"Released on Friday, June 1, 1967, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band sold 250,000 copies in its first week and was certified Gold within a month. By the end of August, more than two and a half million copies of the record had sold in the states alone, where the album was number One on the charts for 19 weeks.
For McCartney, the greatest recognition came on June 3, when, two days after Sgt. Pepper's' release, he witnessed the Jimi Hendrix Experience open their show at London's Saville Theatre by performing "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."
"That was the single biggest tribute for me," says McCartney. "I was a big fan of Jimi's."
For the Beatles as a group, gt. Pepper's was ultimately something of a vindication against critics who regularly claimed the group's creativity and influence wouldn't last. During the long months of making Sgt. Pepper's, the press frequently speculated on the long delay in releasing the new album.
"The music papers had been saying, 'What are the Beatles up to? Drying up, I suppose,' " McCartney recalls. "So it was nice, making an album like Pepper and thinking, Yeah, drying up, I suppose. That's right. It was lovely to have them on that when it came out. I loved it."