Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and presents the album as the central factor behind the events and scenes that led to the full emergence of the 1960s counterculture.

In addition to archive footage, it features interviews with key figures from the period, including Derek Taylor (who also served as consultant on the production),[3] George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman and Timothy Leary.

[4] Sociomusicologist Simon Frith described 1967 as the year that "it all came together", in terms of the realisation of the 1960s youth movement's search for independence from societal norms and a new path dedicated to enlightenment.

[5] This movement manifested as a counterculture, embracing communal living, pacifism, consciousness-raising hallucinogenic drugs, psychedelic fashions and art, and Indian mysticism.

[6] The main centre was the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, while movements were also underway in London, Los Angeles, New York, Amsterdam, Berlin and Paris.

[7] Timothy Leary, a former Harvard professor, extolled students and young professionals to "Turn on, tune in, drop out", a phrase that became a catch-cry for the hippie phenomenon.

These measures included the arrest of Rolling Stones members Mick Jagger and Keith Richards on drugs charges, to which The Times responded with an editorial titled "Who Breaks a Butterfly upon a Wheel?

[19] Recalling the inspiration behind the album twenty years later, Paul McCartney says: "we started to incorporate more of the crazy life that we were living at the time into the music.

Other interviewees include William Rees-Mogg (former editor of The Times), Barry Miles (International Times), Hollywood actors Peter Fonda and Peter Coyote (the latter a countercultural playwright in 1967[3] and a member of the San Francisco diggers),[21] music critic William Mann, musicologist Wilfrid Mellers, and Californian musicians Roger McGuinn, Paul Kantner and Michelle Phillips.

[2] Aside from the Beatles, contemporary music is represented through footage of Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, the Byrds, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Buffalo Springfield[3] and Janis Joplin.

[7] The era's fascination with India is represented by archival film of Indian classical musician Ravi Shankar and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi,[7] whose Transcendental Meditation technique the Beatles soon turned to as an alternative to LSD.

[3] The ideological division between hippies and the older generation is shown in footage of tourist coach trips around Haight-Ashbury, and a clip from Inside Pop[4] in which, referring to a character in Dylan's song "Ballad of a Thin Man", Leonard Bernstein asks: "You know who Mr Jones is, don't you?

'"[3] Writing in The New York Times, John Corry welcomed the two former Beatles' insights, although he rued the presence of Leary, Hoffman and Fonda, and that the frequent interview comments limited the amount of music that was heard.

Corry also questioned the filmmakers' contention that the Beatles were solely responsible for the cultural changes of 1967 and said that "The paradox in the documentary is that Mr. McCartney and Mr. Harrison ... claim a good deal less than their apostles.