The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely heart Club Band on June 1, 1967. The year 2012 marks the forty-fifth anniversary of this insanely creative and iconic album. The album received four Grammy Awards in 1968 and frequently ranks high of the published lists of the greatest album of all time. It is also one of the world’s best selling albums, thirty-two million copies have been shipped. And in honor of such a wonderfully monumental anniversary, I took it upon myself to create a old fashioned cassette mixed tape. 

It all occurred on sunny Sunday morning, listening to the “Breakfast With the Beatles” radio program. I listened to “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever” blissfully. Then Chris Carter brought the forty fifth anniversary to my attention and played the entire Sgt. Pepper’s. Thus I frantically grabbed my cassette recorder and the blank cassette tape. As “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” played I attempted to make it the first song on the tape. But rookie mistake. I forgot to rewind the cassette completely thus inhibiting the recording process. In my moment of insanity I sat and listened to “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” knowing it would not be forever etched on the tape. The irony stung. But I managed to add “Getting Better,” “She’s Leaving Home,” “Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” “When I’m Sixty-Four,” and a “Day in the Life.” As well as “Here Comes the Sun” by George Harrison, “Hold On” and “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” by John Lennon; “Mean Mr. Mustard,” “twist and Shout,” and an excerpt from “the End.” The last song on the first side was not a Beatles tune, but was “Under Pressure” by Queen and the thin white duke, David Bowie. 

The second side includes “I’m So Tired,” “I am the Walrus,” “In My Life,” “Happiness is a Warm Gun,” and “Isn’t it a Pity” by Georg Harrison. The B side is only half way done currently. But this will last as a memory and an honor, a tribute if you will, to the “fab four“.