotting would be more interesting.

A band called the Fab Beatles are due to play the album Revolver in full at a gig in Brighton to mark the record's 50th anniversary. I'm sure they are a wonderful band but the point of all this seems elusive. If you want to listen to Revolver (the first album I bought, and to my mind, better than its follow-up), listen to Revolver.

The only possible point of covering someone else's song is to bring something new and different to it. Tribute bands, on the whole, do the complete opposite. But that, of course, is what a lot of people want.