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Magical mystery tour.

Release date: 27 November 1967

"It was like we were in another phase of our career you know we'd done all the live stuff and that was marvellous, now we were into being more artists. We got more freedom to be artists." PAUL

"If you think it was good, keep it, if you don't, scrap it." JOHN

"You have success with something that might have seemed like a far out idea, people had said wow this is great and so when we'd come back again George would be really quite keen to try, what other ideas have you got?" GEORGE

"And now we are going to play a track from Magical Mystery Tour which is one of my favourite albums because it was so weird I Am The Walrus, one of my favourite tracks because I did it of course but also cos it's one of those that has enough little bitties going to keep you interested even a hundred years later." JOHN

"The Beatles songs had started to sound more individual from Revolver onwards or even before then." GEORGE MARTIN

The Beatles devised, wrote and directed a television film called Magical Mystery Tour which was broadcast on BBC Television at Christmas, 1967

Even before Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, had hit the shops, the idea of the programme had been born and work had commenced on the title track.

It was decided that the soundtrack for the programme would be released on two seven inch discs which would be packaged with a booklet in a gatefold sleeve. The booklet contained stills from the show along with a comic strip telling the story. A lyric sheet was also stapled into the centrespread of the booklet. The EP was a runaway success and reached no. 2 in the UK singles chart, held off the top spot by their own single... "Hello, Goodbye".

In the US, the double-EP format was not considered viable so instead, Capitol Records created an album by placing the six songs from the EP on side one of an album and drawing side two from the titles that had appeared on singles in 1967. These titles were "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Penny Lane", "All You Need Is Love" - their anthem that had been broadcast around the world via Satellite in June. "Baby, You're A Rich Man" and their current single, "Hello, Goodbye". The US release made # 1 in early January 1968 and stayed there for eight weeks. Its initial chart run lasted 59 weeks.

1967 had certainly been a year of great achievement but it was also tinged with sadness. Brian Epstein, The Beatles' manager since 1961 passed away on 27th August, 1967 at the age of 32.

The US configuration for Magical Mystery Tour was later adopted by many other countries (including the UK in 1976). When the Beatles catalogue was first issued on Compact Disc in 1987, Magical Mystery Tour joined the core list of titles.

If they aren't already planning so, the Beatles should start planning their next full-length film immediately. After watching a rough cut of their 'Magical Mystery Tour', which BBC viewers can see on Boxing Day. I am convinced they are extremely capable of writing and directing a major movie for release on one of the major cinema circuits. The film sequences for the musical numbers are extremely clever. For 'Blue Jay Way' George is seen sitting cross-legged in a sweating mist which materialises into a variety of shapes and patterns. It's a pity that most TV viewers will be able to see it only in black and white. 'I Am The Walrus' has four of them togged up in animal costumes switching at times to them bobbing across the screen as egg-men. A special word of praise for Ringo, who more than the others comes over very, very funnily. But praise to all of them for making a most entertaining film. I only wish they would now put out a sequel made up from the parts they left on the cutting-room floor. NME July 20, 1967

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Behind The Scenes Of The Beatles' 'Magical Mystery Tour'

David Bianculli

The Beatles look out of the Magical Mystery Tour coach skylight, on location in England in September 1967. Apple Films Ltd/Channel Thirteen hide caption

The Beatles look out of the Magical Mystery Tour coach skylight, on location in England in September 1967.

On Friday night on PBS, Great Performances presents a documentary about the making of a Beatles TV special from 1967 — Magical Mystery Tour — then shows a restored version of that special . Magical Mystery Tour has the music from the U.S. album of the same name, but it's not the album. It's a musical comedy fantasy about the Beatles and a busload of tourists taking a trip to unknown destinations.

It was written and produced in 1967, which was an incredibly fertile period for the Beatles. "Strawberry Fields Forever" came out that year, as well as "Penny Lane" and the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. That was followed, a month later, by the live TV premiere of "All You Need is Love," broadcast globally. The Beatles, it seemed, could do no wrong. And then they did Magical Mystery Tour, which was televised by the BBC the day after Christmas — on Boxing Day — as a holiday special. A quarter of the British population watched it — and many of those hated it.

Back then, the 53-minute program was filmed in color but wasn't broadcast that way. Imagine the Sgt. Pepper cover in black and white, and you can imagine how much was lost in the translation. Reception to the TV special was so poor that the show wasn't even picked up in the United States — just the soundtrack. Eventually, the special was syndicated to some local TV stations and toured the college film circuit along with Reefer Madness. That's when I first saw it. But on a national level, Magical Mystery Tour has never been televised in the United States — until now.

On Friday — as always, check local listings — Magical Mystery Tour will be preceded by the new one-hour companion documentary , Magical Mystery Tour Revisited. This may be the first case on record in which a documentary about a film is longer than the film itself — but it's worth it.

The documentary, produced by Jonathan Clyde of Apple Films and directed by Francis Hanly, is wonderfully thorough. It explains how the idea for Magical Mystery Tour came about, and how Paul McCartney originally drew the concept as a pie chart — then shows the chart. It covers the origins of each number written specifically for the show, from the title song and "The Fool on the Hill" to "I Am the Walrus" and "Your Mother Should Know." It presents lots of outtakes and new interviews with McCartney and Ringo Starr, as well as Martin Scorsese, Terry Gilliam and Peter Fonda. It also includes a vintage interview with George Harrison, whose assessment of the 1967 TV special is as unfiltered as the program itself.

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It's a fine documentary — better, to be honest, than Magical Mystery Tour itself. But Magical Mystery Tour is so much fun to watch if you're a Beatles fan, that it serves up one joy after another. John Lennon serving shovels of spaghetti as a waiter in a dream sequence. John and George in a strip club, watching the house band singing a song called "Death Cab for Cutie" — which, incidentally, inspired the name of a much more recent rock band. And the closing production number, "Your Mother Should Know," which has the Beatles in white suits, dancing in unison down a giant staircase.

In addition to the PBS double feature, Magical Mystery Tour is also now available as a deluxe boxed set from Apple. It includes Blu-ray and DVD versions of the original special, a vastly shortened version of the documentary, and lots of extras, including outtakes and complete scenes that were cut out of the program before its 1967 premiere. These extras are every bit as entertaining as Magical Mystery Tour, and one segment is a minor revelation: singer-songwriter Ivor Cutler, seated at an ornate white organ in the middle of the English countryside, performing his composition "I'm Going in a Field." It must have been hypnotically bizarre then. It's hypnotically bizarre now .

It's no secret that I'm almost ridiculous in my enthusiasm for the Beatles. But for me, all this new Magical Mystery Tour material -- the restored TV special, the documentary, the boxed set — is like a perfectly timed holiday gift. The boxed set is expensive — but the Great Performances double feature is free. All you need is ... a TV set.

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Magical Mystery Tour

By Scott Plagenhoef

September 9, 2009

After the death of manager Brian Epstein, the Beatles took a series of rather poor turns, the first of which was the Magical Mystery Tour film. Conceived as a low-key art project, the Beatles were oddly nonchalant about the challenges of putting together a movie. They'd assembled records, they'd worked on A Hard Day's Night and Help! -- how hard could it be? Without Epstein to advise, however, things like budgeting and time management became a challenge, and this understated experimental film turned into a sapping distraction.

Musically, however, the accompanying EP was an overwhelming success. The EP format apparently freed the band to experiment a bit, not having to fill sides of a 45 with pop songs or make the grand statements of an album. The title track is a rousing set piece, meant to introduce the travelogue concept of the film. The remaining four songs released exclusive to the EP are low-key marvels-- Paul McCartney's graceful "The Fool on the Hill" and music-hall throwback "Your Mother Should Know", George Harrison's droning "Blue Jay Way", and the percolating instrumental "Flying". Few of them are anyone's all-time favorite Beatles songs, only one had a prayer of being played on the radio, and yet this run seems to achieve a majesty in part because of that: It's a rare stretch of amazing Beatles music that can seem like a private obsession rather than a permanent part of our shared culture.

As a more laid-back release, the EP suggested the direction the band might have taken on the White Album had it remained a full band, happy to shed the outsized conceptualism and big statements and craft atmospheric, evocative pieces. In the U.S., the EP was paired with three recent double-sided singles, ballooning Magical Mystery Tour into an album-- the only instance in which a U.S. release, often mangled by Capitol, became Beatles canon. With only the EP's title track married specifically to the film's themes, the overall effect of a title track/album sleeve as shell game was in line with Sgt. Pepper ' s Lonely Hearts Club Band .

