The Making of Sgt. Pepper

The Making of Sgt Pepper was a 50 minutes long 1992 documentary produced by London Weekend Television for ITV. Broadcast as part of the series “The South Bank Show”, the documentary was hosted by Melvyn Bragg and featured separate interviews with Paul McCartney (filmed on 9th April 1992), George Harrison (12th April) and Ringo Starr (19th April). The show also featured George Martin playing back some of the Sgt. Pepper’s recordings directly off the original studio 4-track master tapes. Sir George was to reprise this excercise for the ‘Sgt Pepper’ segment of The Beatles Anthology TV series a few years later.
When the Disney Channel aired The Making of Sgt. Pepper a few months later in the USA, it excised a segment dealing with the influence of drugs on that album, with George Harrison reminiscing (not unfondly) about pot and LSD, and Paul McCartney cautiously distinguishing the recreational drugs of that era from today’s “crack … glue-sniffing … life-threatening things. If you could get everyone back to the period and everyone could understand how the period was and kind of how innocent it was,” McCartney says, “then it is easier to talk about.”