Kent Hartman

“While other successful rock-and-roll acts of the day such as Gary Lewis and the Playboys, the Buckinghams, and the Grass Roots remained perfectly content with the status quo of putting out a new album every six months that contained a couple of hoped-for hits and eight or ten unremarkable “filler” tracks, the Beatles would have none of it. They raised the bar for one and all with Sgt. Pepper’s by making every tune matter. The melody, the lyrics, the instrumentation, the arrangement, the cohesion, the sequencing, the message, the cover art—it was all inextricably entwined. Albums were now to be listened to from beginning to end. No more cherry-picking among the cuts just to hear the latest hit song from the radio. The record labels, of course, still tried to pick the hits via 45-RPM releases to AM radio, but the public increasingly wanted the entire album to matter. Listening had become a full-blown, immersive, even communal experience. Accordingly, new LP releases were alternately ogled, examined, discussed, dissected, deconstructed, reconstructed, criticized, embraced, rejected, cherished, and generally played until the grooves wore out.”
― Kent Hartman, Goodnight, L.A.: The Rise and Fall of Classic Rock—The Untold Story from inside the Legendary Recording Studios

“Album-wise, the seeds of sonic change came two years prior with the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles in 1967. The first true rock-and-roll concept album (though some would argue that Pet Sounds in 1966 by the Beach Boys got there first or even the Beatles’ own Revolver), the artistically adventurous Sgt. Pepper’s astonished listeners in countless ways, perhaps chief among them because every song on the LP was good. As in, really good.”
― Kent Hartman, Goodnight, L.A.: The Rise and Fall of Classic Rock—The Untold Story from inside the Legendary Recording Studios