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The good news was that the band could now spend more time in the recording studio.

In November 1966, the Beatles started recording the album that would become the legendary Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Beatles spent more than four months recording this album, which was unheard of at the time (the Beatles' first record, Please Please Me had been recorded in just 9 hours).

It's however worth pointing out that there had been a shift in the group's leadership at this point.

Before Sgt. Pepper, John Lennon had been the natural leader of the Beatles. It was Lennon who formed the Quarry Men back in the late 1950s, and he had also been the group's most dominant song writer.

By late 1966, this had changed. McCartney now wrote most of the songs, and seemed to have most of the ideas, while Lennon, for the first time, appeared to be more in the background. (It was, for example, McCartney's idea to perform as the fictional Sgt. Pepper band on the album's opening and closing cuts.)

Insiders have said Lennon was constantly taking the drug LSD during this period, and that this made him passive and less bossy. Lennon had also recently met the Japanese artist Yoko Ono, who he married in 1969, and whom many have said that took his attention away from the Beatles.

It's however dubious if Yoko Ono had any direct influence on Lennon's career at this stage, since he was still living with his first wife, Cynthia Lennon (born Powell).

Nevertheless, Lennon may not have been as proactive during the Sgt. Pepper sessions as before, but he still delivered some awesome songs for the album. A Day In The Life, the album closer, was a fifty-fifty Lennon and McCartney collaboration, although it had been written as two separate songs. Lennon also penned Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, Good Morning Good Morning and Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite. He also wrote the superb Strawberry Fields Forever, which was released as single together with McCartney's Penny Lane (the two songs were not included on Sgt. Pepper). Interestingly, in the US, Penny Lane shot to number 1 on the billboard charts, while Strawberry Fields Forever only made it to number 8.

Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band turned out to be a huge success, and it is probably the most famous pop record ever made. The album topped the charts for 15 weeks in the US and for 27 weeks in the UK.

The time devoted to studio recording gave unusual results, and the Beatles once again broke new barriers in their quest for new and exciting sounds. Classical orchestras and brass bands were ambitiously used to enhance the arrangements of songs like She's Leaving Home and A Day In The Life. The distorted vocal and organ on Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds created a whole new experience for the listener, while Harrison's Within You Without You blended Indian and western classical instruments, which never before had been recorded together.

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