Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album carried on the childhood and Liverpool theme with its circus and fairground effects, its pervading atmosphere of the traditional northern music hall that was in both its main creators' [McCartney and Lennon's] blood." "Sgt. Pepper" album cover was designed by the pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth. Blake recalled of the concept: "I offered the idea that if they had just played a concert in the park, the cover could be a photograph of the group just after the concert with the crowd who had just watched the concert, watching them. If we did this by using cardboard
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band publications from the cultural mainstream increasingly voiced their "ecstatic approbation toward the Beatles". The vast majority of contemporary reviews of "Sgt. Pepper" were positive, with the album receiving widespread critical acclaim. Schaffner said that the consensus was aptly summed up by Tom Phillips in "The Village Voice", when he called the LP "the most ambitious and most successful record album ever issued". Among Britain's pop press, Peter Jones of "Record Mirror" said the album was "truly fine ... clever and brilliant, from raucous to poignant and back again", while "Disc and Music Echo"s reviewer called it "a beautiful and potent