Daily Mail April 3, 2012
When the Beatles’ album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album was released in 1967 at the very height of their fame, it was a wonder of its age – and not only for its songs. Almost as important was its packaging – that ornate, folding sleeve that showed the four Beatles in fancy dress at the centre of a flowery, hippy montage of characters from Karl Marx to Bob Dylan, Oscar Wilde and Laurel and Hardy.
The most expensive and famous cover ever designed, it was to change the art work on albums for ever, as well as bringing everlasting renown to its designer, pop artist Peter Blake.
Unfortunately it didn’t also bring him commensurate remuneration, in that, as the agent who negotiated for him was high on pot at the time, Blake only received a £200 fee. Ah, well, it was the Sixties!
In a few weeks time Blake will be 80, and to celebrate his birthday he’s designed a new Sgt Pepper cover, 2012 style, replacing the original images, including those of the Beatles, with old friends and people he admires and whom he believes celebrate British culture.
It’s a terrific idea, claiming back an idea that he so cheaply sold. But his choice of the people portrayed in his new montage is where he and I might not completely agree. In fact, some of his choices are decidedly rum. Understandably, being an artist, the visual arts, and especially fashion, figure prominently, so I’ve no particular grumble here.
It’s nice, if surprising, to see Justin de Villeneuve again, Twiggy’s forgotten former manager and boy friend, and, despite her Olympic team designs, Stella McCartney isn’t unwelcome. Nor are film directors Ridley Scott and Alfred Hitchcock.
Presumably, though, sculptor Anish Kapoor and the artist-in-the-frock Grayson Perry only made the cut because they are good mates with Peter Blake. Fair enough, I suppose.
What really puzzles me, though, is the plethora of restaurateurs and chefs. I know the entire nation has gone potty about food, with the endless succession of books and TV programmes (so cheap to make) about eating, but are the late Fanny Craddock, Mr Chow, Rick Stein and three other kitchen potentates all really icons of British culture. Or are they just cooks with big hats?
It’s all personal, of course. It has to be in any list that includes Tommy Steele and Shirley Bassey. But sometimes Blake’s choices seem just plain random.
How could he choose Mick Jagger without Keith Richards, when we all know that without those Richards’ guitar riffs Mick Jagger might well have stayed at university and ended up running a City bank?
Surprisingly, because I know Blake was interested in wrestling for a time, what is completely missing from the new montage are sporting heroes, although boxer Sonny Liston was in the original. There’s no David Beckham or my own favourite footballer, the ever reasonable John Barnes – and not even Bobby Moore who gifted the nation with the only World Cup we’ve ever won.
He might even have found a place here for comedian Eddie Izzard, if only for his heroic, long distance walking feat for charity, or Lewis Hamilton for his Formula One exploits.
And while the playwrights Tom Stoppard, Harold Pinter and Terence Rattigan are all included, with the exception of children’s authors JK Rowling and Roald Dahl, there are few novelists.
What about David Nicholls, whose brilliant novel One Day became an admittedly unbrilliant movie, or Helen Fielding who tapped into the minds of a generation of women and invented Bridget Jones. Then there’s Robert Harris, Sue Townsend, the one-off and very brave Terry Pratchett, and the wonderful graphic artist Posy Simmonds. All these, and Michael Morpugno, the man who wrote War Horse, would have made my list.
The original Sgt Pepper included several comedians, but with the exception of Nick Park, whom everyone admires for his creation of Wallace And Gromit, and Richard Curtis, who gave us Black Adder, Four Weddings And A Funeral, and much else, there aren’t any intentionally funny people.
Which is surprising because one of the things we Brits particularly excel at it’s being funny. Thirty five years after Fawlty Towers we’re still laughing at John Cleese as Basil, while Jennifer Saunders’ Ab Fab creation of Edina Monsoon was wickedly inspirational. They should be there. Then there’s Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse who’ve created whole casts of full, funny characters
To be honest, I rather like the idea that, as the Beatles company Apple have never offered to make reparation for the fact that Blake was, albeit accidentally, ripped off for his work on the original Sgt Pepper cover all those years ago, the artists puts himself and his family front and central in his new illustration. Good for him.
But, although Paul McCartney is there in the third row, surely there should have a been a place for all four Beatles, without whom Blake’s career would have been a little different. Equally, had I been doing it, I would have found a central spot for the Beatles’ producer George Martin, who did as much as almost anyone to create the Sgt Pepper album in the first place.
Obviously, as Peter Blake admits, it’s impossible to get everyone into a montage, and I suspect some of his friends might have been feeling a bit put-out when they woke up yesterday to discover that they hadn’t been included, but there are some significant gaps in his cultural spread.
I would like to have seen David Dimbleby for the way he tells loquacious Cabinet ministers to shut up on Question Time, Jeremy Paxman for his pantomime indignation when facing the froth of the mighty and powerful and Melvyn Bragg for his career long battle to bring culture to the masses.
Then there’s Gareth Malone who taught the Soldiers Wives and many children to sing, as well as Mary Portas whose Channel Four programme took a group of unemployed young people in Middleton and set up a company making lacy knickers and, in so doing, changed their lives. These people, like Camila Batmanghelidjh of Kids Company, are inspirational, as is the telegenic scientist Brian Cox who even managed to make physics sexy – not a phrase you will often hear.
Everyone would have a different list. As I could scarcely care less about fashion, there would be no room for Peter Blake’s favourites of Vivien Westwood, Mary Quant and Barbara Hulanicki in mine, but we would agree on including Sir David Attenborough – although I might add his film making brother Richard, too.
And I would insist on Russell T. Davies, who has reinvented Dr Who for a new generation, and Rob Brydon, if only for Marion and Geoff, while no mosaic that captured contemporary Britain would be complete without Julia Donaldson’s creation of the Gruffalo.
Last, though by no means least, and as delightful as the former Kate Middleton is, and I think she’s lovely, it seems to me that no pictorial account of Britain is complete without the Queen. Some of my more cynical friends will mock me, but I believe she bridges generations, class (in that she’s so far removed from everyone else she’s classless) and politics. Sixty years on from her coronation, still working and probably regarded with more affection now than at any time in her reign, she is totally remarkable. She should be on anyone’s list.
I can remember when Sgt Pepper first came out, rushing to buy one of the first copies, and then sitting by my Dansette record player listening to the songs – Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, She’s Leaving Home, When I’m Sixty Four and the rest, and studying the faces on the cover, trying to make out who they all were.
I never did identify all of them, and I’m sure millions of hours have been spent by others in the same pursuit. Which, when you consider it, was an enormous contribution that an artist called Peter Blake made to all our lives forty five years ago. I hope he has a very happy birthday.
