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LONDON: Mae West said: "No. I won't be in it. What would I be doing in a lonely hearts' club?"
So The Beatles wrote personally to the Hollywood vamp, who then agreed to join Fred Astaire and Karl Marx on the cover of their magnum opus, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, released 40 years ago yesterday.
It took 129 days for the Fab Four to record one of the most enduring albums of the last century. Their first, Please Please Me, had taken just 585 minutes to record.
Now latter-day rock stars have paid their own tribute - Oasis, Kaiser Chiefs and Razorlight celebrated the anniversary by recording their own versions of the album's famous songs.
Geoff Emerick, who worked on the original album, was back at the controls for the "time machine" recording session. "This is the first time I've touched this equipment since The Beatles' days," he said.
Computer technology has transformed music. In 1967, if Paul McCartney sang off-key or John Lennon fluffed his guitar lines, they had to re-record from the start.
Pop historian and broadcaster Paul Gambaccini, reflecting on the album's legacy, said: "It is one of the great icons of the 20th century. It was the symbol of a well-defined moment in time - the 'Summer of Love', in 1967."
The download generation could now give the album new life. "It has never stopped selling and there will probably be another sales spike when it goes digital," said Gambaccini.
The Beatles have been one of the last big acts to hold out from putting their music on the internet. "The danger was that they were beginning to lose their place in rock history with a new generation of music fans," said Martin Talbot, editor of Music Week.
Early this year, Apple Corps, the company representing The Beatles - and owned by McCartney, Ringo Starr and the families of Lennon and George Harrison - settled a £30 million ($80.2 million) royalties dispute with EMI Group in a deal that could finally pave the way for the Liverpool band's music to go online.
Now, with the last legal hurdles cleared, the Beatles could at last be ready to take to the information superhighway.
