Although Melbourne band The Twilights, fronted by Glenn Shorrock, had got a copy from England and were cheekily already playing it live before its local release.

But when it finally made it, it made an impact.

Here’s some people who lived through Sgt. Pepper’s, and a few who look back on it with wonder.

MOLLY MELDRUM

The music icon was merely a Beatles fanboy at the time Sgt. Pepper’s was released. But the album had a major impact.

“I was absolutely blown away when I heard Sgt. Pepper’s for the first time. It was a real musical statement. I remember Ronnie Burns and I played it over and over, then we’d take it to our friends’ houses and play it there over and over. You’d sit down and listen to it, then look at the cover art, work out who the people on it were. Musically, it really was something else. Everyone says George Martin was the fifth Beatle and it’s totally correct. He had such a brilliant influence in guiding them down these new paths, that’s what made it possible to make a record like Sgt. Pepper’s. The production on that album blew my mind. When I got to the chance to produce records myself I absolutely modelled what I did off George Martin. Even with The Real Thing by Russell Morris, there’s bits in there, the choir, the sitar, that were inspired by the Beatles and Sgt. Pepper’s. It’s one of the greatest albums ever made, it still sounds incredible today. Listening to that record in Melbourne, never did I dream then that I would ever personally meet the Beatles, let alone work with them at Apple in London. I love the title track, that was the one for me. I even tried to dress a bit like they had during the Sgt. Pepper’s era, although my version was more like tacky drag. It really established them as the superior group of the time, if that wasn’t already clear. There’ll never be another Beatles.”

RONNIE BURNS

When Sgt. Pepper’s dropped, Burns was frontman in Melbourne band The Flies, who’d won a Moomba competition for being most like The Beatles.

“Molly was living with me, we would dissect all the Beatles singles and albums as they came out. Sgt. Pepper’s was a huge event. They did such brilliant things with such simple technology. There was so much work that had gone into that record, from the cover to the music to the concept. We were trying to work out what they were doing and what they were saying. It was abstract but it wasn’t bizarre, we all understood what was going on. The volume of work they put out was truly amazing. You want music to progress and if anyone ever did that it was The Beatles. It was truly amazing. They were creating all these unusual chords and passages. They had the luxury at that time to go into a studio with one of the greatest producers in history, they weren’t touring, there was no constraint on their time, they could just create. We were all plugged into that, how could anyone keep up with them? It was so inspiring. They were prepared to walk where other people hadn’t gone before. That was the exciting part. We then all walked with them. They fascinated us. Sgt. Pepper’s changed music, but the Beatles changed music every time they released a record.”

GLENN SHORROCK

In 1967 Glenn Shorrock was frontman for The Twilights, major Beatles fans. The band were recording at Abbey Road and got a preview of Sgt. Pepper’s.

“The Twilights had won Hoadley’s Battle of the Sounds and part of the prize was a trip to England and the chance to record at Abbey Road studios. We rocked up there on January 6, 1967. The doorman said ‘You’ve picked a bloody good day to come here, the group’s in’. We said: ‘Who?’ Obviously it was the Beatles. It was a great session, we did three songs in one night but it was a bit hard to concentrate when we knew our heroes were working just up the corridor. We were a bit shy, but I was constantly opening the door and looking out for them. Finally I saw George Harrison waft in looking like the Wizard of Oz, draped in sitars and guitars. Later in the night I snuck up a bit further and stuck my ear to the control room where they were recording and I heard the lyrics to Penny Lane. I didn’t know what it was. It didn’t make any sense to me, but of course history has it the Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever single was part of the whole Sgt. Pepper’s session, they just put the single out before the album. It was magic. George Martin came in and listened to what we were doing, which was nice. He walked around like the Duke of Edinburgh, with his hands behind his back. ‘Jolly good, sounds good, from Australia right?’ When we got back to Australia and the album first reached us I remember we had one pair of headphones between us. We were dragging them out of each other’s ears to listen to it. It was a very exciting night, I remember it well. It was highly anticipated. We didn’t realise the impact the album made on us. It was a watershed album, an iconic album that was the zenith of the Beatles’ creativity and spurred us on to learn it. We had someone in England that sent us the Beatles records quickly, before they came out in Australia. The Twilights actually played Sgt. Pepper’s in full live before it was released in Australia. Actually, not in full, we were a bit stymied by A Day In the Life. We didn’t know how to reproduce that with two guitarists. That was our reputation, that we would get Beatles material before the radio got it and play it live. We enjoyed that. It was the first concept album. They were leading up to it with Revolver, that was an adventurous album. They were constantly changing the playing field. It was such a beautiful and theatrical album to listen to. It wasn’t rock and roll any more, it was Beatles music. They could play rock and roll, that’s how they began, a rough rock band. But they took it to the top of the mountain. It is a seminal album.”

