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 in the Life" as the "Sgt. Pepper" track that best exemplifies this approach. In his book on ambient music, "The Ambient Century: From Mahler to Moby", Mark Prendergast describes the album as the Beatles' "homage" to Stockhausen and Cage, adding that its "rich, tape-manipulated sound" shows the influence of electronic and experimental composer Pierre Schaeffer. The musician and producer Alan Parsons believes that with "Sgt. Pepper" "people then started thinking that you could spend a year making an album and they began to consider an album as a sound composition and not just a musical composition. The idea was gradually