Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on the Road was a 1974 off-Broadway production directed by Tom O'Horgan. It opened at the Beacon Theatre in New York on November 17, 1974 and ran for a total of 66 performances.
The plot tells of a Candide-like rock music singer, Billy Shears, who marries Strawberry Fields. Billy loses her to death, and his own integrity to Maxwell's Silver Hammermen, Jack, Sledge and Claw, dressed in chain mail and representing the Hells Angels of the commercial music business. Billy's bête noire is a temptress named Lucy.
Among the original cast were Ted Neeley as Billy Shears and Alaina Reed as Lucy. David Patrick Kelly played Sgt.Pepper.
The musical would later be loosely adapted into the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band film.
John Lennon once attended a showing of the play in 1974. It was caught on film in the original promo video for "Whatever Gets You Through The Night".
Famous quotes containing the words the road, pepper, lonely, hearts, club, band and/or road:
“Practically everyone now bemoans Western man’s sense of alienation, lack of community, and inability to find ways of organizing society for human ends. We have reached the end of the road that is built on the set of traits held out for male identity—advance at any cost, pay any price, drive out all competitors, and kill them if necessary.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)
“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper;
A peck of pickled pepper Peter Piper picked.
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper,
Where’s the peck of pickled pepper Peter Piper picked?”
—Mother Goose (fl. 17th–18th century. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers (l. 1–4)
“It’s so lonely here. Like we were the only two people left in the whole world. Maybe we are. Maybe when we get back to shore everybody else will have disappeared. I’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
—Michael Wilson (1914–1978)
“His hope is treacherous only whose love dies
With beauty, which is varying every hour;
But, in chaste hearts uninfluenced by the power
Of outward change, there blooms a deathless flower,
That breathes on earth the air of paradise.”
—Michelangelo Buonarroti (1474–1564)
“I spoke at a woman’s club in Philadelphia yesterday and a young lady said to me afterwards, “Well, that sounds very nice, but don’t you think it is better to be the power behind the throne?” I answered that I had not had much experience with thrones, but a woman who has been on a throne, and who is now behind it, seems to prefer to be on the throne.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)
“Firm, united, let us be,
Rallying round our Liberty;
As a band of brothers joined,
Peace and safety we shall find.”
—Joseph Hopkinson (1770–1842)
“The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny; flattery to treachery; standing armies to arbitrary government; and the glory of God to the temporal interest of the clergy.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)