ALICE COOPER

The shock rocker actually starred in the infamous 1978 musical film version of Sgt. Peppers, with the Bee Gees, Peter Frampton and Steve Martin.

“The only reason I even wanted to be in that movie was that George Martin was going to produce the music. I wanted to say I worked with George Martin. I played this criminal religious character called Father Sun. We did this song Because, a great John Lennon song. When I did it the first time I did it like John, I did a great impersonation of John. George Martin said ‘That’s great, how would Alice do it?’. So I took this beautiful song and turned it into a threat. He called up John and said ‘You gotta hear this’. John loved the fact I took this pretty song and made it sound like a threat. I did actually get to meet all the Beatles. I’ve worked with Paul McCartney in the Hollywood Vampires, I’ve known him for 35 years. I used to drink with John, and George, and Ringo. I got to know them pretty well. If you ask 90 per cent of people in rock and roll they would say Sgt. Pepper’s is probably the greatest album of all time. It really is one of the most influential albums ever released. My generation — Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne and Rod Stewart and Elton John — we were the very next generation to come up who learned how to write music from listening to the Beatles and Sgt. Pepper’s. We would learn how to do things by listening to The Beatles and adding our touch to it. If you listen to an Alice Cooper album it’s all very melodic. Same with Ozzy Osbourne, Aerosmith, all the hard rock bands from that era. The further away you get from the Beatles the less melodic the music gets. Bands today aren’t melodic. I always tell young bands go back and listen to early Beatles and pick up on their melody lines.”

GOTYE

The Australian chart topper, aka Wally de Backer, is heavily pro Beatle.

“I’m a huge, unashamed Beatles fan. When people ask my favourite artist I always say the best band ever, The Beatles. How can you assail that incredible body of work, that moment of time, the whole romance around them as four guys and what they experienced, how the world responded? The Beatles to me feel like this deep, deep well of joy. When I listen to almost anything they did, not just Sgt. Pepper’s, but from Abbey Road back to early demos, it always picks me up. They were amazing. The effortlessness and the joy in their music is so inspiring.”

ALISON MOYET

The UK singer/songwriter was weaned on the Fab Four.

“The Beatles were the first band I collected. My little old gran had all the old Apple singles she gave to me. It was a time when I was 14 or 15 and my life was purely 100-per-cent Beatles. Sgt. Pepper’s was very important, it was the soundtrack to my pubescent years.”

GREG ARMSTRONG

The Beatles fan has run a weekly radio show, Let It Be Beatles, for 25 years. This anniversary is like Christmas for Beatles disciples.

“The Beatles don’t normally celebrate anniversaries or landmarks. But this is a really lavish project, there’s a six disc version of Sgt. Pepper’s. It’s the first time we’re getting a mother lode of work in progress, different takes and session material since the Beatles’ Anthology, and that’s been over 20 years ago. Sgt. Pepper’s was a critical period for the Beatles. They’d stopped touring, they were being very creative, they weren’t knocking the album out in a hurry, it took months to record. This was the result of them stopping touring. It’s a bit of a concept, the concept doesn’t run all the way through but it opens and closes with the idea of this mythical band, it works well. Every song is exciting. They tried songs in so many ways, we’ve never really heard those early versions unlike with other albums. There’s no whole unheard songs now, just alternate versions. They’d change the song between take one and take nine, they were developing the songs in the studio. It was the peak of their mountain in most people’s eyes. It’s not my favourite Beatles album, I love it, but it’s a huge landmark. It’s not just an album, it’s a bit of a historical marker for the decade. Everyone knows it. Beatles fans are very picky. Giles Martin is remixing it, he’s tampering with the legacy if you like, but everything people have heard so far has gotten a big tick. And Beatles fans are the first people to point out when something is done badly. Like the Eight Days a Week film last year, it was good but it was a bit forgettable, it could have been better. The depth of what they’re doing with Pepper’s is amazing. Giles was working with his dad for a long time. They opened up all the tapes for the Love project. Giles was his dad’s ears, his hearing wasn’t great, and he could go to his dad and ask him how they made a vocal effect on a mono version. It’s been the best handover for any job change ever.”

