People In Sgt Pepper's Cover

[Fun King]

I always have thought that the people in the cover of SPLHCB should be a big evidence on its own. I mean, maybe the did choose those people in particular for some strange meaning, like ths sound of their names, for instance, but even if they did it based on their own likes and tastes, that should give us a great overview of their cultural background at the time.

For instance, I have always been very intrigued about who chose Alistair Crowley, and why?

[eggy]

I found this about Alistair Crowley on Sgt Pepper cover:


Sgt. Pepper's
Lonely Hearts Club Band
In 1967 the Beatles had released their first album dedicated to the promotion of psychedelic drugs, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The album contained a fantasized version of an LSD trip, called "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", or L.S.D. for short. It became a top seller.


Clearly, the Beatles' album was dedicated to Satanist Aleister Crowley.
It was released 20 years, to the day, after Crowley's death in 1947, and its title song began with the lyrics, "It was twenty years ago today..." The album's cover featured a picture of Crowley.


One month after the album's release, the Beatles shocked the world by announcing, publicly, that they were regularly taking LSD. Beatle member Paul McCartney, in an interview with Life magazine said, "LSD opened my eyes. It is better than Jesus". We only use one-tenth of our brain." They also publicly called for the legalization of marijuana.


The cat was now out of the bag, but the protests were few and minor. In England, the BBC banned "A Day in the Life," and in the U.S.A., Maryland Governor Spiro T.Agnew, who would later be watergated, launched a campaign to ban "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds."


Aliester Crowley is without a doubt, the main spiritual "teacher" of rock music. Crowley's mission in life was to destroy Jesus Christ and Christianity, while exalting sex perversion, drugs, magic and Satan.


Aliester Crowley spews his hatred of Jesus Christ in The World's Tragedy:


In the introduction of The World's Tragedy, Israel Regardie says:
"This long, almost epic poem is one of the most bitter and vicious diatribes against Christianity that I have ever read."
Crowley's most famous teaching, "Do what thou wilt shalt be the whole of the law" became the "mantra" of the 60's revolution of drugs, sexual perversion and anti-Christianity. "Do your own thing" "If it feels good do it".
THE BEATLES & CROWLEY


According to The All Music Guide, The Beatle's Sgt. Pepper album, "will forever be known as the recording that changed rock & roll". Time magazine said, Sgt Pepper's was "drenched in drugs."


The cover of Sgt. Pepper's showed the Beatles with a background of, according to Ringo Starr, people "we like and admire" Paul McCartney said of Sgt. Pepper's cover, ". . . we were going to have photos on the wall of all our
HEROS . .


One of the Beatle's heros included on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's was the infamous Aliester Crowley! Most people, especially in 1967, did not even know who Crowley was but the Beatles certainly did.


Sgt. Pepper


". . . we were going to have photos on the wall of all our HEROS . . ."

"Hero" Aliester Crowley is second from left on the top row. Where is Jesus??:


The Bealtes took Crowley's teaching very seriously. Beatle John Lennon, in an interview, says the "whole idea of the Beatles was Aliester Crowley's idea, "do what thou wilt":


"The whole Beatle idea was to do what you want, right? To take your own responsibilty, do what you want and try not to harm other people, right? DO WHAT THOU WILST, as long as it doesn't hurt somebody. . ."


"They're COMPLETELY ANTI-CHRIST. I mean, I am anti-Christ as well, but they're so anti-Christ they shock me which isn't an easy thing."
Derek Taylor, Press Officer for the Beatles





I want to say that i dont share some of the things in this article i found

[eggy]

Peter Blake about Sgt Peppers cover:


Peter Blake: 'The Beatles already had a cover designed by a Dutch group called the Fool, but my gallery dealer, Robert Fraser, said to Paul, "Why don't you use a 'fine artist', a professional, to do the cover instead?" Paul rather liked the idea and I was asked to do it. The concept of the album had already evolved: it would it would be as though the Beatles were another band, performing a concert. Paul and John said I should imagine that the band had just finished a concert, perhaps in a park. I then thought that we could have a crowd standing behind them, and this developed into the collage idea.
I asked them to make lists of people they's most like to have in the audience at this imaginary concert. John's was interesting because it included Jesus and Ghandi and, more cynically, Hitler. But this was just a few months after the US furor about his 'Jesus' statement, so they were left out. George's list was all gurus. Ringo said, "Whatever the others say is fine by me", because he didn't really want to be bothered. Robert Fraser and I also made lists. We then got all the photographs together and had life-size cut-outs made onto hardboard.
EMI realized that because many of the people we were depicting were still alive, we might be sued for not seeking their permission. So the Beatles' manager, Brian Epstein, who was very wary of all the complications in the first place, had his assistant write to everyone. Mae West replied, "No, I won't be on it. What would I be doing in a lonely hearts club?" So the Beatles wrote her a personal letter and she changed her mind.

