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 record, unique, clever, and stunning". In "The Times", William Mann described "Sgt. Pepper" as a "pop music master-class" and wrote admiringly of its use of "vivid" bass lines that partly recalled the Alberti tradition in classical music. He also commented that, so considerable were the album's musical advances, "the only track that would have been conceivable in pop songs five years ago" was "With a Little Help from My Friends". Having been among the first British critics to fully appreciate "Revolver", Peter Clayton of "Gramophone" magazine said that the new album was "like nearly everything the Beatles do, bizarre, wonderful,