Fifty-nine years ago today, The Beatles released one of the most influential singles in rock history: the double A-side pairing of "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane."
The standalone single was first issued by Capitol Records in the United States on Feb. 13, 1967, and it marked a dramatic shift in the band's creative direction. The songs, which would go on to be legendary hits, were recorded in the string of sessions that would culminate in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Though the singles were ultimately not included on the landmark album, they were equally groundbreaking.
"Strawberry Fields Forever," written primarily by John Lennon, drew from his childhood memories of Liverpool.
"Strawberry Fields is a real place. After I stopped living at Penny Lane, I moved in with my auntie who lived in the suburbs in a nice semidetached place with a small garden and doctors and lawyers and that ilk living around... not the poor slummy kind of image that was projected in all the Beatles stories," he explained in an 1980 interview with Playboy. "Near that home was Strawberry Fields, a house near a boys' reformatory where I used to go to garden parties as a kid with my friends Nigel and Pete. We would go there and hang out and sell lemonade bottles for a penny. We always had fun at Strawberry Fields. So that's where I got the name. But I used it as an image. Strawberry Fields forever."
Paul McCartney's "Penny Lane" similar looked back at Liverpool through a vivid, almost cinematic lens. "Penny Lane was the depot I had to change buses at to get from my house to John’s and to a lot of my friends. It was a big bus terminal which we all knew very well." said McCartney in The Beatles Anthology.
Together, the tracks showcased the band's growing experimentation in the studio. "Strawberry Fields Forever" blended multiple takes in differing keys and tempos, the result of producer George Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick achieved by playing around with tape speed. The finished songs were unlike anything anyone had ever heard before at the time.
"The only reason that 'Strawberry Fields Forever' and 'Penny Lane' didn’t go onto the new album was a feeling that if we issued a single, it shouldn’t go onto an album," Martin said in The Beatles Anthology. "That was a crazy idea, and I'm afraid I was partly responsible. … It was a smashing single – but it was also a dreadful mistake."
Nearly six decades later the trailblazing release still stands as one of the defining moments of the 1960s rock era.
Related: Iconic '60s Group Ranked 'Best Rock Band' of All Time
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