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   CLUB SANDWICH 45

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Club Sandwich 45

The Pepper display at The Walker Art Gallery in 1984

            The photographs of the 'audience' were blown up to life-size and pasted on boards, cut out and attached to various length sticks. At the same time (this was mid-March '67) an Aladdin's cave of objects began arriving at Cooper's Chelsea studio. Paul ordered a vanload of musical instruments, John brought his portable television. Blake himself, with his prediction for hero-icons, had acquired from Madame Tussaud's a waxwork Sonny Liston, Diana Dors, TE Lawrence and George Bernard Shaw - and the four Beatles, early 60s mop-top style, in contrast to the flamboyant Pepper band who were about to take their place in the centre of things.
            Plants had been ordered - not the marijuana of popular myth
- but normal decorative house plants. And flowers, lots of flowers.
            The whole job took a couple of weeks, Blake recalls - "I did the organising, Jann the hard work, actually putting it together".
            They began with the back row of heads which were fixed to the back wall of the studio. The heads in front were positioned on their sticks, each about six inches in front of the one behind; despite the sense of depth achieved, the collage of heads behind the Beatles was only about two feet deep altogether.
            In front of that were the wax figures, then a four foot platform to accommodate the Beatles themselves and the Lonely Hearts Club drum.
            In front of the group was a carefully arranged flower display - although, Blake remembers, things changed from his original plans as the work developed.
            "My concept was to have it like a municipal flower bed, with the letters spelt out in flowers, like the Boy Scouts sign in flowers on the clock in Edinburgh".
            The delivery boy who arrived with some of the floral display offered to make a guitar out of hyacinths for the assemblage, which he did.
            Even Cooper's small son Adam contributed, the Rolling Stones sweatshirt on the Shirley Temple rag doll.
            By the time the Beatles arrived for the photo session on March 30th, everything was ready. All they had to do was get changed and pose.
            The sessions took about three hours, including pictures of the group for the centrefold and the back cover.
            Well before Blake and Haworth began work in Cooper's studio, as the concept itself was arrived at, it was clear to all concerned that the sleeve should be part of the 'event' of 'Pepper' rather than mere wrapping. Just as the record had assumed an identity of its own, with the linking sound effects, applause and so on, so the sleeve would be part of a mixed-media 'happening' in which the listener had some physical involvement.
            The gatefold sleeve was a rarity back in '67, and the practice of printing lyrics on a pop album unheard of. This latter innovation added to the feel of audience participation, and further to this end Blake and Haworth designed a give-away insert to
go inside the sleeve like some Christmas stocking treat. There was the good Sergeant's moustache, regimental stripes, a picture postcard... all to cut out and keep. Not that many owners of the record were to cut out the pieces, preferring rather to keep them intact as an integral part of the 'event'.
            Despite the long planning and painstaking effort of Blake, Fraser, Jann Haworth, Cooper and the Beatles, no one quite anticipated the classic status the sleeve would assume almost overnight as the visual signpost of the Flower Power summer of '67, in the same way as the music inside was to become its soundtrack.
            In the weeks following the album's release on June 1st, a favourite pastime while listening to the music was trying to identify the all-star cast on the cover. There were the film stars - Tom Mix, Marlon Brando and the rest, visual artists including Aubrey Beardsley and Richard Lindner, writers from Edgar Allan Poe to Dylan Thomas, variety comedians Max Miller, Tommy Handley, philosophers Marx, Huxley and Jung. Surprisingly, but perhaps significantly, the only musicians present were pop singer Dion, Bob Dylan, the deceased former Beatle Stuart Sutcliffe (also a visual artist) and the Beatles themselves.
            The band in their Pepper outfits gave a fairy-tale ambience to the surrealism of the tableau, like characters from some Sigmund Romberg operetta. There they were, under the gaze of their effigied former selves, mock serious aroundi the circus-barker bass drum.
            The drumskin, about to become the most famous in the world, was actually designed and painted by a real fairground artist, Joe Ephgrave. He submitted two skins, the one used on the cover ending up with John, the alternative one with Paul.
            Scattered about the flower arrangement were various unrelated objects
... cryptic analysis soon theorised about every item's secret significance. But who were playing games? - the listeners who wanted to read too much into every subtlety, every casual sign, or the Beatles who offered this kaleidoscope of unanswerable clues?
            Immediately after the photo session, "souvenirs" from the tableau began to disappear.
            When I helped organise the
Art of the Beatles exhibition at Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery in 1984, it became apparent that little remains traceable today.
            On the wall of the art gallery the 'Pepper' display consisted of three surviving cut-out heads belonging to Peter Blake, the original artwork for the insert and Paul's 'alternative' drumskin.
            A collector friend of Blake still has the full-length Marlene Dietrich, autographed by the Beatles, while Sonny Liston stands, arms folded, in the artist's Chiswick study.
            It was twenty years ago... but
Sgt. Pepper sounds as good today as the moment it was released, back in the charts on CD and vinyl. It was an historic , album, as much for the packaging as the product. Pop music, and the art that increasingly accompanied it, would never be the same again.
            Listen to it, look at it.
            A splendid time is guaranteed for all.

Club Sandwich 45