Robert Fraser was a business partner of Michael Cooper, an excellent photographer, so he was commissioned to do the shoot. I worked in his studio for a fortnight constructing the collage, fixing the top row to the back wall and putting the next about six inches in front and so on, so that we got a tiered effect. Then we put in the palm tree and the other little objects. I wanted to have the waxworks of the Beatles because I thought that they might be looking at Sgt. Pepper's band too. The boy who delivered the floral display asked if he could contribute by making a guitar out of hyacinths, and the little girl wearing the 'Welcome the Rolling Stones, Good Guys' sweatshirt was a cloth figure of Shirley Temple, the shirt coming from Michael Cooper's young son, Adam. The Beatles arrived during the evening of March 30. We had a drink, they got dressed and we did the session. It took about three hours in all, inclusing the shots for the centre-fold and back cover. I'm not sure how much it all cost. One reads exaggerated figures. I think Robert Fraserwas paid 1500 by EMI, and I got about 200. People say to me, "You must have made alot of money on it" but I didn't because Robert signed away the copyright. But it never mattered too much because it was such a wonderful thing to have done.'




Paul McCartney: "These were all just cult heroes. George chose a few of his schoolmates he liked; and the rest of us said names we liked the sound of: like Aldous Huxley, H.G. Wells, Johnny Weissmuller...
We realised for the first time that someday someone would actually be holding a thing that they'd call 'The Beatles' new LP' and that normally it would just be a collection of songs or a nice picture on the cover, nothing more. So the idea was to do a complete thing that you could make what you liked of; just a little magic presentation."

[FlamingPie]

Cool, Eggy. Do you think you can get some info on this guy:

I was always wondering who he was.

[apollocvermouth]

This particular fellow is the member of the Royal Antediluvian Order of the Buffaloes. (R.A.O.B)

This group is known for the charitable acts they engage in to further the "pursuit of brotherhood."

When one thinks of the couuntless numbers of individuals to choose from for the cover of Sgt. Pepper, it makes one wonder why those who appear were the "chosen ones."

Take Stockhausen, for example. Several
telegrams were wired to him for approval in an almost frantic attempt to get him included on the cover.

Why?

Seems a bit more calculated than just liking the sound of the names.

Upon a closer look, there seems to be some connections with the different faces that appear on the cover as well.

Much more than mere happenstance.

Many of the items such as the "Paul?"
flower display and the other articles
found gracing the cover tell a story as well.

There is more going on than meets the eye.


"There is nothing you can see that isn't shown."

Apollo

[FlamingPie]

But it looks like some demon or something. I guess you can say that Diana Dors is covering up something ugly.

[Fun King]

Well, take a look to any biography of Crowley. Ain't it that sinister? What is that guy doing there?

[img src="http://galeon.hispavista.com/akostuff/img/Dunno2[1].gif"]

[Doc]

Theres a "dor" between us and the red faced man.

You'd have to get past these dorrs to see him.

These are special doors/ They are di-ana doors.

Diana's right are, covered by a stole, blocks our view.

Call PITA.

[eggy]

Flaming said:

Cool, Eggy. Do you think you can get some info on this guy:

I was always wondering who he was.

I found this about this strange guy:


Legionnaire from the Order of the Buffaloes (17?? - )
With a history that can be traced back as far as the late 1700s, the Royal Antediluvian Order of the Buffaloes (R.A.O.B.) is a fraternal organization open to all adult males without distinction as to social position, religious faiths or political beliefs. "The Buffs" main dedication is to charitable acts, helping their own associates and others who are in need of relief from any of the many human problems to which mankind is heir. The order consists of many thousands of members, all over the world, including lodges in Britain (location of their 'Grand Lodge'), South Africa, Gibralter, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, and Cyprus Province. They proudly claim that there has "never, in the last hundred years, been any worthwhile public endeavour to brighten the lives of the sick and needy in our own and other countries unless members of the R.A.O.B. have been actively involved in that endeavour."

[FlamingPie]

Are there any other pictures of him?

[Harb]

Has it ever struck as odd that every person appearing on the front cover had (at the time of it's release) either died, had a near death experience, or have portrayed death in a film?

For example, Edgar Allan Poe died a tragic death, Marilyn Monroe was a suicide victim, James Dean died in a motorcycle crash and Jay Mansfield was decapitated in a car crash. Also, we cannot forget the face of the other dead Beatle, Stuart Sutcliffe.

[FlamingPie]

What about Bob Dylan? He never died in a movie or in real life...

[Harb]

What about the Bob Dylan song - 'Death is not the End'

Strangely eerie!

Or there's 'The Lonely Death of Hattie Carroll' or 'The Death of Emmett Till'?

[apollocvermouth]

In July of 1966, Dylan was involved in a very serious motorcycle accident and spent many months in seclusion.

