So, what do William S. Burroughs,Lewis Carroll,Stephen Crane,Aldous Huxley, andGeorge Bernard Shaw have in common? A surprising number of you answered that their greatest works were drug-inspired. (That’s probably true for Burroughs; not sure about the rest.) Rather, the answer is that they’re all among the luminaries pictured in a famous group photo that marked its 40th anniversary this week, the cover of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. (Other authors featured in the "lovely audience" include Edgar Allan Poe, Terry Southern, H.G. Wells, and Oscar Wilde.) In the inset shown here, you can see Burroughs (upper left corner), Crane (behind Paul McCartney, partially obscured by a hand), Shaw (just above George Harrison’s hat), and Wells (upper right corner). Carroll is just out of frame on the lower right, next to Marlene Dietrich.
"This is the first HeadScratcher that I got immediately as soon as I saw the list, without having to do any IMDB or Wikipedia searches!" wrote Kevin Quillinan, one of many of you who got this right. "That either means I’m terribly wrong or I am way too obsessed with the Beatles." (Well, you’re not terribly wrong, Kevin.) "You definitely had me going for awhile," wrote Huxley fan Matt Nickerson. "I kept thinking it had to do with the Harry Potter theme park announcement but alas, a Brave New World ride does not exist." (Alas, it does not, but I’d sure like to run the soma concession outside that ride.) Noted Lisa Courtney, "My husband and I are diehard Beatles fans, yet neither of us were born until long after the Beatles broke up. I first heard ‘A Day in the Life’ in the mid-’80s, and it totally ruined for me a lot of the music of that time (no big loss!)."
The list of winners is after the jump. It’s guaranteed to raise a smile.
Meredith Bickford
Lisa Courtney
Zareh Delanchian
Alex Gordon
Brent Healy
Helen Labonc
Mike Miller
Matt Nickerson
Craig Norris
Ann Prendergast
Kevin Quillinan
Dave Simanoff
Adam Sullens
Liz Townsend
Patrick A. Yearout
Thanks for playing, everyone! Come back Friday for another HeadScratcher…
Comments (1-4) of 4 Add your comment
Foiled by my hatred of the Beatles!
BTW, Susman, you forgot to mention Karl Marx, who’s got a fairly prominent role on that cover.
The Beatles do nothing for me, but then again my favorite artists are The Pixies, Ween, Laibach and MF DOOM. So I’m not exactly their audience.
And check yourself Susman, Huxley died tripping balls thanks to Tim Leary.
Aww yeah Frowny, I love me some MF Doom! His Danger Doom and Spices and Herbs (volumes 1-10) are my favorite party albums ever.
hmm, I’m actually a rather big fan of the Pixies and Ween myself. The Beatles are like kings in my eyes, most music can be traced back to them they had such an eclectic sound (White Album alone, hello?). It goes back to them just like it goes back to Elvis, Carl Perkins before him, etc.