Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" and "A Day in the Life". Producer George Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick helped realise the group's ideas by approaching the studio as an instrument, applying orchestral overdubs, sound effects and other methods of tape manipulation. Recording was completed on 21 April 1967. The cover, depicting the Beatles posing in front of a tableau of celebrities and historical figures, was designed by the British pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth. "Sgt. Pepper" is regarded by musicologists as an early concept album that advanced the use of extended form in popular music while
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band 'art form'. Rock and roll is not an 'art form'; rock and roll is a raw wail from the bottom of the guts." In another 1981 assessment, for the magazine "The History of Rock", Simon Frith described "Sgt. Pepper" as "the last great pop album, the last LP ambitious to amuse "everyone"". In his feature article on "Sgt. Pepper"s 40th anniversary, for "Mojo", John Harris said that, such was its "seismic and universal" impact and subsequent identification with 1967, a "fashion for trashing" the album had become commonplace. He attributed this to iconclasm, as successive generations identified the album with