Gatefold

"Gatefold" would be a nice name for the world pictured in the Fool's original design for the gatefold of Sgt. Pepper's. (I'm certain I'm not alone in having spent lots of "headphones & notebook" time writing about the land of Gatefold.) Paul's art dealer Robert Fraser talked the Beatles out of using this image; it was "not good art" and would quickly become a dated artifact of the psychedelic era. (They did use The Fool's record sleeve design: the cloudy camouflage layers of red fading to pink.) Fraser's criticisms are correct, but there's a deeper problem with the artwork: it represents psychedelia rather than enacting it (which would make it more appropriate as album art for Magical Mystery Tour). It attempts to illustrate something you can only grasp in imagination, and that only fleetingly, for the fantasy landscapes of Sgt. Pepper can unfold only in time; mental events can't be laid out on a page and made present all at once. Whatever is shockingly real and overflowing in the present moment (wonder, connection) instantly recedes; at the center of psychedelic experience is a gaping hole. This is why people on drugs often think they're dying; they are. We always are, but it's a big deal when you see it happening up close.