DAVEY LANE

He’s a solo artist, and also a member of You Am I, but Davey Lane has put on several tribute concerts to the Beatles and George Martin. He was a good 15 years away from being born when Sgt. Pepper’s was released, but he’s studied the band fervently.

“My dad got me into The Who when I was about eight or nine — Pete Townshend was the reason I picked up the guitar. I wasn’t interested in anything else. Not too long after dad came home from the market one day with a copy of Sgt. Pepper’s for me to listen to. I clearly remember the cover and thinking as a child at the dawn of the ‘90s how old-fashioned I thought it was. Some guys standing around in quasi-military uniforms holding antiquated instruments surrounded by portraits in black and white. It looked like a funeral. Why would I want to listen to something so bleak when I could watch a guy in a white boiler suit throw his arm around and smash guitars? But when he put it on for me, as a kid who grew up on Whispering Jack, Electric Blue and Pseudo Echo’s Funky Town, the realm of music truly clicked for me in an entirely different way — it seemed futuristic with those vaudevillian bits only ever breaking the spell. I never knew music could be so — kaleidoscopic! Now, my feeling is that it’s nowhere nearly as timeless as what preceded it or followed it — Revolver and The White Album (I put Magical Mystery Tour in the same basket as a lot of Pepper) as those records were drier, more distorted and right in your face and didn’t lean as heavily on the music hall (When I’m 64, Your Mother Should Know, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer etc) but underneath the overdubs and manipulation of sound on Pepper, my god, what a BAND they are playing those songs. You can quite easily find on the net or the Anthology discs stripped back versions of Getting Better, Good Morning Good Morning and the Pepper Reprise and it’s easy to hear their enthusiasm for playing instruments together in a room had not been dulled by the drudgery of those last couple years of touring. As well-documented as it is, it’d be unfair to note Pepper’s influence without noting what Pepper itself nicked from the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds — I doubt Mr Kite would have sounded the same if they haven’t heard I Know There’s An Answer, and I doubt McCartney would have opted for so many twists and turns in his basslines without hearing Carol Kaye’s before. I love the ideas that they probably knew could only be done once and once only, like the crescendo in A Day In the Life. By the way, anyone ever notice how the hook in the song Hush is a direct rip of the middle bit in A Day In The Life? I didn’t realise until a couple of days ago. More the fool me. Pepper’s the record least represented on bootleg recordings so I’m keen to hear any snippet that’s new on the extra discs. I’m a sucker for any fly-on-the-wall document of any great band working through songs in the studio. There’s always something to glean from it. I’m genuinely frothing from the mouth at the prospect of a new stereo remix. If I can hear a new stereo mix that goes back to the source of each instrument before they were reduced to one track on a 4-track tape machine, I’m gonna put my hand up to hear it. The snippets I’ve heard sound incredible, especially the drum sounds. It’s the act you’ve known for all these years but it sounds brand frickin new!”

COLLEEN HEWETT

A young Colleen was a few years away from going solo in 1967 — and scoring a hit with a cover of the Beatles’ Carry That Weight.

“I remember really well when Sgt. Peppers was released. It caused a stir and everyone was fascinated by the artwork on the cover. But I was in the minority with how I thought about the album. I loved The Beatles but didn’t like the orchestrations on the album. I always enjoyed their simplicity but I didn’t get Sgt. Pepper’s, and I didn’t like The Beatles dressing up in that weird gear. At the time I was working with the wonderful Laurie Allen in his Revue, and we were focusing on soul and blues music, and there was no place for the new Beatles. That just shows what a dud judge I am — I couldn’t have been more wrong about Sgt. Pepper’s, although I still prefer the early Beatles.”