Besides being a strong influence in John's writing style, he would be a likely canidate for inclusion on the Pepper cover using Harb's observations.

Yet, there remains some rather strange
"connections" with other invited guest.

Edgar Allen Poe holds a rather dubious
record in Beatle lore. Not only appearing on the Pepper cover, but also being mentioned in song (I am the Walrus), and even speculated to have been the inspiration for the song "Blackbird" from his epic poem titled
"The Raven", and the inclusion of the word "Eldorado" heard on "Revolution #9" from a poem by the same name.

Poe's early works, mostly written for a Philly newspaper, dealt in the art of solving ciphers by using available clues.

His first books used many ciphers and written clues to solve the mystery along with the characters in the book.
The most obvious being a novel titled "The Goldbug."

These tactics were not oblivious to the Beatles, who used the technigue to a great extent in developing the cover for Sgt. Pepper.

One strange connection is with the author Terry Southern who is also amongst the crowd on Pepper. Southern, among other great books, is known for his penning of "Dr. Strangelove," which later became a hit movie by the same name.

In the book/movie, the dis-arm code used to diffuse the "bomb" was named "P.O.E.", short for "Peace on Earth."

The movie was directed by none other than Stanley Kubrick, whose unused footage from another film was used during the "Flying" segment on the "Magical Mystery Tour" movie.

And, it doesn't stop there folks.

But we'll leave that for another day.

Remember:
There's NOTHING you can KNOW that isn't KNOWN.

Apollo

[Doc]

[img src="http://galeon.hispavista.com/akostuff/img/Good-Post[1].gif"] Excellent class today, Professor.

[apollocvermouth]

Lewis Carroll, besides gracing the cover of Pepper, may have had a hand in it's recording as well.

We all know what effect he had on John and his unique style of writing, so we will pass over that one for now.

But little known is the technique employed by George Martin and Lennon for the organ sounds on "Mr. Kite."

In the book titled, "Phantasmagoria and Other Poems" written by Carroll, is the poem "Poeta Fit, Non Nascitur."

The poem involves a young man seeking advice from a more seasoned poet on how he could become a poet himself.

The elderly poet tells him in the following stanzas:

"For first you write a sentence, and then you chop it small.

Then mix the bits and sort them out,
just as they chance to fall.

The order of the phrases
makes no difference at all."

This being the exact ploy used in the organ parts mixed into the song.

It shows to what extent the background information on each member of the "crowd" was used to formulate the creation of Sgt. Pepper and the mystery
surrounding it.

Apollo

[Doc]

Thanks, Apollo. So, if I understand correctly, in one poetic technique, linear sequence is artistically redefined. The comfort zone of one's own personal syntax is too safe. Creatively stretching by writing beyond the usual flow helps; "open up" the presentation so that the result freshly engages the reader................?

Do I hear the buzzer?

I'll take literature for 50 please; "What is poetry.................."

[Doc]

Well, and so if Arnold Schoenburg had been on the cover of SPLHCB John might have written a tone row like in the 12-tone sytem of composition, I suppose........

[apollocvermouth]

"It seems very pretty," she said when she had finished it, "but it's rather hard to understand!" (You see she didn't like to confess even to herself,
that she couldn't make it out at all)
"Somehow it fills my head with ideas--
only I don't exactly know what they are! However, somebody killed something: that's clear, at any rate---"

[Doc]

Yes, I recall that passage, somehow.

You imply: The more one knows about each of the "crowd" on the cover, the more one can cross reference what is known about them in order to derive inter-connections from their "attendence."

Each person in the cover must be worth a thousand words on their own. Quite an essay! A many chaptered book!

OK, so, did Karma direct the photo shoot? Or did some brilliant humans cleverly anticipate the "posing" needed to result in the mirror shots, etc. The drum head, the hidden walrus---so many other puzzle parts HAD to be placed just so in 3 dimensions in order to get the photographic result in 2 dimensions.

Astonishing. Whoever set the scene, so to speak, must not have been paid nearly enough.

[FlamingPie]

DoctorRobert said:

Whoever set the scene, so to speak, must not have been paid nearly enough.

I don't think he was doing it for the money. As the great James Paul McCartney said, "money can't buy me love."

[Doc]

Aye-aye. What's done for love is done in a way that forgets how long it takes, how much effort is required, and the opportunity itself IS the payment. Then, if this truly was a dedicatory cover, then renumeration was a low priority.

In the face of sincere giving, greed evaporates. ;D

[FlamingPie]

DoctorRobert said:

Aye-aye. What's done for love is done in a way that forgets how long it takes, how much effort is required, and the opportunity itself IS the payment.

Exactly.

[Doc]

Flaming said:

Exactly.

[img src="http://galeon.hispavista.com/akostuff/img/Good-Post[1].gif"]

[FlamingPie]

Are you being sarcastic?