Talk:Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (song)/Archive 1

message: I like those lines at the beginning.
It was twenty years ago today
Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play
They've been goin' in and out of style
But they're guaranteed to raise a smile
So let me introduce to you
The act you've known for all these years
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
The act we've known for all these years are, of course, The Beatles themselves. But, the song—or, at least, the single—was released in 1978. Minus 20 years, that's 1958, the year Paul and George joined John's band, The Quarrymen. Who taught this band to play? Who is Sgt. Pepper? What does this have to do with Paul and George joining John's band?
Or, more likely since the song first came out on the album in 1967 before it was 20 years ago, what happened in 1947? Anything important to The Beatles? I can't find any history about them identified by year before 1967. Other than the member's personal life, their birth dates and stuff.
I don't expect anyone to answer these questions, or think about them, or even read them, let alone notice them; I just wanted to ask them somewhere. Beatles tragodology is a hobby of mine.
--VolatileChemical 01:48, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You're being too literal, VC.  For the purposes of the song, The Beatles weren't The Beatles, but, in fact, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  That is the act you've known all these years, not The Beatles.  Forget that the single was released 1978; The Beatles could have had no foreknowledge of that.  "Twenty years ago today" had no special significance to The Beatles, but made for a ripping good opening line, and was specifically chosen because Paul, John, George, and Ringo wanted listeners to know straightaway that the group singing to them wasn't the Beatles, but Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Cub Band. StarryEyes 08:21, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Lyrics

message: The singles in the info box are a little messed up. I dont know how to go by doing this sorta thig, so could anyone fix it? 216.222.255.113 00:28, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No one said it was released as a single in 1967. It came out on the album in 1967. It was later released as a single in 1978 and then the (cover) version by Paul McCartney and U2 was released as a single in 2005. —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 08:39, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The original 1967 single managed to chart for three weeks in the UK, with a peak position of 63. Unless I'm retarded, or something, thats what somebody said. I'm aware that that chart position is from 78, but it says "1967 single".CharlesMartel 03:30, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, you're absolutely right. It turns out it was some uncaught vandalism from February by . I've fixed it now. —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 19:58, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Singles

message: This article looks terrible the way it is (with two infoboxes). Maybe we could reduce that fist box into an album listing infobox (like the one I put in "One", for example)? --Kristbg 03:14, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I tried to put the two infoboxes together , with a orange part for the album and a yellow part for the singles.I just can't figure out how to put in the Chart Positions and Single Chronology.Here's the orginal infobox, so you can integrate the missing info.
MrGater 11:42, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There isn't much info in the orange infobox that isn't already on the other one, but I added the album version length to the new infobox. --Kristbg 14:31, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Infoboxes 

message: I think that Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise) deserves to be an artice by itself, the two versions of the song are completely different. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 58.104.26.162 (talk) 09:41, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reprise 

message: Mal Evans co-wrote the song. 'Nuff said - read the quotes... ThE bEaTLeS aka andreasegde 15:39, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Mal Evans

message: Why has this article not been put up for GA? --andreasegde 17:14, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: GA

message: They need to be formatted so as to be the same. --andreasegde 04:35, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I did more work on the references. I tried to make them as consistent as possible and as complete as possible. For online sources, I visited the page in question and used the title from that page as the title for the citation. In the case of the all caps "SERGEANT PEPPER'S..." BBC News story, the title was all caps on the web page in question, but I changed it to mixed case in the citation based on the comment from the GA reviewer. John Cardinal (talk) 01:09, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: References

message: I thought this might be useful:
"Ringo's Billy Shears. Definitely. That was just in the production of Sgt. Pepper. It just happened to turn out that we dreamed up Billy Shears. It was a rhyme for "years" . . . "band you've known for all these years . . . and here he is, the one and only Billy Shears." We thought, that's a great little name, it's an Eleanor-Rigby-type name, a nice atmospheric name, and it was leading into Ringo's track."
Roling Stone interview --andreasegde (talk) 11:49, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: GA

message: :GA review (see here for criteria)
#It is reasonably well written.
#:a (prose):  b (MoS): 
#:: 
#It is factually accurate and verifiable.
#:a (references):  b (citations to reliable sources):  c (OR): 
#:: 
#It is broad in its coverage.
#:a (major aspects):  b (focused): 
#:: 
#It follows the neutral point of view policy.
#:Fair representation without bias: 
#:: 
#It is stable.
#:No edit wars etc.: 
#:: 
#It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
#:a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales):  b (appropriate use with suitable captions): 
#:: 
#Overall: 
#:Pass/Fail: 
#:: 
Some little problems with this article are the citations. For example Note 30 is all caps "SERGEANT PEPPER'S 40th ANNIVERSARY".  Another is a copy editing problem within "Release" section: the sentence "At one point in 1976, there were 23 Beatles singles in the UK top 100." seems to be a bit of a non sequitur. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 22:12, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that there are too many comma clauses, and I agree (in general) that the prose of the article could be made more clear. On the specific point of adding even a tiny bit of background on McCartney, I don't think that is a good idea. He is identified as the writer of the song in the first paragraph of the article, and that reference is a wikilink (of course). If we add any description here, it will be redundant with information available elsewhere (his article, The Beatles article, etc.). A little redundancy is OK, but remember that McCartney is the writer or co-writer of hundreds of notable songs. If all those articles need that tiny bit of identifying info to achieve GA status, that's no longer tiny. If the reader wants to know more about McCartney beyond what is described here (the specifics related to the song), they click the link... — John Cardinal (talk) 19:47, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I understand what you're saying about McCartney and you may be correct. However, I should point out that what you call the first paragraph of the article has become - through that mysterious process of Wikipedia policy making - the section called the lead: seeWP:Lead. The lead is now supposed to summarize the entire article and should contain no unique information. In other words, things in the lead have to be repeated in the body of the text. This article is OK and is much better than a lot of what is on Wikipedia. It just doesn't meet a set of criteria for 'Good Article' as that criteria exists today. Some re-writing here and there to make things clearer and I think this article would easily be GA. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 20:49, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Message to John: It would be wonderful if you cleaned the problems on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (song) and put it up for GA again. Please do it (said in a nice way :) I'm busy on the Lennon article, which has more problems than I thought. --andreasegde (talk) 23:43, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  GA Review 

