50 years ago today...

I never forget the first album I owned. I was a schoolboy at the time and living in The Netherlands. One evening my father brought home a cassette tape (anyone remember those?) and on it was the most bizarrely colourful photograph of people I had ever seen. I didn't know it at the time but what I held in my hand would completely change my view on music. It was transformational. I played the tape expecting to hear some sort of brass band music, or other seemingly boring stuff, as represented by the instruments the musicians were clasping on the album cover. But what I  heard transported me to another realm, where rocking horse people ate marshmallow pies. I was of course, listening to The Beatles masterpiece - Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The album was released 50 years ago today, on June 1st, 1967. The revolutionary cover design was by the famed artist Peter Blake, but the music, written mainly by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, was even more revolutionary. Its melodies and the images it painted in my mind have stayed with me all of my life. It is still, in my estimation, the greatest rock album ever made. But the design got me thinking about my other great love - learning.

Gazing now at the front cover of Sgt Peppers, I still see new things emerging, almost 50 years on. Most of the faces I can now name. They are reminiscent of the cast of hundreds that helped shape me, in my formative years, into who I have since become. There are respectful nods to many of those who influenced the Fab Four, including musicians such as the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. 

There are old, long lost friends, such as former bassist Stuart Sutcliffe, and comedy legends including comic actors Stan Laurel and W. C. Fields. Interestingly, there are also waxwork models of the four lads frozen in time from an earlier period of their lives. 

If we were each to create a collage of all those who have influenced us from our early years, who might we include? Better still, if your students created their own life-collages, would you appear in them as an important influence?

Photos by Steve Wheeler


50 years ago today by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.