"Sgt. Pepper is called the first concept album, but it doesn't go anywhere. All my contributions to the album have absolutely nothing to do with this idea of Sgt. Pepper and his band; it works 'cause we said it worked."

John Lennon

"Until this album we'd never thought of taking the freedom to do something like Sgt. Pepper. Marijuana started to find its way into everything we did. It colored our perception, and we started to realize there weren't as many barriers as we'd thought, we could break through with things like album covers, or invent another persona for the band."

Paul McCartney

"Sgt. Pepper was supposed to have been this complete musical montage with all these songs blending into each other. That idea went out the window two tracks in, after 'Sgt. Pepper' and 'Little Help from My Friends.' "

Ringo Starr

"[Pepper] was the turning point, something that will stand the test of time as a valid art form: sculpture in music..."

"When we'd finished doing the orchestral bit [for A Day in the Life], one part of me said, 'We're being a bit self-indulgent here.' The other part of me said, 'It's bloody marvelous!' "

George Martin

"The Sgt. Pepper album...compresses the evolutionary development of musicology and much of the history of Eastern and Western sound in a new tympanic complexity...The Beatles are Divine Messiahs...Prototypes of a new young race of laughing freemen."

Timothy Leary

"It was like throwing down a hat in the center of a ring, it was a tremendous challenge...It seemed like an almost insurmountable task to come up with anything even in the same ballpark."

John Sebastian, Lovin' Spoonfuls

"Sgt. Pepper was what we listened to for the next days and weeks: that record, played over and over again. It was the theme of the people working for the [Monterey Pop] Festival."

Michelle Phillips, Mamas and the Papas

"Hearing Sgt. Pepper, smoking reefers, and planning the revolution in my friend's loft, we were just overwhelmed by their vision."

Abbie Hoffman

"Somehow Sgt. Pepper did not stop the Vietnam War. Somehow it didn't work. Somebody isn't listening..."

David Crosby