Of the three singles, the undisputed highlight is "Strawberry Fields Forever"/ "Penny Lane", John Lennon and Paul McCartney's tributes to their hometown, Liverpool. Slyly surreal, assisted by studio experimentation but not in debt to it, full of brass, harmonium, and strings, unmistakably English-- when critics call eccentric or baroque UK pop bands "Beatlesesque," this is the closest there is to a root for that adjective. There is no definitive Beatles sound, of course, but with a band that now functions as much as a common, multi-generational language as a group of musicians, it's no surprise that songs rooted in childhood-- the one experience most likely to seem shared and have common touchpoints-- are among their most universally beloved.

The rest of the singles collected here are no less familiar: Lennon's "All You Need Is Love" was initially completed up for an international TV special on BBC1-- its basic message was meant to translate to any language. Harrison's guitar solo, producer George Martin's strings, and the parade of intertextual musical references that start and close the piece elevate it above hippie hymn. Its flipside, "Baby You're a Rich Man", is less successful, a second-rate take on John Lennon's money-isn't-everything theme from the considerably stronger "And Your Bird Can Sing". It's the one lesser moment on an otherwise massively rewarding compilation.

Much better from Lennon is "I Am the Walrus", crafted for the Magical Mystery Tour film and EP but also released as a double-sided single with McCartney's "Hello Goodbye". One of Lennon's signature songs, "Walrus" channels the singer's longtime fascinations with Lewis Carroll, puns and turns of phrase, and non sequiturs. "Hello Goodbye" echoes the same contradictory logic found in the verses of "All You Need Is Love", a vague sense of disorientation that still does little to balance its relentlessly upbeat tone. McCartney excelled at selling simplistic lyrics that risk seeming cloying, though, and he again does here-- plus, the kaleidoscopic, carnival-ride melody and interplay between lead and backing vocals ensure it's a much better record than it is a song.

In almost every instance on those singles, the Beatles are either whimsical or borderline simplistic, releasing songs that don't seem sophisticated or heavy or monumental (even though most of them are). In that sense, they're all like "All You Need Is Love" or childhood memories or Lewis Carroll-- easy to love, fit for all ages, rich in multi-textual details, deceptively trippy (see Paul's "Penny Lane" in particular, with images of it raining despite blue skies, or the songs here that revel in contradictions-- "Hello Goodbye"'s title, the verses in "All You Need Is Love"). More than any other place in the band's catalogue, this is where the group seems to crack open a unique world, and for many young kids then and since this was their introduction to music as imagination, or adventure. The rest of the Magical Mystery Tour LP is the opposite of the middle four tracks on the EP-- songs so universal that, like "Yellow Submarine", they are practically implanted in your brain from birth. Seemingly innocent, completely soaked through with humor and fantasy, Magical Mystery Tour slots in my mind almost closer to the original Willy Wonka or The Wizard of Oz as it does other Beatles records or even other music-- timeless entertainment crafted with a childlike curiosity and appeal but filled with wit and wonder.

On the whole, Magical Mystery Tour is quietly one of the most rewarding listens in the Beatles' career. True, it doesn't represent some sort of forward momentum or clear new idea-- largely in part because it wasn't conceived as an album. The accompanying pieces on the EP are anomalies in the Beatles oeuvre but they aren't statements per se, or indications that the group is in any sort of transition. But if there was ever a moment in the Beatles' lifetime that listeners would have been happy to have the group just settle in and release songs as soon as possible, it was just before and after the then-interminable 10-month gap between the Revolver and *Sgt. Pepper'* s . Without that context, the results could seem slight-- a sort-of canonized version of Past Masters perhaps-- but whether it's an album, a collection of separate pieces, or whatnot matters little when the music itself is so incredible.

[ Note : Click here for an overview of the 2009 Beatles reissues, including discussion of the packaging and sound quality.]

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The Beatles on the Road to 'Magical Mystery Tour'

The first day of June 1967 saw the release of an album that would provide the soundtrack for the approaching summer. For weeks to come, nearly everywhere you went, you would hear it: on the radio, in restaurants and clubs, from passing automobiles and through the open windows of homes, where it spun repeatedly on turntables.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was the album, and it was the Beatles’ latest and greatest achievement. The record defined not only that summer—dubbed the Summer of Love—but also the year and, eventually, the moment at which pop music became art. Until then, pop music had been written and produced for teenagers, and teenage music was not supposed to be like this: sophisticated, challenging, as carefully wrought as an objet d’art.

With Sgt. Pepper’s , the Beatles redefined the genre even further than they had the previous year with Revolver , creating grand productions punctuated by calliopes, classical Indian instruments, orchestras, animal noises, sound effects and layered crashes of piano chords. Pressed onto a 12-inch slab of vinyl and packed into a baroque, parti-colored sleeve, the music on Sgt. Pepper’s constituted not just an album but an event—a pivotal moment in the development of Western music.

So what do you do for an encore? Seizing the moment, the Beatles might have carried onward with a music project even grander, or defied expectations and taken a completely different artistic direction. In fact, they would do both in 1968 with their sprawling, stripped-down double-disc White Album.

But in the meantime, in late April 1967, with the Sgt. Pepper’s sessions barely finished and the album still unreleased, they launched haphazardly into a new project based on, of all things, an art-film concept dreamed up by their bassist, Paul McCartney. Titled Magical Mystery Tour , it was designed from the beginning as a TV film that would include the Beatles both as actors and as musical performers. The idea had come to McCartney on April 11 during a return flight from the U.S. to Britain.

The Beatles had quit touring the previous August, and a film, he reasoned, would be a good way to keep them in the public eye. In fact, it would be little more than a container for six new Beatles songs: the title track, “Your Mother Should Know,” “The Fool on the Hill,” “Blue Jay Way,” “I Am the Walrus” and “Flying.” Accordingly, the film’s plot was slight and functional: a bus carrying the band and a group of tourists through provincial England comes under the power of a cadre of magicians (also played by the Beatles), after which strange things start to happen. As a story device, the bus tour was certain to appeal to British viewers.

“It was basically a sharabang trip,” George Harrison said, “which people used to go on from Liverpool to see the Blackpool Lights,” a popular electric light display presented in the autumn months. “They’d get loads of crates of beer and an accordion player and all get pissed, basically—pissed in the English sense, meaning drunk. And it was kind of like that. It was a very flimsy kind of thing.”

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As John Lennon saw it, “It’s about a group of common, or ‘garden,’ people on a coach tour around everywhere, really, and things happen to them.”

No one in the group took the concept very seriously. The Beatles didn’t hire big-name screenwriters or a visionary director, or pour loads of money into the production. They simply signed up some character actors—including Jessie Robins as Ringo Starr’s bellicose, fat aunt, and eccentric Scottish poet and musician Ivor Cutler as the skeletal Buster Bloodvessel—hired out a coach, and hit the English countryside, filming a series of bizarre and droll sketches designed to support the title’s dual notions of magic and mystery.

“We rented a bus and off we went,” Starr says. “There was some planning. John would always want a midget or two around, and we had to get an aircraft hangar to put the set in. We’d do the music, of course. They were the finest videos, and it was a lot of fun.”

“We knew we weren’t doing a regular film,” McCartney says. “We were doing a crazy, roly-poly Sixties film.”

Indeed, the entire last half of 1967 was a strange time for the Beatles. Concurrent with the start of Magical Mystery Tour, they’d agreed to provide music for Yellow Submarine, an animated film based on their 1966 song of the same name from Revolver . Film productions had been a secondary aspect of the Beatles’ career ever since their 1964 feature film debut, A Hard Day’s Night . Now, however, they were involved in two films simultaneously. In addition, at nearly the same time that they’d agreed to Yellow Submarine , their manager, Brian Epstein, had signed them up to appear on Our World , a live global television event scheduled for June 25, for which the Beatles would compose and perform a new composition, “All You Need Is Love.”

Clearly, there was no shortage of projects for the group to work on. The problem was that, after an intense five months of recording Sgt. Pepper’s , they found it difficult to focus again on a new project, let alone three.

“I would say they had no focus, absolutely,” says Ken Scott, the Abbey Road engineer who ran the mixing console for several of Magical Mystery Tour ’s songs. (His recollections of working with the Beatles as well as recording classic albums by David Bowie, Elton John, Supertramp and others are chronicled in his new memoir, Abbey Road to Ziggy Stardust.) “It was kind of weird, ’cause I’d worked with them from A Hard Day’s Night through Rubber Soul as a second engineer, and I’d seen sort of how they would get down to work and all of that kind of thing. But on Magical Mystery Tour , the focus didn’t seem there. It was kind of thrown together.”

