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".
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“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper;
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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)
““Come; see the oxen kneel,
“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
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—Socrates (469–399 B.C.)
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—Groucho Marx (1895–1977)
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—James Baldwin (1924–1987)
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—Frances Wright (1795–1852)