I still have this single in the picture sleeve and cherish it. It changed my life some how and was frankly the most exciting single I ever bought.

behindthegrooves:

On this day in music history: February 13, 1967 - “Strawberry Fields Forever” / “Penny Lane” by The Beatles is released. The double A-sided single is the first release to emerge from the recording sessions that yields the landmark album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”. The two songs based on childhood remembrances by Lennon and McCartney were originally slated to be a part of the album. The two songs are instead issued as a stand alone single, after Capitol Records in the US begins to press the band for a new release, not having issued any new Beatles records in over six months. In the US, “Penny Lane” hits number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on March 18, 1967, while “Strawberry Fields” peaks at number eight on April 1, 1967. In the UK, the single peaks at #2 behind Englebert Humperdinck’s “Release Me”. US and Canadian promotional copies of the single include an earlier mono mix of “Penny Lane” that includes a seven note trumpet coda at the end that is mixed out of all commercially released versions of the song, making the promo 45 a valuable and heavily sought after collector’s item. Both tracks make their LP debut on the US release of “Magical Mystery Tour” in November of 1967.