A survey of the group’s recording sessions from this period bears out his point. Between the completion of Sgt. Pepper’s on April 21 and the conclusion of sessions for Magical Mystery Tour the following November, the group recorded about an album’s worth of songs, several of which remained unmixed or unfinished for another year, some for even longer. In addition to the six Magical Mystery Tour tracks, the Beatles recorded McCartney’s “All Together Now,” and Harrison’s “Only a Northern Song” and “It’s All Too Much,” all of which ended up on the Yellow Submarine soundtrack, released in January 1969. Also started during this time was the recording of Lennon’s novelty tune “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number),” which remained unfinished until late 1969 and unreleased until 1970.

Which is not to imply that the Beatles lacked motivation. Geoff Emerick, who engineered Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s and much of Magical Mystery Tour , believes their almost nonstop working schedule from 1962 through 1967 had everything to do with their lack of direction in the wake of Sgt. Pepper’s . In his 2006 memoir, Here, There and Everywhere , he recalls, “People don’t realize how hard the Beatles worked in the studio, and on the road. Not just physically, but psychologically and mentally it had to have been incredibly wearying. Now”—with the completion of Sgt. Pepper’s —“it was time to let off some steam. All throughout the spring and summer of 1967, the prevalent feeling in the group seemed to be: after all those years of hard work, now it’s time to play.

“Personally, I saw it as just a bit of harmless light relief after all the intensity that had gone in to Pepper. The question was, how long could it last before they got bored?”

For now, there was no chance of that happening. The filming of Magical Mystery Tour wouldn’t take place until mid September, but in the meantime, there were songs to be written and recorded for the film, not to mention work to be done for Yellow Submarine and Our World. McCartney had written Magical Mystery Tour ’s title track around the same time that he’d come up with its concept, so it was the first of the project’s tunes to be recorded. The bulk of the recording was done over five dates from late April to early May, in a set of sessions that featured the same sort of inventiveness that the Beatles had brought to Sgt. Pepper’s . Richard Lush, the second engineer on those dates, recalls, “All that ‘Roll up, roll up for the Mystery Tour’ bit was taped very slow so that it played back very fast. They really wanted those voices to sound different.”

By the end of the fourth session, the group had spent nearly 27 hours on the track. It was a tremendous amount of time to devote to a single recording, demonstrating how completely the Beatles had taken over Abbey Road as an incubator for their musical ideas. Ken Scott says those long hours were the reason many of Abbey Road’s senior engineers didn’t want to work with the Beatles.

“The old-timers were all in their forties,” Scott says. “They had families, and they had got totally used to working 10 to 1, 2:30 to 5:30, 7 to 10, whereas the Beatles didn’t work on those schedules. So they didn’t like it because of that, primarily.” Indeed, on May 9, with “Magical Mystery Tour” completed, the Beatles spent more than seven hours—from 11 p.m. to 6:15 the next morning—jamming unproductively in the studio. Even the durable George Martin, their producer, sneaked out early on that session.

For the time being, Magical Mystery Tour ground to a halt as the Beatles focused on recording songs for Yellow Submarine and preparations for the Our World television program on June 25. The TV show was especially important, as it was the first live, global satellite TV production. Fourteen countries participated in the two-and-a-half-hour production with segments of arts and sports performances, cultural events and even broadcasts of babies being born. It’s estimated that more than 400 million people the world over viewed the program.

Undoubtedly, the highlight for most young viewers was Britain’s contribution, featuring the Beatles performing “All You Need Is Love.” Written for the event by Lennon, the song was a well-timed missive from the counterculture to the established order. With the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War still fresh in the news and the United States’ Vietnam escalation dragging on, Our World provided a platform for the Beatles to spread a message of peace. “Because of the mood of the time, it seemed to be a great idea to do that song,” Harrison said. “We thought, Well, we’ll just sing ‘all you need is love,’ because it’s a kind of subtle bit of PR for God, basically.”

Though Lennon, McCartney and Harrison performed their parts live on air, much of the song’s backing track was prerecorded during a one-day session at Olympic Studios on June 14 (see sidebar, page 50) and in subsequent sessions at Abbey Road, in order to make the performance go as smoothly as possible. Which it did—just barely.

“We had prepared a track, a basic track, of the recording for the television show,” George Martin says. “But we were gonna do a lot live. And there was an orchestra that was live… And just about 30 seconds to go on the air, there was a phone call. And it was the producer of the show, saying, ‘I’m afraid I’ve lost all contact with the studio. You’re gonna have to relay instructions to them—’cause we’re going on air any moment now!’ And I thought, My god, if you’re gonna make a fool of yourself, you may as well do it properly in front of 200 million people!”

“The man upstairs pointed his finger,” George Harrison recalled, “and that’s it. We did it, one take.” After a few post-show overdubs, the song was complete and ready for its release as a single on July 7.

And with that, the Beatles abruptly went on hiatus. For the next two months, Magical Mystery Tour was put on hold. Not another note would be recorded for it until late August.

With nothing to do, the Beatles wandered in ways only the very rich can. They rented a boat and sailed up the coast of Athens, shopping for an island on which they could plant themselves and their growing commercial empire. “We’re all going to live there,” Lennon said. “It’ll be fantastic, all on our own on this island.” The idea came to nothing. Adrift in the Summer of Love, they dropped acid, and lots of it, particularly Lennon and Harrison.

Late in the first week of August, Harrison and his wife, Patti Boyd, traveled to San Francisco, drawn by the news of the burgeoning hippie scene in the Haight-Ashbury district. The experience was disheartening. Harrison thought he’d find a community of doe-eyed enlightened beings. Instead, he encountered young dropouts who were constantly on drugs. “That was the turning point for me,” he said. “That’s when I went right off the whole drug cult and stopped taking the dreaded lysergic acid.”

• Indian culture and mysticism held a growing fascination for Harrison. Seeking a release from drugs, he turned to meditation. Through a friend, he learned that Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the leader of the Transcendental Meditation movement, would be speaking at the Hilton Hotel in London on August 24. He decided to go and picked up tickets for his bandmates, in case they wanted to come along. In the end, all but Ringo Starr attended.
• “We went along, and I thought he made a lot of sense,” McCartney says. “I think we all did, because he basically said that, with a simple system of meditation—20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the evening, no big sort of crazy thing—you can improve the quality of life and find some sort of meaning in doing so.”

Immediately after the presentation, Harrison, Lennon and McCartney had a private audience with the Maharishi. At his request, they agreed to travel with him on the following day to Bangor, Wales, for a seminar and retreat. Photos from the Bangor event show all four Beatles, clad in psychedelic finery, sitting on a dais with the Maharishi, who was clearly reveling in the attention that the group was bringing to his movement.

“I was really impressed with the Maharishi, and I was impressed because he was laughing all the time,” Starr recalls. “And so we listened to his lectures, and we started meditating. We were given our mantras. It was another point of view. It was the first time we were getting into Eastern philosophies.”

But while the Beatles were achieving a higher level of consciousness in Wales, their world was falling apart back in London. On August 27, as they meditated with the Maharishi, their manager Brian Epstein died from an accidental overdose of sleeping pills.

“That was kind of stunning,” McCartney says. “’Cause we were off sort of finding the meaning of life, and there he was—dead.”

Both friend and business manager to the Beatles, Epstein had worked tirelessly to secure a recording contract for them back in 1962. His efforts had landed them an audition with George Martin, who subsequently signed them to EMI’s Parlophone Records. Since then, Epstein had overseen their growing empire, leaving the Beatles’ free to focus on their music. Harrison said of his passing, “It was a huge void. We didn’t know anything about, you know, our personal business and finances. He’d taken care of everything… It was chaos after that.”

On September 1, within days of Epstein’s death, the Beatles gathered at McCartney’s house in London’s St. John’s Wood and put their minds back to the task of making music. A plan to study Transcendental Meditation at the Maharishi’s retreat in India was put on hold. Magical Mystery Tour was now a top priority. Perhaps they needed something to take their minds off their grief. Or maybe, as Lennon suggested, Epstein’s death put the fear of god into them that their own days were numbered. “I knew that we were in trouble then,” Lennon recalled. “I didn’t really have any misconceptions about our ability to do anything other than play music. I was scared, you know. I thought, We’ve fucking had it now.”

