Rock all-stars remake Sgt. Pepper's for anniversary tribute
Last Updated: Monday, April 9, 2007 | 2:53 PM ET
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Some of the U.K.'s most popular rock bands are set to remake the iconic Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band this spring.
The BBC has enlisted a host of hit musical acts — including Oasis, The Killers, Kaiser Chiefs, Travis, Razorlight and James Morrison — for the project, which will pay tribute to the album's upcoming 40th anniversary.
Over the years, the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band has topped several best album lists.
"This will be not only a unique radio event, but a very special musical moment," Lesley Douglas, controller of BBC Radio Two, said in an interview with BBC News.
Douglas also said that the new versions "will be a fitting tribute to one of the great albums of all time."
The bands are participating in recording sessions with BBC Radio Two, with the tribute to air June 2.
Geoff Emerick, the original engineer who recorded the Sgt. Pepper's album in 1967, is also taking part.
He will record the new cover album with the same equipment he used for the Fab Four's original at London's famed Abbey Road Studios.
Released June 1, 1967, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was the eighth album from the Beatles.
With songs like Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, When I'm Sixty-Four, A Day in the Life and With a Little Help from My Friends, it was an instant hit and grew to become one of the band's most influential albums and has often topped critical lists of the greatest albums of all time.
The album's cover art — which featured a collage depicting the band in costume alongside with images of Karl Marx, Bob Dylan, W.C. Fields, Marlene Dietrich, Edgar Allen Poe, Marilyn Monroe and dozens of other famous figures — also gained acclaim. Aside from being enshrined on a British stamp, it has been parodied by everyone from Frank Zappa to MAD magazine to The Simpsons.
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