It was with some surprise, and no little consternation, I discovered last week that Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Beatles’ legendary record album, is now half a century old. It’s official. I won’t say June, 1967 — when it was released — feels like yesterday to me, but it certainly doesn’t seem all that long ago.

1967! I am suddenly swept back to carefree Swinging London, driving my red Italian sports car with insolent ease through the leafy streets of Kensington. I am 26. Next to me is a girl in a muslin dress with flowers in her hair. My face is disfigured by a large and revolting Viva Zapata-style moustache. I blush at the memory.

To anyone under, say, 30, Sgt. Pepper probably seems as historic and quaint as the Magna Carta, or the Bill of Rights. The Beatles themselves have passed into the twilight world of myth and fantasy. They’re no more “real” today than Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. But their album became the triumphant anthem and, more sadly, the requiem of “The Swinging Sixties,” the decade of Peace and Love, Hippies and Flower Power.

The “disc,” as we called such things back then, was a seductive cocktail of cynicism and innocence, nostalgia and optimism, sentimentality and satire. One or two tracks were strangely prophetic: “Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64?” asks one song. For Paul McCartney, the answer was certainly “yes.” He really should have picked a higher number. He’s now 75, immensely rich, and still rocking on, albeit a bit creakily.

But for co-author John Lennon, the answer was, tragically, “no.” He was shot dead by a maniac in 1980, when he was only 40 years old.

Soon after 1967, things quickly went pear-shaped. In America, Vietnam unravelled horribly. In Europe, violent student riots threatened chaos and Marxism. Now, 50 years later, I can only lament the situation has not improved. Sure, everyone has whiter teeth and fresher breath, and our telephones can do anything but grill a hamburger.

But look what else has happened.

Here in Europe, we glumly view the demise of the splendid, impossible dream of a united continent. Neo-Fascist nationalism is on the rise in virtually every country of the world. In the United States, the people are deeply and dangerously divided over the merits, or otherwise, of their President.

Our planet is blighted by religious maniacs eager to kill anyone who dares hold a viewpoint different from theirs, and they’re only too happy to kill themselves in the process. There’s no reasoning with such minds. It’s no good threatening them with execution, as martyrs get a trip to Paradise. 

We can be sure recent terrorist attacks in Manchester and London will prompt some Americans to cancel that long-planned holiday trip to England. Perhaps they were looking forward to indulging in a little Beatles nostalgia along with their Tower of London and the Changing of the Guard tours. Avoiding England now is irrational. The chances of being killed by crazed Muslims are minimal, but irrational behavior is the new normal in this Brave New Age of fear and loathing.

Patrick O’Gara, a former Blade editor, lives in Northern Spain. Contact him at: pogara@theblade.com.

First Published June 12, 2017, 4:00 a.m.