As the creative force behind the film, McCartney had been busy working on the film’s loose script. “He and John sat down, I think in Paul’s place in St. John’s Wood,” recalled Neil Aspinall, the Beatles’ longtime friend and road manager. “And they just drew a circle and then marked it off like the spokes on a wheel. And it was really, ‘We can have a song here, and we can have this here, we can have this dream sequence there, we can have that there,’ and they sort of mapped it out. But it was pretty rough.”

The Beatles had made little headway on Magical Mystery Tour since May. On August 22 and 23, just days before Epstein’s death, they’d attempted to record “Your Mother Should Know” at Chappell Recording Studios, an independent facility in central London (Abbey Road had been booked and unavailable.) But now it was time to knuckle down. On September 5, the Beatles regrouped in the familiar confines of Abbey Road’s large Studio One to do just that, starting with a new Lennon composition, “I Am the Walrus.”

There was a new face on the session: Ken Scott. Like Geoff Emerick, Scott was one of the many young men who’d climbed up through EMI’s rigorous training program. He had worked as second engineer—a tape machine operator—on previous Beatles sessions, but to date he had never engineered a recording. On this day’s session, he was working as second engineer to Emerick, who had engineered nearly every Beatles session from Revolver forward. Emerick’s ingenuity with recording equipment, his ideas about microphone placement and his talent for interpreting and fulfilling the Beatles’ growing desire for audio effects had quickly made him an invaluable part of the group’s production team.

So Scott was understandably shocked when, less than two weeks later, on September 16, he arrived at Abbey Road and was told to take over as the Beatles’ engineer; Emerick had abruptly left for an extended vacation. “I was completely thrown in at the deep end, put behind a board having never touched it before,” Scott recalls. “That first session I had no idea what the hell I was doing.”

Scott did his best and carried on with the session, a remake of “Your Mother Should Know,” using the same mic setups and recording gear that Emerick had been using. Under the circumstances, it’s not surprising that Scott can’t recall what guitars, basses and amps were used on Magical Mystery Tour, but photos, videos and the film offer suggestions. With respect to guitars, the Beatles most likely used the same gear that they used on Sgt. Pepper’s, though it may not appear that way to the untrained eye. As the psychedelic craze caught on in the summer of 1967, Harrison, Lennon and McCartney each gave their guitars wild paint jobs. Harrison treated his 1961 Sonic Blue Stratocaster, acquired in 1965, to a Day-Glo rainbow finish that he applied himself, and redubbed the guitar “Rocky.” He can be seen playing the guitar in the “All You Need Is Love” broadcast, during which he performed his guitar solo live, and in the “I Am the Walrus” segment of Magical Mystery Tour. Likewise, McCartney embellished his Rickenbacker 4001S bass with a dripping pattern using white, silver and red paint; the bass can be seen in the “All You Need Is Love” broadcast, the “I Am the Walrus” segment and the video for the single “Hello, Goodbye,” recorded around the same time as Magical Mystery Tour . Lennon continued to use his Epiphone Casino, which he had spray-painted either white or grey, as well as his Gibson J-160E acoustic-electric, to which he eventually had a psychedelic finish applied.

As for amps, McCartney used a Vox 730 guitar amp—a valve/solid-state hybrid—with a 2x12 730 cabinet for his bass. Lennon and Harrison can both be seen using Vox Conqueror heads with 730 cabinets in the “Hello, Goodbye” video. Other amps in their possession at this time included a Fender Showman, a Fender Bassman head with a 2x12 cabinet, and a Selmer Thunderbird Twin 50 MkII.

Though Scott originally relied on Emerick’s miking and engineering techniques, he found his comfort zone as the weeks stretched on. Eventually, he began to experiment with sounds, much as Emerick had before him. The Beatles’ sessions proved perfect for this. “As a young engineer learning, working with the Beatles was absolutely incredible, for two reasons,” Scott says. “One, there weren’t time limits. With EMI’s traditional three-hour sessions, you didn’t have time to experiment because you had to get a couple of tracks recorded in three hours. With the Beatles, time was unlimited. Two, there was the freedom to experiment. The Beatles always wanted things to sound different, and that gave you the opportunity to try things. I could use completely the wrong mic in completely the wrong place, and completely screw up the EQ so it sounds atrocious. But I would learn from that. And the Beatles could just as easily hear it and say, ‘Oh, that’s awful—but we’ll use it.’” He laughs. “Because they wanted everything to be different. So just in terms of experimentation, they were the most amazing band to be able to work with.”

There was no greater example of experimentation on Magical Mystery Tour than the mono mixdown session for “I Am the Walrus,” on the night of September 29. The song itself was a marvel of wordplay and orchestration—as Lennon said, “one of those that has enough little bitties going to keep you interested even a hundred years later.” No song in the Beatles’ catalog features as many literary and social references in its lyrics as “I Am the Walrus” does. In writing it, Lennon drew on references to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (the walrus), playground nursery rhymes, the Hare Krishna movement, Edgar Allen Poe and even the Beatles’ own “Lucy in the Sky.” Complementing the bizarre lyrics was an equally vivid and evocative orchestral score for strings, horns, clarinet and 16-piece choir, which was recorded on September 27 in Studio One.

But the crowning touch was applied at the September 29 mixdown. Although the song was essentially finished, Lennon wasn’t ready to sign off on the track. “John felt that the song was missing something,” Scott says. Lennon’s idea was to add to the last half of the recording the sound of a radio dial being turned through its frequency range, catching snippets of live programs as well as the static in between stations. But unlike other overdubs, this one would be added live at the mixing stage, thereby embedding the radio broadcast permanently into the final recording. It was an unusual way to work, but with no free tracks available on the four-track tape, it was the only way to proceed.

The job of dial turning fell to Ringo Starr. During one of the two takes performed that night, he let the dial come to rest on a BBC broadcast of Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of King Lear. “I can’t remember if he just stopped doing it or if John told him to stop at that point whilst we were mixing,” Scott says. “But it finished up being that section from King Lear. The fact that it finishes up just being one station almost goes against what [Lennon] was after. He very much wanted it [the radio station] just sort of changing the entire time.” As it happened, the extract from King Lear—depicting the violent death of the steward Oswald—fit perfectly. Its disturbing dialogue and the cadences of the actors’ speech meshed as if on cue with the song’s complex arrangement. “It was pure luck,” Scott says, “because it was [mixed] live. We never could have recreated it.”

The surreal sounds of “I Am the Walrus” are nearly equalled by “Blue Jay Way,” Harrison’s contribution to Magical Mystery Tour . The song is among the best of his compositions from this period, a haunting piece from which the group fashioned a sonically fascinating recording. Harrison wrote the song in August while staying at a rented house on Blue Jay Way in the L.A. neighborhood of Hollywood Hills. He was waiting for Derek Taylor, the Beatles’ press officer, to arrive, but Taylor had trouble finding the house. As the hour grew later, fog descended, further delaying his arrival. Feeling sleepy, but not wanting to doze off, Harrison sat down at a Hammond organ in the house and began composing a new song fresh from the experience of waiting for Taylor’s arrival, punctuated by a mournful chorus on which he pleads, “Please don’t be long, for I may be asleep.”

The recording of “Blue Jay Way” took place in Studio Two, commencing on September 6 and continuing through the 7th. As evidence that the Beatles were plowing ahead on Magical Mystery Tour following months of inactivity, the song was begun while the group was still at work on “I Am the Walrus.” “Blue Jay Way” features a kitchen-sink application of audio effects, including vocals through a Leslie speaker (first used on Revolver’s “Tomorrow Never Knows”), flanging on the drums and, on the stereo mix of the song, an overdubbing of backward background vocals.

The result is a recording that, while not as dense as Lennon’s “I Am the Walrus,” is every bit as satisfying. After standing in the shadows of Lennon and McCartney, Harrison was clearly coming into his own. “As each one was taking more control of their own songs, he didn’t have to rely on the others quite so much,” Scott says. “So I think that gave him more freedom, more flexibility to complete his songs, and that they were turning out better and better all along.”

