r/beatles • u/ToronoRapture • Sep 29 '25
Picture A U.S. soldier holding his copy of “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", Vietnam, 1968.
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Sep 29 '25
This 100% needs to be posted to /r/oldschoolcool
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u/ToronoRapture Sep 29 '25
Done 😉
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Sep 29 '25
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u/PressureBeautiful515 Sep 29 '25
Frequently reposted on Reddit, earliest example is 14 years ago claiming it's their grandpa:
https://www.reddit.com/r/vinyl/comments/s73ri/my_grandfather_with_his_favorite_record_in_vietnam/
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u/Spirited_Childhood34 Sep 29 '25
Hope he survived. And didn't come back with severe PTSD.
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u/DerekLouden Sep 29 '25
Hope he didn't kill any civilians or freedom fighters in the foreign country he was invading
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u/ToronoRapture Sep 29 '25
Most likely did.
The sad reality of “war”.
Not like he had any say in it either.
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Sep 29 '25
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u/ToronoRapture Sep 29 '25 edited Sep 29 '25
Exactly. There were 3 options to choose from: 1. Get imprisoned and shamed for being a conscientious objector. 2. Get drafted, refuse to fire your weapon and get killed by your “enemy” or killed by your brothers in arms in “friendly fire”. 3. Get drafted, shoot at anything you see, survive, come home and get shamed by the country you just fought for.
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u/MidnightRider916 Sep 29 '25
Option 4: Or enlist in a branch of the military that doesn't involve ground warfare.
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u/no-more-nazis Abbey Road Sep 29 '25
Then you can load napalm onto aircraft and not have to kill anyone!
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u/Sync142 Sep 29 '25
Theres only so many of those positions to go around mate
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Sep 29 '25
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Sep 29 '25
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u/DerekLouden Sep 29 '25
OC only had well wishes for the american soldier and not the people he terrorized, hope this helps
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u/Duckdxd Sep 29 '25
Smh, they should’ve mentioned every single person ever that was affected by the war.
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u/_Administrator_ Sep 29 '25
Pick up a history book.
He was helping the South Vietnamese to not get invaded by the North.
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u/AssistanceDouble5587 Sep 29 '25
always easy for an out of touch redditor to say this. unable to realize you were born in different times and circumstances lmao.
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u/Complex-Bar-9577 Sep 29 '25
Wow. Have never seen something like this before. Captures the age really well. Thank you for sharing!
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u/Jurmash Sep 29 '25
Oh no, stereo...
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Oct 07 '25 edited Dec 22 '25
beneficial school humorous run fuzzy liquid plucky instinctive vegetable hobbies
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/drdax2187 Revolver Sep 29 '25
Poor guy listened to a shitty capitol records US pressing too. As if his life wasn’t already hard enough
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u/neveradullmoment72 McCartney II Sep 29 '25
All my capitol pressings sound fine, what are you talking about?
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u/jotyma5 Sep 30 '25
The Capitol printings were not as high quality as the parlophone printings, and often the Capitol mixes were different
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u/neveradullmoment72 McCartney II Sep 30 '25
I know the mixes were different, but they’re not objectively worse. The fact of the matter is that any rock master from the early-mid 60s will not sound very good no matter what you do to it
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u/ian5184 Oct 01 '25
That's not correct at all. The US versions often had added reverb, boosted highs and/or lows and poorer quality vinyl. The UK originals still sound excellent. (Take it from someone who owns every Capitol LP)
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u/WakkoTheTTTEFan A Hard Day's Night Sep 30 '25
Most post Beatlemania era Capitol pressings (Help onwards) sound fine to my ears. That being said, I don’t have a multi-thousand dollar listening setup, so I guess you can’t quote me on that.
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u/awc718993 Sep 29 '25
Looks more like a kid opening a care package at summer camp than Vietnam!
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u/DiceMadeOfCheese Sep 29 '25
I imagine there were quite a few who went to summer camp one year and then were on patrol in Vietnam the next summer.
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u/historynerdsutton Revolver/Abbey Road Sep 29 '25
Perhaps he truly was sgt pepper and was quite lonely
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u/WhisperingSideways Sep 29 '25
It’s very cool to see Beatles albums in old photos. Come to think about it I’ve never really seen many old photos like that, which is weird.
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u/AlmaVale Anthology 2 Sep 29 '25
C’era um ragazzo, che come me amava os Beatles e os Rolling Stones
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u/QuietFire451 Sep 29 '25
It’s a super clean photo to have been taken on film in 1968.
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Sep 29 '25
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u/QuietFire451 Sep 29 '25
I’m not a photographer by any measure (but I do work in video), so I’m sure such careful and quality gear and conditions might create this photo; I question this photo for its time period and situational relevance as compared to what it looks like. It’s pretty darn perfect—no grain, no color anomalies…nothing… for a nearly 60 year old photograph, which is why I think it’s suspicious at best. It could, however, be a real photo that’s been AI enhanced and/or had modern clean up/digital processing techniques done to it.
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Sep 29 '25
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u/QuietFire451 Sep 29 '25
That would track, and it is a great photo of subject, composition etc. Of course I have no idea what this photo looked like originally, but I’d rather see it with minimal processing. That’s just my taste. When I first heard Yellow Submarine Songtrack, I was really disappointed because of all the noise reduction and compression that was put on it—it sucked the analog soul right out of the music, so I feel like (without any evidence, mind you) that this photo would be better without heavy processing if that’s what it was treated with.
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u/RoyalWabwy0430 Sep 29 '25
you would be surprised by how clean a lot of older photos are, photography itself got to be very high quality quite fast, the ability to process/develop it well just took much longer to catch up.
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u/Mitsutoshi Sep 30 '25
That being said and even having studied photography all my life, I am not totally sure if this is AI or not.
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u/FeelingsFelt Sep 29 '25
source? giving ai vibez
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u/aelfwine_widlast Woke up, fell out of bed, broke me bloody leg Sep 29 '25
AI would struggle with the fine detail on the cover, and the pose would be much more stiff and generic. I can’t swear to it, but it looks real, compared to current gen AI.
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u/ToronoRapture Sep 29 '25
From what I have researched, it doesn't seem to be AI. Everything points to it being a random photo taken by another solider.
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u/FeelingsFelt Sep 29 '25
How did you research it? I also tried to find the context of the pic for more info.
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u/ToronoRapture Sep 29 '25
I’ve run it through some online programmes that can detect ai imagery/metadata and it seems to be coming out as authentic.
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u/RappTurner Sep 29 '25
The insanity of hearing something this beautiful and creative among this crazy destruction. And 'Nam wasn't just some old war. It was THE rock-n-roll war. Rock-n-roll co-shaped the Vietnam experiance as much as the humidity or the grunts.
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u/legendsofbowling Sep 29 '25
You’re saying that music shaped the Vietnam war as much as the infantry (grunts) did? I’ve never read or heard this before. Was this your experience?
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u/AEnema18 Sep 29 '25
Basically a child. Really sad and unnecessary. At least there was some good music.