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The Beatles are rightly considered one of the most progressive rock bands of all time. So it is easy to look back at their salad days and point out John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr as the early 1960s version of a boy band. After all, the group were well-marketed and hit the top of the charts with startling consistency. But, within a few years, they were already changing the game. After their album Rubber Sul, the group confirmed themselves as the rock icons they are now revered as. Not only did they begin expanding their counterculture...

She's Leaving Home (Remastered 2009) · The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

The most ambitious reissue yet of an individual album from the Beatles’ catalog is coming May 26 with an expanded and newly remixed edition of the Fab Four’s 1967 pop masterpiece, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” Consistently ranked by critics and fans among the most influential rock albums of all time, “Sgt. Pepper” is being reissued in multiple formats and editions, including new stereo and surround-sound audio mixes along with nearly three dozen previously unreleased recordings from the same sessions.

It was 40 years ago today. Ah, you knew the story would start like that. What other way to begin? June 1, 1967. That's when "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" hit the streets in the United Kingdom, a day later in the United States, and hit the consciousness of the pop world like a dose of something strange in the Kool-Aid. It was the eighth (British) Beatles album but also the beginning of a new chapter for the band and for a popular culture entering into the Summer of Love and a period of heightened experimentation with music, fashion,...