On September 8, with the basic tracks for “Blue Jay Way” completed, the Beatles turned their attention to “Flying,” a slow blues in C that was unusual in two respects: not only was it an instrumental (it’s la-la-ing vocals notwithstanding) but all four Beatles shared a co-writing credit on it. At this stage, the song was called “Aerial Tour Instrumental” and included a saxophone solo (later erased) from a Mellotron, the tape-based sample player that had provided the flutes on “Strawberry Fields Forever” (and which also provides the windwood lead instrument and background string sounds on “Flying”). More overdubs were added on September 28, including ethereal sounds from tape loops created by Lennon and Starr, thereby stretching the recording’s length to 9:36. The song was edited down to 2:14 and fades out with the tape loops, though the unused portion of the song didn’t go to waste: it was saved and reused as incidental music in the movie.

McCartney’s track “The Fool on the Hill” was the last song to be undertaken for Magical Mystery Tour , beginning on September 25 in Abbey Road’s Studio Two. According to the bassist, he had written it while at the piano in his father’s house, in Liverpool, following the Beatles’ August trip to the Maharishi’s seminar in Wales. The “Fool” referred to in the song is actually the Maharishi, whom McCartney saw as a misunderstood mystic. “His detractors called him a fool,” he explained. “Because of his giggle he wasn’t taken too seriously.”

Despite its rather simple arrangement, “The Fool on the Hill” contained numerous overdubs, including recorder, penny whistle and harmonicas, which quickly filled up the four-track tape. On October 20, McCartney decided to add a flute solo to the song, but with no tracks available, the tape would have to be bounced down—for the second time since it was begun—to another reel of tape, onto which the flute overdubs could be added.

Rather than subject the song to yet another transfer, a procedure that can add hiss and degrade sound quality, George Martin decided to implement a technique that had been used for “A Day in the Life,” on Sgt. Pepper’s . For that song, Abbey Road engineer Ken Townsend had devised a way to link two four-tracks to play in sync, using a pilot tone on one track to control the speed of the second machine. “It was extremely trustworthy, except for one little thing,” Scott says, “and that was the starting time of them. Once you got them running together, yes, they were perfectly in sync. The problem was just starting them up together, because each machine starts at a different speed every time.”

Apparently, by the time they recorded “The Fool on the Hill,” everyone had forgotten how much trouble the system could be. “The problem was that on the second four-track, [the flutes] didn’t come in till about a quarter of the way into the song,” Scott says. “So we wouldn’t know until they came in whether or not the two machines were running in sync. Eventually we got it so that they ran in sync for probably just two mixes: the mono and stereo. Yeah. It wasn’t fun.”

By the middle of November, all six Magical Mystery Tour tracks were completed, mixed and mastered. On December 8, the finished work was released in England as a gatefold package containing two extended-play 45-rpm records. In the U.S., where EPs had failed to catch on, Capitol Records, the Beatles’ American label, issued it as a full-length album containing the six songs on one side and five other Beatles tracks released as singles in 1967: “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Penny Lane,” “All You Need Is Love,” “Baby You’re a Rich Man” and “Hello, Goodbye.” In either of its musical formats, Magical Mystery Tour was a hit with both the public and critics.

The film was not. Shown on the BBC on Boxing Day—the day after Christmas, and a holiday in Britain— Magical Mystery Tour was universally panned as a confusing and self-indulgent mess. Having little in the way of plot, it derived its entertainment value from the Beatles’ musical performances as well as cinematography that was rich with the psychedelic colors that typified the times.

“And of course they showed it in black and white!” Ringo Starr says. “And so it was hated. They all had their chance then to say, ‘They’ve gone too far. Who do they think they are?’”

McCartney, as the film’s instigator, takes the long view. “I defend it on the lines that nowhere else do you see a performance of ‘I Am the Walrus,’” he says. “That’s the only performance ever.”

No such defenses are necessary when it comes to the music. It’s as fine as anything on Sgt. Pepper’s , and it shows at times an even greater command of arrangement and studio production. Clearly, the Beatles were getting a firmer hand on the intricacies of their music.

But there is a weariness to the music as well, a tangible sense of Sgt. Pepper’s expectant summer giving way to Magical Mystery Tour ’s melancholy autumn. The six songs destined for Magical Mystery Tour were written before Epstein’s death late that August, but there is a dry, funereal whiff to most of those that were recorded after it, as if the Beatles were mourning his loss through the by now ritual sessions at Abbey Road. “I Am the Walrus” is wonderfully macabre and grotesque with its maniacal background vocals and Lennon’s seething croup of a voice, his baleful shouts growing until, by the coda, he sounds like a huffing blast furnace. Harrison’s haunting “Blue Jay Way” emerges sinisterly out of silence, its dreamy Lydian melody, sustained organ chords, unsettling cello lines and ghoulish background vocals evoking the song’s theme of unanswered longing and physical dislocation. McCartney’s “Fool on the Hill” is plaintive and abandoned, its wistful flutes and plodding chorus of bass harmonicas inducing cloud-engulfed vistas of lonely supernal peaks.

And then there is the dirgelike 12-bar-blues burlesque of “Flying,” a perversely psychedelic defiling of the genre that gave birth to the rock and roll from which the Beatles emerged and, in 1967, briefly took flight. Within weeks of the dawn of 1968, they would land once again on the solid ground of rock and roll and folk, recording McCartney’s barrelhouse R&B tribute “Lady Madonna” and, one day later, Lennon’s gentle acoustic ode “Across the Universe.” A dream was over. A new one was just beginning.

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Christopher Scapelliti is editor-in-chief of  Guitar Player  magazine, the world’s longest-running guitar magazine, founded in 1967. In his extensive career, he has authored in-depth interviews with such guitarists as Pete Townshend, Slash, Billy Corgan, Jack White, Elvis Costello and Todd Rundgren, and audio professionals including Beatles engineers Geoff Emerick and Ken Scott. He is the co-author of  Guitar Aficionado: The Collections: The Most Famous, Rare, and Valuable Guitars in the World , a founding editor of  Guitar Aficionado  magazine, and a former editor with  Guitar World ,  Guitar for the Practicing Musician  and  Maximum Guitar . Apart from guitars, he maintains a collection of more than 30 vintage analog synthesizers.

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Magical Mystery Tour (1967)

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• The Beatles’ songs – complete A-Z list

Magical Mystery Tour

Recorded just four days after the completion of the Sgt Pepper album, ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ was Paul McCartney ’s attempt to maintain momentum within The Beatles and to give them a new direction and sense of purpose.

John and I remembered mystery tours, and we always thought this was a fascinating idea: getting on a bus and not knowing where you were going. Rather romantic and slightly surreal! All these old dears with the blue rinses going off to mysterious places. Generally there’s a crate of ale in the boot of the coach and you sing lots of songs. It’s a charabanc trip. So we took that idea and used it as a basis for a song and the film.

Inspired by Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters and their LSD-fuelled bus, McCartney decided The Beatles should try something similar. He devised a rough concept for the new project, which would involve the group travelling around the England in their own coach, filming whatever took place.

I used to go to the fairgrounds as a kid, the waltzers and the dodgems, but what interested me was the freak shows: the boxing booths, the bearded lady and the sheep with five legs, which actually was a four-legged sheep with one leg sewn on its side. When I touched it, the fellow said, ‘Hey, leave that alone!’ these were the great things of your youth. So much of your writing comes from this period; your golden memories. If I’m stuck for an idea, I can always think of a great summer, think of a time when I went to the seaside. Okay, sand sun waves donkeys laughter. That’s a pretty good scenario for a song.

The resulting TV film was a mess, and critically panned, though the soundtrack double EP (expanded to a full album in the US) was a best-seller.

‘Magical Mystery Tour’ was co-written by John and I, very much in our fairground period. One of our great inspirations was always the barker. ‘Roll up! Roll up!’ The promise of something: the newspaper ad that says ‘guaranteed not to crack’, the ‘high class’ butcher, ‘satisfaction guaranteed’ from Sgt Pepper . ‘Come inside,’ ‘ Step inside, Love ‘; you’ll find that pervades a lot of my songs. If you look at all the Lennon-McCartney things, it’s a thing we do a lot.

The title track was McCartney’s initial idea, based on ideas written on an overnight flight from America on 11 April 1967 , though what he took to the studio was little more than the title and three chords. He attempted to rouse the other Beatles into contributing lyrics, but their enthusiasm was low and later completed the lyrics alone.

