Issue 58 / August 2015

Marvin Powell
Words: Joshua Potts
Photography: Aaron McManus / ampix.co.uk
When I was eighteen, I bought an album I didn’t care for, at the
basement price of £3.99. I’d heard everything there was to hear
about it already (minus most of the songs), and the CD’s cover
and booklet certainly had my attention – that carnival red, the
wreath, the photographs documenting a new approach to pop
music, and those four uniforms, each tailored to the illusion that
I was seeing ageless symbols instead of people. Yet listening
to Sgt. Pepper’s took a good while to be fun. My tastes at the
time were... malnourished, to be kind. Yet I kept going back to
the album in a vain hope for some kind of road to Damascus
moment, knowing that so much had been said about it, that so
many writers and music fans felt its power every day, even as
it seemed to have been there from the beginning of time. And,
quite unexpectedly, the sounds of Pepper wormed into me too;
unexpected, that is, for just how long it took me to ‘get it’. I was
a fan before I knew that I was. I might still wish a loop of Yellow
Submarine on my worst enemy, but I’ve come to see those other
tracks as old friends, waiting for me to arrive at the adult’s table.
I kept going back to them. I might not have understood why, but
I persisted. If the reason was solely down to expectation, well
– that’s what good criticism does to you, I suppose.