TV REVIEW : Fab Foray Into Making of ‘Sgt. Pepper’

It was twenty- five years ago today--plus four months or so--that Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play.

So it’s not quite an anniversary. And “The Making of Sgt. Pepper,” a TV documentary premiering Sunday at 9 p.m. on the Disney Channel, can’t claim any topical tie-in as rationale for reconstructing just what genius and madness went into the recording of the Beatles’ 1967 landmark album.

But no special occasion is necessary. “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” stands today as one of the hallmarks of pop music in virtually every regard, from concept to engineering--still the best rock album ever , some would argue. And “The Making of Sgt. Pepper” is an entirely fitting tribute, general enough to educate novices, yet detailed enough to captivate even jaded, know-it-all Beatlemaniacs.

No long-buried videos have suddenly popped up to portray the Fab Four at work on their sonic epic. What we have instead is almost as good: our main tour guide back in time, producer George Martin, sitting at a sound board, fooling around with the original four-track tapes at whim.

Like most of the Beatles’ best work, the final “Pepper” tracks always seemed so revelatory, so perfectly formed, as to have been dropped down fully formed by the gods. But as Martin (also executive producer of the program, which was produced by Nick de Grunwald and directed by Alan Benson) isolates different channels in the mix--highlighting naked vocals here, cellos or slide guitar or sitar there--his recollection of the individual elements that went into constructing the whole shows what incredibly creative and hard-working mortals these Beatles be.

It’s not just Martin’s show; the surviving ex-Beatles themselves chime in with memories. George Harrison hearkens back to his forays to India to visit Ravi Shankar and the Maharishi, which resulted in the album’s most psychedelic song, “Within You, Without You,” and brought Indian musicians together with British string players for a world-beat first. He admits this contribution was “an indulgence . . . I don’t think (the other Beatles) were even at the session, but I think they quite enjoyed the idea of having something that was a bit left-field on the album.”

In contrast, Paul McCartney notes, “When I started songwriting, it wasn’t to write rock ‘n’ roll, it was to write for Sinatra, it was to write cabaret”--a tendency borne out in the sentimental “When I’m 64,” the LP’s nod to old-fashioned nostalgia. McCartney also again points out that his biggest influence at the time was the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds,” from which the Beatles “nicked a few ideas,” like the use of bass harmonica.

A few examples of the many anecdotal asides in the special, some well known to Beatles compleatists, some fresh:

* The first and third songs recorded during the “Pepper” sessions weren’t even included on the album--not because they were no good, but because they were so good. “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane” were instead released separately around the same time on a single. Says Martin: “In those days, we didn’t include single releases on albums, because we thought that was rather conning the public--one of the biggest mistakes I ever made.”

* John Lennon wanted “Good Morning, Good Morning” to end on a note of subliminal portent with a series of animals--starting with a rooster--each one “capable of either frightening or devouring the one before it,” Martin says. The song itself was inspired by a Kellogg’s cereal commercial, and Martin says Lennon’s melody was “typical of him in that it was of odd meters but sounded perfectly natural. He would have a 3/4 bar, a 4/4 bar, a 5/4 bar even, without knowing it.”

* In the song “With a Little Help From My Friends,” Ringo Starr demanded that Lennon and McCartney change the line “Would you throw tomatoes at me” to “Would you stand up and walk out on me,” fearful that if the Beatles were to ever tour again, he’d be adoringly pelted with vegetables.

One thing the 45-minute special doesn’t offer much of is sociological context. Martin does take offense at the oft-repeated theory that the initials of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” were meant to refer to LSD, but that’s the show’s only drug reference, despite the undisputed chemical influences on the quartet at the time. (This is the Disney Channel, after all.)

The importance of “Sgt. Pepper” was placed in a much broader social context in a 5-year-old English special, “It Was Twenty Years Ago Today,” which aired on PBS three years ago. That documentary featured interviews with the likes of Allen Ginsberg and Abbie Hoffman, and extensively detailed the album’s effect on the counterculture and vice versa. You won’t get that here, but the purely musical revelations more than make up for a multitude of cultural omissions.