Because those were psychedelic times it had to become a magical mystery tour, a little bit more surreal than the real ones to give us a licence to do it. But it employs all the circus and fairground barkers, ‘Roll up! Roll up!’, which was also a reference to rolling up a joint. We were always sticking those little things in that we knew our friends would get; veiled references to drugs and to trips. ‘Magical Mystery Tour is waiting to take you away ,’ so that’s a kind of drug, ‘it’s dying to take you away’ so that’s a Tibetan Book of the Dead reference. We put all these words in and if you were just an ordinary person, it’s a nice bus that’s waiting to take you away, but if you’re tripping, it’s dying, it’s the real tour, the real magical mystery tour. We stuck all that stuff in for our ‘in group’ of friends really. ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ was the equivalent of a drug trip and we made the film based on that. ‘That’ll be good, a far-out mystery tour. Nobody quite knows where they’re going. We can take ’em anywhere we want, man!’ Which was the feeling of the period. ‘They can go in the sky. It can take off!’ In fact, in the early script, which was just a few fireside chats more than a script, the bus was going to actually take off and fly up to the magicians in the clouds, which was us all dressed in red magicians’ costumes, and we’d mess around in a little laboratory being silly for a while.

In the studio

The first ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ session took place on 25 April 1967 . The Beatles spent much time rehearsing and improvising the song, with Paul McCartney at the piano suggesting ideas to the others in the group.

Eventually they recorded three takes of the basic rhythm track: two guitars, piano and drums. Take three was the best. After this they raided the Abbey Road sound effects collection, creating a tape loop of the sound of coaches to be added at the mixing stage.

On 26 April McCartney recorded his bass part, and all The Beatles plus Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans played percussion instruments, including tambourine, maracas and cowbell. McCartney, John Lennon , and George Harrison also taped extra vocals.

The following day still more vocals were added. McCartney taped his lead, with backing from Lennon and Harrison.

An overdub of four trumpets was added on 3 May . The session began by McCartney humming notes to the brass players to let them know what he wanted, but he mostly failed to get his intentions across.

In the end the players were sent away while McCartney and George Martin worked out the notation on the piano in Abbey Road’s studio three. One of the trumpeters, Gary Howarth, reportedly became so impatient that he wrote a score himself. According to Philip Jones, a friend of the session musicians, that was the idea The Beatles ended up using.

The recording of ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ was completed on 7 November . During the editing of the film, Lennon had added a spoken introduction: “Roll up, roll up for the Magical Mystery Tour! Step right this way! Hurry, hurry, hurry!” It was decided that this should be added to the record release too.

McCartney recreated Lennon’s spiel, although he left out the “Hurry, hurry, hurry!” section. A tape loop of traffic noise, assembled back on 25 April, was also added. The song was then mixed in stereo and mono.

Latest Comments

Hi all! Does anyone know what mix of this song was used in the ‘Anthology’? I have the original vinyl (Canadian) and the remasters, and the mix in ‘Anthology’ definitely has different panning; in my two versions the electric guitar is on the left with the drums, percussion, etc. In the ‘Anthology’ clip (chapter 7, 23:20-24:06,) the drums appear in both speakers, the percussion and piano remain on the left and the electric guitar is hard-panned to the right with the trumpets. By giving greater exposure to the electric guitar, piano and percussion in this way (the guitar and piano notes being in roughly the same range,) the mix “moves” more than the other one, creating more of a rock song. Does anyone A) notice this difference and B) know where to find this mix in its entirety? Thanks…

i’ve just checked my Anthology and it’s not on there as i thought, but the version of this song in the film is different to the released version, maybe it’s this mix you refer to? as it has been widely bootlegged.

i think the Anthology was the movie version. I myself have 3 versions of the song.

‘Magical Mystery Tour is waiting to take you away,’ so that’s a kind of drug, ‘it’s dying to take you away’ so that’s a Tibetan Book of the Dead reference.’

I love Paul as a musician, but quotes like this are just stupid.

no its not. its really true. with a comment like that we can see , you know nothing about the beatles…

It’s not so stupid… ingesting LSD and other psychedelics produces a state of consciousness paralel to the one the brain experiences when it is dying. Hence the tibetan book of the dead reference.

No you are stupid not him. You clearly know nothing about the drug and the book yet u made a silly clueless comment.

Thank you dude Someone had to say it

Yeh I agree, I feel the fact John is constantly held up as the lyrical genius gets to him, and he feels the need to prove himself (including with his new book!). Such a talented musician, he doesn’t need to prove himself to anyone.

Yeah, I feel that way too. It’s the same as with “Got To Get You Into My Life”, which I don’t really believe was a love-letter to pot, despite Paul’s claims. Paul, to me, seems to feel the need to prove his edginess and counteract any suggestion that he’s a lightweight – like it’s not enough to be a brilliant musician and songwriter

Agreed, 100%. A real shame Paul made these retrospective comments…or felt he needed to. Lyrically, the songs don’t even fit the story he put out. ‘Got to get you into my life’ is the classic example…it’s a great uptempo love song and that’s it.

I disagree completely… just read the lyrics of the first verse! Even John posited that Got To Get You Into My Life was about LSD, so if anything Paul is retreating and making himself less edgy by saying it was pot. I think it’s telling when people conclude deceitful motives when none are apparent… sometimes you see what you want to see.

You are correct. It’s about acid, but Paul has downplayed that to say it’s an ode to weed, which is fine. Whoever said it’s just a love song is clueless.

I Think Paul knows what He wrote his songs about than us. Even Lennon said Got To Get You Into My Life was a drug song.

The rest of the song is good, but oh God just that coda in the end is sooo magical… incredible really. 😮

That’s always been my favorite part of the song, the haunting piano coda!

Who wrote/played that coda? It has a very emotional effect on me

Paul played the piano at the end there, I believe

Isn’t it, though? Amazing little thing. Beautiful

It really is, sounds like something that The Doors might do :] But what’s most impressive to me is drumming and this part, kind of 8 when Paul sings: “You got everything you need…”. It’s really good.

That piano coda sure sounds like Mike Garson. Listen to the piano solo in Aladdin Sane.

Paul gave John significant credit for helping to write this “Paul” song – one of the few examples where he does that.

Love Me Do, Paperback Writer, What You’re Doing, Here There And Everywhere, Good Day Sunshine, Penny Lane — even When I’m 64 could also be mentioned, but you’re right; there aren’t *that* many…songs that Paul seems to give John more credit than John himself seemed to feel he deserved.

John, it has to be said, did take *a lot* of credit. Was he right to? Possibly, but slightly more would be pushing it a bit, and I guess the same goes for Paul.

I am one of the rare people who actually likes this song better than SGT. Pepper. You gotta love the raw, heavy guitar on Pepper but there is just something about MMT, especially on the remasters. Also, its obvious that the beatles (other than Paul, and maybe Ringo) quit on there potential on some of their later songs. Too bad because MMT could have really been a masterpiece. I love Johns chorus at the end. His voice tone really cuts into me and I absolutely love the second part where he says “…dying to take you away…” Just think how much better this song could have been if he and George werent so distracted by this point.

Is that really John singing the last two “The Magical Mystery Tour is … “? I always thought so.

I agree, Nolan. Just think about how much better the entire MMT ALBUM would have been if John and George had been at least a LITTLE more enthusiastic. I imagine these recording sessions being dominated by Paul (partly out of necessity), while John and George yawned and constantly glanced at their watches. If they had been more “into it,” the whole album would have ended up more, uh… “magical.” Of course, Paul probably DID come off like an overbearing alpha dog, so the distaction of the rest of the group is not surprising.

Frankly the only “magic” in the soundtrack portion of MMT for me is John’s “I Am The Walrus” and George’s “Blue Jay Way”. I am grateful for the contributions of the “distracted” ones. As for the 1967 singles portion of MMT, John’s contributions of “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “All You Need Is Love” (plus his half of “Baby, You’re A Rich Man”) are outstanding to say the least.

I agree with you, Joseph Brush. I think “Strawberry Fields Forever” and especially “All You Need Is Love” are the great songs. But I don’t like Blue Jay Way.

well Fool on the Hill and Your Mother Should Know, not to mention the previously-released Hello Goodbye, are all very typical Paul songs with great sing-along qualities and each has a bit of weirdness to keep it in line with the whole concept of the film/album. Add the singles and it’s really a great, great album. I don’t know if it’s fair to single out the John and George compositions and simply write off Paul’s efforts on this one.

