NEW YORK — “Sgt. Pepper” was only the beginning. Half a century after the Beatles’ psychedelic landmark, it stands as one of many musical astonishments of 1967 that shaped what we listen to now.

It was a year of technical, lyrical and rhythmic innovation, of the highest craftsmanship and most inspired anti-craftsmanship. The rock album became an art form, and the tight, two-minute hits of Motown and Stax began to give way to the funk of James Brown and Sly and the Family Stone and the fiery candor of Aretha Franklin and “Respect.” It was the dawn of the rock festival, in Monterey, and of the pop soundtrack, Simon & Garfunkel’s music for “The Graduate.”

There were endings in 1967 — the deaths of Otis Redding and Woody Guthrie — but many more beginnings. Few years contained so many notable debuts, from artists who would influence punk, heavy metal, glam rock, progressive rock, new wave and other musical trends: The Velvet Underground, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Doors, along with first albums by Leonard Cohen, Janis Joplin (with Big Brother and the Holding Company), the Grateful Dead, David Bowie, Pink Floyd and Sly and the Family Stone, who called their record “A Whole New Thing.”

In 1967, a 21-year-old Berkeley dropout, Jann Wenner, borrowed $7,500 and from a San Francisco loft turned out the first issue of Rolling Stone, which helped bring serious attention to music then-dismissed by most establishment newspapers and magazines. During a recent interview, Wenner said 1967 was an ideal time to launch such a publication. Rock was not only maturing, but becoming more interconnected. The Monterey festival in June helped introduce the Who and Hendrix to America, while also bringing together performers from Los Angeles (the Byrds, the Mamas and the Papas) and San Francisco (the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane).

Music scenes thrived throughout the United States and in England, where the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Cream and others were making some of their best music; and a young Reg Dwight renamed himself Elton John and began his songwriting partnership with Bernie Taupin.

Besides “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the Beatles released the hits “Strawberry Fields” and “Penny Lane” and unveiled their paean to the Summer of Love, “All You Need is Love.” The Stones issued the acclaimed “Between the Buttons” album and the classic two-sided single “Ruby Tuesday” and “Let’s Spend the Night Together.” The Who’s “The Who Sell Out” cleverly interspersed mock-radio commercials and jingles between such hits as “I Can See for Miles.”

“The classic album era begins around this time and it canonizes music in a very different way than when you hear a single,” says Ann Powers, a music critic for NPR. “And that’s a powerful reason why the music remains so resonant, because the album is a like a novel set to music. It’s the form we share with our children and the form we teach and the form we collect.”