Why You Can Hear Laughter in The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’

TL;DR:

• An audience laughs near the beginning of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
• Paul McCartney said audiences would have no context for the laughter.
• “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “With a Little Help With my Friends” were hits.

The Beatles‘ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band includes many noises that are not traditionally musical. For example, the title track includes laughter. Paul McCartney explained this was a tribute to his childhood.

Paul McCartney explained 1 of his favorite moments from 1 of The Beatles’ songs

In the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul discussed the title song from Sgt. Pepper. “We had an audience laughing on the front of ‘Sgt. Pepper,'” he said.

“It had always been one of my favorite moments; I’d listened to radio a lot as a kid, and there had always been a moment in a radio show, say with somebody like Tommy Cooper, where he would walk on stage and he’d say hello, and they’d laugh, and he’d tell a joke, and they’d laugh, and there would always be a moment in these things, because it was live radio, where he wouldn’t say anything, and the audience would laugh,” he said.

Paul McCartney wanted The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’ to give fans the feeling radio shows gave him

Paul said laughter on the radio made him ask questions. “And my imagination went wild whenever that happened,” he said. “I thought, ‘What is it? Has he dropped his trousers?'”

Paul wanted the title track of Sgt. Pepper to inspire similar emotions. “It fascinated me so much, and I’d always remembered that, so when we did Pepper there’s one of those laughs for nothing in there, just where Billy Shears is being introduced they all just laugh, and you don’t know what the audience has laughed at,” he said.

How ‘Sgt. Pepper’ and its title track performed on the charts in the United States and the United Kingdom

“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” was not a single in the United States, so it did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100. The song’s parent album became far more popular. Sgt. Pepper topped the Billboard 200 for 15 weeks. The album lasted on the chart for 233 weeks altogether.

The Official Charts Company reports “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club” was a hit in the United Kingdom. There, it was a double A-side with “With a Little Help From My Friends.” The tunes reached No. 63 and stayed on the chart for a trio of weeks. Meanwhile, Sgt. Pepper was No. 1 for 28 of its 277 weeks on the U.K. chart.

“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” was a hit — even if its laughter is nonsensical.