I have to say that “Walrus” and “Strawberry Field” are phenomenal compositions by John and George Martin with the rest of the band doing their thing to back them up flawlessly. I just give Paul the slight overall edge in his contributions. He represents the frontman for me…Looking at all the beatles post work including Paul’s, it doesn’t even matter. Without all 4 of them together with the chemistry they had in relationship to one another, inspiring and demanding eachothers A+ game no matter what was going on, we wouldn’t even be having ongoing conversations like this 40 years later. Granted there are exceptions and if I ever get bored enough with their compact and complete catalogue, I would get a kick in naming the top 50 or 100 worst beatles songs. Paul would dominate that list as well but he also takes the cake in many of my all time favorite beatles songs. That’s why I love Paul’s work the most. He could afford produce some real clunkers because he could always make up for it ten times over with masterpiece after masterpiece. Hearing the remastered mono recording of MMT is really like experiencing this song for the first time for me. Comparing it to the 87’s is simply put an absolute disaster vs and absolute work of art. I always liked this song as a young boy. But I never loved it like the seemingly hundreds of other fantastic Beatles songs I got to experience over and over growing up.

“I am the Walrus” is certainly a fantastic song, but the most magical moment on MMT is the title song’s coda melting into “Fool on the Hill.”

I always liked the Walrus , Strawberry Fields and A Day in the Life. Lennon’s backing vocals make certain songs sound quite awesome. See how they run? It couldn’t get no worse? She’s leaving home ,bye,bye. I too felt the impact The Beatles made in the 60’s. They definitely had a different sound than their contemporaries. Obviously they were better together than apart. MMT was an interesting album. Capital records made a good decision by putting 1967’s singles on one side. Baby You’re a Rich Man is underrated. I agree with you regarding the mono mixes.

Dying is the ultimate Magical Mystery experience.

Love this song. It is just so fast paced and catchy.Basically a McCartney song. I also love the EP , film and album of the same name.

And the bassline, all the way through. One of Macca’s absolute best performances

Great title track for film, E.P. and album. Very 1967, would have been a hit if released as a single.

favorite song of all time, especially love John’s slow verse

Needless to say, I did ‘roll-up’ for the Magical Mystery Tour.

Which Beatle is the one giving the “Roll up” introduction at the beginning of the song? Does anyone out there know?

It was John in the film, but Paul on the record. Paul’s version was recorded on 7 November 1967 .

On the Cheap Trick cover of this song, on the bridge section I can clearly hear two voices overlapping, one is saying “Mystery Tour”, the other “Taking aTrip”. It’s harder to disentangle on the Beatles’ version, but is that what is happening? It actually sounds like Mystery Trip, but I think Cheap Trick have done us all a favour ?

Wow! I clearly hear “taking a trip” at slightly less volume than “mystery tour”. For years I’ve wondered what that garbled sounding second vocal was singing and now I know. Thanks!

It always sounded like ” a mystery trip” to me. (shrug).

There is no lead guitar in this song. Just two rhythm guitar parts.

Hello everyone! Can anyone explain why Magical Mystery Tour (song) is not treated as a Beatles hit, since the double EP with this recording as the title track entered the singles chart and shot to number 2. After all, this is an achievement equal to the success of the singles Please Please Me, SFF/PL or Let It Be. Moreover, like the single Please Please Me, in top music weekly newspaper Melody Maker, it reached number 1 for one week (January 13, 1968).

Even though the Magical Mystery Tour EP got to number 2 in the UK singles chart it is considered an EP and not a 45 stand alone single and therefore it does not qualify as a hit single.

Thanks for your reply, I know all of what you wrote, but my question still doesn’t have a clear, convincing answer. It is obvious that MMT was a double EP from a formal or technical point of view, but in terms of musical competition, i.e. classification on the charts, it was undoubtedly treated as a single. Thus, the title track should be considered another huge hit by The Beatles.

I understand what you say and ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ is a very well known song but as I said previously it was not a single. It was a Double EP. EP’s would often climb into the singles chart as all the early Beatles EPs did. ‘Long Tall Sally’ EP from 1964 is another example. It got to No.1 in the singles charts but is not considered a huge hit in the UK. The ‘All My Loving’ EP from 1964 also reached No.1 but ‘All My Loving’ is not considered a single. The fact that they wrote ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ makes no difference. All EPs were considered as singles in as much as they got into the singles chart in the UK and they all had single chart placings. ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ gets plenty of airplay on radio. I don’t think it gets treated any differently apart from the fact that it was not a single so is therefore not included on Beatles single compilations. See Here for more info. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_play?wprov=sfti1

Sheldon, thank you kindly. The matter is clear to me now.

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The Beatles: Magical Mystery Tour

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Magical Mystery Tour (EP)

From beatles wiki - interviews, music, beatles quotes.

Magical Mystery Tour is an double EP by The Beatles , produced by George Martin , both including the six-song soundtrack to the 1967 film of the same name . The record format released in the United Kingdom on 8 December 1967, was a six-track double EP on the Parlophone label, whilst in the United States the record, released 11 days earlier, on 27 November 1967, was an eleven-track LP created by Capitol Records , adding the band's 1967 single releases.

The US LP was later adopted as the official version of the record when The Beatles' catalogue was updated for the 1980s digital Compact Disc releases. The album was remastered 9 September 2009 for the first time since its CD release. The soundtrack was a critical and commercial success, a #1 album in the US and Grammy-nominated , despite the relative critical and commercial failure of the Magical Mystery Tour film.

• 1 Initial release formats
• 2 Track listing
• 3 Personnel
• 5 External links

Initial release formats

The number of songs used in the film posed a problem for The Beatles and their UK record company EMI , as there were too few for an LP album but too many for an EP. Template:Sfn One idea considered was to issue an EP which played at 33 ⅓ rpm but this would have caused a loss of fidelity that was deemed unacceptable. The solution chosen was to issue an innovative format of two EP's packaged in a gatefold sleeve with a 28-page booklet containing the lyrics and colour pictures. Template:Sfn Of the package, Bob Neaverson wrote "While it certainly solved the song quota problem, one suspects that it was also partly born of The Beatles' pioneering desire to experiment with conventional formats and packaging". Template:Sfn The package was released in the UK on 8 December, in time for the Christmas market.

In the US, EPs were not popular at the time so (and against The Beatles' wishes) Capitol Records decided to release the soundtrack as an LP by adding some recent non-album singles. Template:Sfn The first side of the LP was the film soundtrack (like earlier British Beatles soundtrack albums), and the second side was a collection of A-side and B-sides released in 1967, with the songs "Penny Lane", "Baby, You're a Rich Man" and "All You Need Is Love" presented in duophonic , fake "processed" stereo, sound. Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

Note that on all stereo releases of both packages, "I Am the Walrus" is in true-stereo only part way through, after which the sound becomes fake-stereo.

When standardising The Beatles' releases for the worldwide Compact Disc release in 1987, the LP version of Magical Mystery Tour (in true-stereo) was included with the otherwise British album line-up. [1]

The inclusion of the 1967 singles on CD with this album meant both that the Magical Mystery Tour CD would be of comparable length to the band's other album CDs, and that those three singles would not need to be included on Past Masters , a two-volume compilation designed to accompany the initial CD album releases and provide all non-album tracks (mostly singles) on CD format. [2]

The album (along with The Beatles' entire UK studio album catalogue) was remastered and reissued on CD in 2009. In homage to the album's conception and first release, the CD incorporates the original Capitol LP label design. The remastered CD features a mini-documentary about the album. Initial copies of the album accidentally list the mini-documentary to be one made for Let It Be .

