The Beatles may have gone in and out of style, but a spoof of their “Sgt. Pepper’s’’ look is guaranteed to raise a smile for an Ohio high school class that graduated 20 years ago ... this year.
For the Lakewood High School class of 1972’s reunion book, Jim O’Bryan, a graphic artist who graduated with the class, superimposed yearbook photos of 150 classmates on the original artwork of the “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’’ album cover.
The classmates took the place of the array of people in the original--from Marilyn Monroe to Muhammad Ali--whom the Beatles admired.
“We included greasers, hippies, punks, favorite teachers ... people from all the different cliques,’' said Mr. O’Bryan.
Appropriately, the pastel-suited Beatles were replaced by the class president, vice-president, and two valedictorians. Behind the crowd sits the high school, decorated with the unofficial class mascot, the “Keep on Truckin’'' character, whose creator, the cartoonist R. Crumb, is a Lakewood native.
The artist even sneaked a self-portrait in the cover; he’s in the TV near (what was) George Harrison’s foot.
To Mr. O’Bryan and the rest of the reunion committee, the hardest part of the project, which took 170 hours of computer work to create, was choosing which of the 450 students would be part of the takeoff. But their efforts were well rewarded when the spoof received a standing ovation from alumni at the August reunion.
Mr. O’Bryan’s plans for the 25-year reunion design?
“I came home from the reunion and finished it in a half an hour,’' he said wryly. “It’s a knockoff of ‘The White Album.’''--S.K.G.