message: GA fail. The criteria for a Good Article can be found at Wikipedia:What is a good article?. This article fails on criteria 1(a): the prose is not clear. The text does not follow the Principle of least astonishment. For example, the very first sentence in the body of the text is this:
On the flight back to England from Nairobi after a holiday in 1966, Evans innocently asked McCartney what the letters “S” and “P” stood for on the pots on their meal trays, and McCartney explained that it was for salt and pepper, which led to the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band concept, as well as the song, although McCartney denies that Evans came up with the name.
Not only is that a sentence with a lot of 'comma clauses', it presumes a great deal of knowledge prior. In this one sentence, too much is assumed and too many arguments are presented: we have a vague 'origin' of the song name and we have a vague dispute. Who is Evans? For that matter, who is McCartney and is the reference to Nairobi significant. Now, McCartney might be obvious but he could have a tiny bit of backgound. Of course, the article does not fall on this one sentence but it is an example of a general problem. On the whole, the article is interesting and I wish everyone well in taking the time to write it. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 16:13, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that there are too many comma clauses, and I agree (in general) that the prose of the article could be made more clear. On the specific point of adding even a tiny bit of background on McCartney, I don't think that is a good idea. He is identified as the writer of the song in the first paragraph of the article, and that reference is a wikilink (of course). If we add any description here, it will be redundant with information available elsewhere (his article, The Beatles article, etc.). A little redundancy is OK, but remember that McCartney is the writer or co-writer of hundreds of notable songs. If all those articles need that tiny bit of identifying info to achieve GA status, that's no longer tiny. If the reader wants to know more about McCartney beyond what is described here (the specifics related to the song), they click the link... — John Cardinal (talk) 19:47, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I understand what you're saying about McCartney and you may be correct. However, I should point out that what you call the first paragraph of the article has become - through that mysterious process of Wikipedia policy making - the section called the lead: seeWP:Lead. The lead is now supposed to summarize the entire article and should contain no unique information. In other words, things in the lead have to be repeated in the body of the text. This article is OK and is much better than a lot of what is on Wikipedia. It just doesn't meet a set of criteria for 'Good Article' as that criteria exists today. Some re-writing here and there to make things clearer and I think this article would easily be GA. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 20:49, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Message to John: It would be wonderful if you cleaned the problems on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (song) and put it up for GA again. Please do it (said in a nice way :) I'm busy on the Lennon article, which has more problems than I thought. --andreasegde (talk) 23:43, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Conclusion

message: Andreasegde and I have agreed not to keep sniping at each other—we fight hard, but make up fast—and so the dispiriting part of the disagreement should be behind us. Andreasegde has suggested that splitting the Mal info into a separate section would be hard to do. I think doing so would reduce the overall weight of his claims, which was my goal before, but I am willing to give that up and leave the article essentially as it is. I would like to make a few changes here and try to reach a balance (IMO) between the two positions. Two examples:
*Change "Evans never received royalties and was not given more than his £38-a-week wage" to "Evans never received royalties." His wage isn't relevant to the claim, and its presence in the article makes it seem like Macca, the other Beatles, and Epstein deliberately underpaid him. (I actually have no idea what £38-a-week would buy in 1966 but 38 of anything doesn't seem like much and I suspect other readers would think the same thing.) In any case, what he was paid would be more relevant in the article on Mal and not here.
*Change "McCartney denies the accusation that Evans came up with the name" to "McCartney denies that Evans came up with the name." Removing "the accusation" tones down the dispute. With "the accusation" there, I get a mental picture of a barrister in the high court (wig and all) berating a sweating, red-faced McCartney, trying to push him to a confession that he was the other shooter on the grassy knoll. (I admit my imagination might be over active!)
I'll re-read the Mal info pretty closely before I make any changes and so there may be more changes than what I described above. In any case, I will try to make changes that do not dramatically reduce Evans claims and don't require big changes to the structure of the article.
I won't act on this until later today and so if anyone has comments about it in the next few hours, please rock on. John Cardinal (talk) 13:49, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Go for it John. Sounds like good editing to me. (To tell the truth, after putting a lot of stuff in an article, I can't see the wood for the trees. Fresh eyes are always welcome.)--andreasegde (talk) 16:16, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  What to do about Mal?