Paul McCartney reveals he came up with the name 'Sgt. Pepper' when he misheard someone say 'pass the salt and pepper'

• Paul McCartney discusses his career with the Beatles in the new Hulu docuseries "McCartney 3,2,1."
• In episode one, he explains the backstory of their album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."
• He came up with the name when he misheard his roadie ask, "Can you pass the salt and pepper?"

According to Paul McCartney, one of the most iconic album titles in history was born from a whimsical misunderstanding.

In the new Hulu docuseries "McCartney 3,2,1," which premiered on Friday, the rocker happily dissects the music and legacy of the Beatles. In episode one, "These Things Bring You Together," he tells the backstory of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," perhaps the band's most celebrated album.

"I was on a plane with our roadie, and we were eating, and he said, 'Can you pass the salt and pepper?' I thought he said 'Sergeant Pepper,'" McCartney said. "We had a laugh about that. And the more I thought about it, Sergeant Pepper - that's kind of a cool character."

McCartney says the concept of "Sgt. Pepper," the band's eighth studio album, released in 1967, was freedom from expectation.

"I said it'd be great to make an album like we're alter egos of ourselves," he told the producer Rick Rubin, who costars in the docuseries. "So we don't have to think, 'This is the Beatles making an album.' There's no pressure of, 'What do the Beatles need to do now?' This is just some other band."

As the legend goes, McCartney and his three bandmates - John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr - had reached a breaking point after the release of their seventh album "Revolver."

"We were fed up with being the Beatles," McCartney recalled, according to Rolling Stone. "We really hated that f---ing four little mop-top boys approach. We were not boys. We were men. It was all gone, all that boy s---, all that screaming. We didn't want any more."

When the band concluded touring in 1966, the four members took some time apart to pursue other passions. McCartney went traveling alone, often outfitted in a mustachioed disguise.

"Nobody recognized me at all. It was good, it was quite liberating for me," he told the biographer Barry Miles for the 1997 book "Many Years From Now." "I was a lonely little poet on the road with my car."

The anonymity inspired McCartney to approach their next album from a different perspective. "Sgt. Pepper" is generally more avant-garde and complex than the band's previous work, reminiscent of The Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds," which McCartney cited in the episode as a major influence.

"There was a little intercontinental rivalry," he said of the American rock band, particularly frontman Brian Wilson. "We heard 'Pet Sounds' and thought, 'Right, we've gotta do something better than that.'"