No album in recent years has been issued in the midst of so much 'fuss and foofaraw as "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."…

The title tune, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, is the latter: redundant without making a point by the redundancy. Its lyric is vague and cluttered. The rock intellectuals will claim it is full of meaning, of course. If it becomes desperately important for you to find meaning in it, a little grass will help: pot makes everything seem significant.

The second song of the album, A Little Help from My Friends, features more of the meandering, unstructured, free-association do-it-yourself-Rorschachism that Lennon and McCartney too often pass off as lyric writing, "I get by with a little help from my friends, I get high with a little help from my friends …" What are the friends? Roaches? Who knows whether they mean drugs, or actual...