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
Cultural impact of the Beatles as, in author Shawn Levy's description, "the world's first household psychedelics, avatars of something wilder and more revolutionary than anything pop culture had ever delivered before". Author Carys Wyn Jones locates "Sgt. Pepper's", along with "Pet Sounds", to the beginning of art rock. Both albums are largely viewed as beginnings in the progressive rock genre due to their lyrical unity, extended structure, complexity, eclecticism, experimentalism and influences derived from classical music forms. For several years following "Sgt. Pepper" release, straightforward rock and roll was supplanted by a growing interest in extended form. Several of the English psychedelic bands who followed