Sgt. Pepper and the Beatles: It Was Forty Years Ago Today

[...]the reader should finish the book having gained new understandings or greater insight into the object at hand. The book also suffers from a certain lack of critical distance from its object. [...]we are told that the band were 'the socio-political zeitgeist for the generation' (Whiteley, p. 12), that the opening song is 'marvellously successful on several levels' (O'Grady, p. 28) and that 'the entire album may be seen as embodying the psycheclassical synthesis' (Wagner, p. 89). Hopefully what books on artists and albums should do is make the reader go back to the music to listen again with new insight. [...]I had hoped that this volume would have reawakened a desire to hear the music under consideration, but unfortunately it did not.