It Was 50 Years Ago Today... | Page 11 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

The Beatles’ official website says it was released on June 1st. I would trust them over Wikipedia.

There are not that many 50 year old personal events that one can remember back to the exact minute. As Necko might note in a Hmmm post, that was 26,298,000 minutes ago . This afternoon is one of those times. It was the last day of 8th grade (middle school in the US) and we were all busy signing yearbooks, hugging each other and packing up our stuff. Mr. Moran’s art studies was my last class before heading out for the 3 month summer break. To my total joy and amazement he had gone out to the record store at lunch and bought the album Sgt. Pepper ‘s Lonely Hearts Club Band. He spent that last class playing the record and letting us discuss what we heard while passing around the cover and inserts. Remember there was no internet so this was quite an event to hear the album and hold the cover on the first day. To be honest I don’t recall the music all that much, with the probable exception of Within You, Without You that seemed like it was music from a different planet. The music didn’t sound like anything I was listening to at the time such as The Doors first album or Surrealistic Pillow by Jefferson Airplane. In addition I was really keen by then that The Beatles were something besides a rock band and were leading us all somewhere , thus it was very important to figure out the cluesso you don’t get left behind. I’m sure that was my first impression when I saw that the lyrics were printed which made it much easier to decipher the true meanings.  This seems a bit fanatic now, but believe me for many of us it only got more intense as time went on (I eventually manually played every Beatle album and single backwards on my turntable). Reflecting on this though, many of the previous lyrics were somewhat cryptic and seemed to offer a path to a different existence; e.g. “You don’t know what you’re missing”, “It’s just a state of mind, I can show you”, “Say the word and you’ll be free”, “Surrender to the void!”, and now they would love to take me home and turn me on!  Anyway that was my first time with Sgt. Pepper . I do recall on the bus home thinking “I can’t wait to hear Lucy In The Sky With Linus” again (the Peanuts comic was big back then). A week later I had my own copy of the album and laughed at my mistake (or was it actually a telepathic message from…Hmmm) 

That’s not how this thread works… 

How are you posting that from the future?

EDIT: nevermind but since when did we have two of these threads? I honestly don’t remember ever seeing this one.

John, George, Cynthia and Patti departed for India 50 years ago today. Meditation has become a life altering/affirming daily practice for me and was facilitated by the journey that began on this day in 1968. 

SgtPeppersBulldog said
Some more information about the trip, along with some great pictures:

https://www.cntraveller.in/sto…..a-got/  

Thanks @SgtPeppersBulldog, those are some cool pictures. I wonder if there are any recordings of John playing the flute. It’s amazing how different John looks in these pictures compared to when he was waiting for the plane (George looks exactly the same). He looks much happier in India   I read that the ashram has fallen into disrepair but is currently being restored, so perhaps we can visit someday 

I’m not entirely sure how accurate that is, though, because I thought he had a Ludwig at least as early as the 1964 US tour.