The Beatles is recognised for its fragmentary style and diverse range of genres, including folk, country rock, British blues, ska, music hall, proto-metal and the avant-garde.

During these sessions, arguments broke out among the foursome over creative differences and John Lennon's new partner, Yoko Ono, whose constant presence subverted the Beatles' policy of excluding wives and girlfriends from the studio.

After a series of problems, including producer George Martin taking an unannounced holiday and engineer Geoff Emerick suddenly quitting during a session, Ringo Starr left the band for two weeks in August.

The Beatles received favourable reviews from most music critics; detractors found its satirical songs unimportant and apolitical amid the turbulent political and social climate of 1968.

[5] The band received a negative critical response to their television film Magical Mystery Tour, which aired in Britain in December 1967, but fan reaction was nevertheless positive.

"[11] Author Ian MacDonald said Sgt Pepper was "shaped by LSD",[12] but the Beatles took no drugs with them to India aside from marijuana, and their clear minds helped the group with their songwriting.

[45] George Martin's influence had gradually waned, and he left abruptly to go on a holiday during the recording sessions, leaving his young protégé Chris Thomas in charge of production.

[57] Some of these songs remained acoustic on The Beatles and were recorded solo or by only part of the group (including "Wild Honey Pie",[58] "Blackbird",[59] "Julia",[60] "I Will"[61] and "Mother Nature's Son").

[62] Author Nicholas Schaffner views the acoustic slant as reflective of a widespread departure from the LSD-inspired psychedelia of 1967, an approach initiated by Bob Dylan and the Beach Boys and adopted in 1968 by artists such as the Rolling Stones and the Byrds.

[72] Ono's presence was highly unorthodox as, up to that point, the Beatles had generally worked in isolation, rarely allowing visitors, wives and girlfriends to attend recording sessions.

[80] In Lennon's case, the album cover of his experimental collaboration with Ono Two Virgins featured the couple completely naked, a gesture his bandmates found bewildering and unnecessary.

[45] Starr abruptly left the studio on 22 August during the session for "Back in the U.S.S.R.",[82] feeling that his role in the group was peripheral compared to the other members, and upset at McCartney's constant criticism of his drumming on the track.

[85] The backing vocals were sung by Lennon and Harrison in the style of the Beach Boys,[85] further to Mike Love's suggestion in Rishikesh that McCartney include mention of the "girls" in the USSR.

[102] Lennon hated the song, calling it "granny music shit",[104] while engineer Richard Lush recalled that Starr disliked having to record the same backing track repetitively, and pinpoints this session as a key indication that the Beatles were going to break up.

[134] The style was influenced by the British Blues Boom of 1968, which included Fleetwood Mac, Cream, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Jeff Beck and Chicken Shack.

"[90] Cult leader and mass murderer Charles Manson was unaware that the term helter skelter is British English for a spiral slide found on a playground or funfair, and assumed the track had something to do with hell.

According to the bootlegged album of the demos made at Kinfauns, the latter of these two categories includes Lennon's "Look at Me"[153] and "Child of Nature" (eventually reworked as "Jealous Guy");[154] McCartney's "Junk";[154] and Harrison's "Not Guilty" and "Circles".

[170] In an interview on the Impossible Way of Life podcast, it was first revealed by members of Hotline TNT that the winner of the auction was Jack White and that the album is currently held in the vault at the headquarters of Third Man Records in Nashville, TN.

"[80] In The Observer, Tony Palmer wrote: "If there is still any doubt that Lennon and McCartney are the greatest songwriters since Schubert", the album "should surely see the last vestiges of cultural snobbery and bourgeois prejudice swept away in a deluge of joyful music making".

[191] William Mann of The Times opined that, in their over-reliance on pastiche and "private jokes", Lennon and McCartney had ceased to progress as songwriters, yet he deemed the release to be "The most important musical event of the year" and acknowledged: "these 30 tracks contain plenty to be studied, enjoyed and gradually appreciated more fully in the coming months.

[198] According to Slant Magazine's Eric Henderson, The Beatles is a rarity among the band's recorded works, in that it "resists reflexive canonisation, which, along with society's continued fragmentation, keeps the album fresh and surprising".

[196] Writing for Paste, Mark Kemp said The Beatles had been wrongly described as "three solo works in one (plus a Ringo song)", saying it "benefits from each member's wildly different ideas" and offers "two of Harrison's finest moments".

[218][219] The British authorities similarly displayed a less tolerant attitude towards the Beatles,[220] when London Drug Squad officers arrested Lennon and Ono in October 1968 for marijuana possession, a charge that he claimed was false.

[221] The album's lyrics progressed from being vague to open-ended and prone to misinterpretation of authorial intention, such as "Glass Onion" (e.g., "the walrus was Paul")[100] and "Piggies" ("what they need's a damn good whacking").

[122] In the case of "Back in the U.S.S.R.", the words were interpreted by Christian evangelist David Noebel as further proof of the Beatles' compliance in a Communist plot to brainwash American youth.

[205] He and other members and associates of the Manson family repeatedly listened to it, and he allegedly told them that it was an apocalyptic message predicting an uprising of oppressed races,[226] drawing parallels with chapter 9 of the Book of Revelation.

[228] Jon Landau, writing for the Liberation News Service, argued that, particularly in "Piggies" and "Rocky Raccoon", the band had adopted parody because they were "afraid of confronting reality" and "the urgencies of the moment".

[229] Like Landau, many writers among the New Left considered the album outdated and irrelevant; instead, they heralded the Rolling Stones' concurrent release, Beggars Banquet, as what Lennon biographer Jon Wiener terms "the 'strong solution,' a musical turning outward, toward the political and social battles of the day".

[230] Sociologists Michael Katovich and Wesley Longhofer write that the album's release created "a collective appreciation of it as a 'state-of-the-art' rendition of the current pop, rock, and folk-rock sounds".

The second release, licensed by Ampex from EMI in early 1970 after the latter ceased manufacture of commercial reel-to-reel tapes, was issued as two separate volumes,[244][245] and sequenced the songs in the same manner as on the cassette version.