Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band On The Road

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 bĂȘte 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 pepper, lonely, hearts, club, band and/or road:

    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)

    Isolate city spread alongside water,
    Posted with white towers, she keeps her face
    Half-turned to Europe, lonely northern daughter,
    Holding through centuries her separate place.
    Philip Larkin (1922–1986)

    Books may be burned and cities sacked, but truth like the yearning for freedom, lives in the hearts of humble men and women. The ultimate victory, the ultimate victory of tomorrow is with democracy; and true democracy with education, for no people in all the world can be kept eternally ignorant or eternally enslaved.
    Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)

    Women ... are completely alone, though they were born and bred upon this soil, as if they belonged to another class in creation.
    “Jennie June” Croly 1829–1901, U.S. founder of the woman’s club movement, journalist, author, editor. F, Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly Mirror of Fashions, pp. 363-4 (December 1870)

    And the heavy night hung dark
    The hills and waters o’er,
    When a band of exiles moored their bark
    On the wild New England shore.
    Felicia Dorothea Hemans (1783–1835)

    If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize, at one effort, the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment, the opportunity is his own—the road to immortal renown lies straight, open, and unencumbered before him. All that he has to do is to write and publish a very little book. Its title should be simple—a few plain words—”My Heart Laid Bare.” But—this little book must be true to its title.
    Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)