Track listing

• " Magical Mystery Tour " " Your Mother Should Know "
• " I Am the Walrus "
• " The Fool on the Hill " " Flying "
• " Blue Jay Way "
• George Harrison  – lead and rhythm guitars , lead , harmony and backing vocals , harmonica on "The Fool on the Hill", Hammond organ on "Blue Jay Way"
• John Lennon  – lead, harmony and backing vocals, rhythm and lead guitars, acoustic and electric piano , mellotron , harmonica on "The Fool on the Hill"
• Paul McCartney  – lead, harmony and backing vocals, bass guitar , piano, mellotron, recorder on "The Fool on the Hill"
• Ringo Starr  – drums , percussion , vocals (shared with Lennon, McCartney and Harrison) on "Flying"
• Geoff Emerick & Ken Scott
• "Magical Mystery Tour" – Mal Evans and Neil Aspinall on percussion, David Mason, Elgar Howarth, Roy Copestake and John Wilbraham on trumpets
• "The Fool on the Hill" – Christoper Taylor, Richard Taylor and Jack Ellory on flute Template:Sfn
• "I Am the Walrus" – Sidney Sax, Jack Rothstein, Ralph Elman, Andrew McGee, Jack Greene, Louis Stevens, John Jezzard and Jack Richards on violins, Lionel Ross, Eldon Fox, Brian Martin and Terry Weil on cellos and Neill Sanders , Tony Tunstall and Morris Miller on horns, Peggie Allen, Wendy Horan, Pat Whitmore, Jill Utting, June Day, Sylvia King, Irene King, G. Mallen, Fred Lucas, Mike Redway, John O'Neill, F. Dachtler, Allan Grant, D. Griffiths, J. Smith and J. Fraser on backing vocals
• "Hello, Goodbye" – Ken Essex, Leo Birnbaum on violas.
• "Strawberry Fields Forever" – Mal Evans on percussion, Tony Fisher, Greg Bowen, Derek Watkins and Stanley Roderick on trumpets and John Hall, Derek Simpson, Norman Jones on cellos.
• "Penny Lane" – Ray Swinfield, P. Goody, Manny Winters and Dennis Walton on flutes, Leon Calvert, Freddy Clayton, Bert Courtley and Duncan Campbell on trumpets, Dick Morgan and Mike Winfield on English horns, Frank Clarke on double bass and David Mason on piccolo trumpet
• "Baby, You're a Rich Man" – Eddie Kramer on vibraphone
• "All You Need Is Love" – George Martin on piano, Mick Jagger , Keith Richards , Marianne Faithfull , Keith Moon , Eric Clapton , Pattie Boyd Harrison , Jane Asher , Mike McCartney , Maureen Starkey, Graham Nash and wife, Gary Leeds and Hunter Davies on backing vocals, Sidney Sax, Patrick Halling, Eric Bowie and Jack Holmes on violins, Rex Morris and Don Honeywill on sax, David Mason and Stanley Woods on trumpets, Evan Watkins and Henry Spain on horns, Jack Emblow on accordion and Brian Martin on cello
• ↑ Other US LPs were subsequently released as part of The Capitol Albums volumes 1 and 2 boxed sets, but not individually.
• ↑ Album Review: The Beatles – Past Masters [Remastered] « Consequence of Sound

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The Best Beatles Movies, Ranked By Music Fans

More than 50 years after their split, The Beatles are one of the most nostalgic bands that still capture fans' attention. The group, who hailed from Liverpool, England, helped usher in a new era of popular music unlike any other artist, but their vision didn't stop at inspiring music and powerful lyrics. Going beyond innovative music videos (of which they were the first ever to make), the band saw filmmaking as an avenue to kill multiple birds with one stone. Like Elvis Presley before them, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr knew how to capitalize on their fame and popularity while allowing fans to see them in a creative setting, and their music was never left out. The Beatles' films celebrated their music, and they entertained fans outside of the listening experience, which was already powerful. 

A Hard Day’s Night

What It’s About : A Hard Day's Night dramatizes The Beatles' lives in 1964 and the height of Beatlemania. Playing themselves, John, Paul, George, and Ringo go about doing the usual things their real-life counterparts do but find themselves in various hilarious situations along the way. All while trying to evade hoards of screaming fans at every turn, The Beatles find ways to annoy their manager, Norm, while traveling by train to London for rehearsals of a television performance. En route, they meet Paul's grandfather, who is always looking to cause trouble, and a sad Ringo almost makes them late for their performance. Whatever they're doing, The Beatles always have time for a song. 

Why It’s Worth A Watch: A Hard Day's Night doesn't exactly have a plot, but it's no less enjoyable watching the band engage in some dramatic shenanigans while doing what they do best: performing their songs. It's silly because The Beatles were silly during this time; they had yet to find psychedelic drugs and expand their minds or their music, not to mention the world. 

The Era: A Hard Day's Night encapsulates The Beatles' Beatlemania era when they couldn't go anywhere without screaming girls chasing them. The scene where they're couped up in their hotel room wasn't far from the truth; when the band made their famous trip to the US, they were also isolated in their hotel rooms. Beatlemania was a phenomenon; by 1964, it had its grip on the world. Suddenly, The Beatles were the most talked about rock band in popular music, and A Hard Day's Night only cemented their popularity while poking fun at Beatlemania simultaneously. The black-and-white film also makes fans remember that the band was still pretty new at this point. Film was just becoming colorful as was their music. 

What It’s About: Director Richard Lester reunited with The Beatles a year after A Hard Day's Night to make an almost sequel, Help! This time, the band gets up to even more shenanigans while traveling around the globe to protect Ringo from being sacrificed by an Eastern cult. The drummer has found a ring that all the cult's victims must wear to be sacrificed, and they hunt him relentlessly and mostly comically. After several attempts to kill Ringo and retrieve the ring, The Beatles take the hunt to the Austrian Alps, and when that fails, Scotland Yard gets involved, but even concealing them at Buckingham Palace doesn't work. Finally, they go to the Bahamas, where the fight against the cult reaches a peak and, of course, one last awesome musical number. 

Why It’s Worth A Watch: Like A Hard Day's Night , Help! is designed to give fans more of The Beatles, as Beatlemania was still strong in 1965. The Beatles wanted to make films because their idol Elvis Presley did; they didn't have to be the most thought-provoking or riveting. The group's films just had to put them in their theaters for fans to see them doing whatever and playing their music. Help! has the same makeup as A Hard Day's Night , but it dives deeper into The Beatles' world with a touch more story. The film is in color, just as The Beatles' music became more vibrant. 

The Era: The Beatles were just about done with their mop-top, Beatlemania era, and were just about to enter their psychedelic era when Help! was made. LSD hadn't yet expanded their minds and helped them create some of their biggest hits, but John, Paul, and George were starting to incorporate more story into their lyrics, unlike any other band at the time. It's also worth noting that the band was getting sick of their mop-top days and doing films like A Hard Day's Night and Help! They wanted to be taken seriously and wanted to experiment with their music. 

Yellow Submarine

What It’s About: Yellow Submarine begins in the glorious, safe bubble of Pepperland, where Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band lives and plays its wonderful music. The beauty and color of Pepperland are drained after an attack by the Blue Meanies, and Fred is tasked with finding John, Paul, George, and Ringo to help them. He goes to Liverpool in the Yellow Submarine to secure them, and they travel through the Sea of Nothing, Sea of Time, and Sea of Holes. Along the way, they meet Jeremy Hillary Boob, and as they arrive in Pepperland, their attack on the Blue Meanies begins. They rebel against the villains and restore Pepperland to its colorful self again.

Why It’s Worth A Watch: Yellow Submarine has Beatles songs and Beatles-like motifs, but the group was barely involved. Still, it's a colorful psychedelic cartoon that's enjoyable for all ages. It has an important yet simple message: even when darkness comes, there is always hope that the light will return, and music can and will help. 

The Era: Yellow Submarine was released in 1968 when The Beatles were beginning to move beyond their psychedelic era into their White Album and Let It Be phase. However, the psychedelic, latter part of the 1960s made sure this film became a success and later a classic.

Magical Mystery Tour

What It’s About: Magical Mystery Tour takes viewers and fans on a full-on psychedelic trip that makes even less sense than A Hard Day's Night and Help! The premise is simple: a group of people (including the band, of course) go on a mystery tour that is, well, magical. Puzzling things begin to happen on the tour bus journey thanks to five magicians, four of which are played by The Beatles themselves and the other by their road manager, Mal Evans. None of the film's events are explainable, including the travelers' race, their moment in the random tent, or waiter Pirandello's strange spaghetti shoveling. Like all The Beatles' movies, Magical Mystery Tour is interspersed with musical interludes, this time unsurprisingly the track list from the album of the same name. 

Why It’s Worth A Watch: The Beatles wanted to explore not just different sounds and music but all art forms. Magical Mystery Tour bursts with color and imagination despite seeming like the band's biggest waste of time, especially since it was a made-for-television film that premiered, at first, only in England and in black and white nonetheless. Still, it was a step the group had to take to refine their music and vision leading up to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band that same year. A magical tour isn't that far off from a fictional band. Both are just as psychedelic. 

The Era: Magical Mystery Tour sees The Beatles fully immersed in their psychedelic phase, which started in 1966 with the creation of Rubber Soul and Revolver . John and George were the first Beatles to try LSD, with Paul being the last, and it quickly changed them beyond anything else. The movie makes no more sense than the band's own psychedelic trips. 

What It’s About: Let It Be is a “fly on the wall” documentary by Michael Lindsay-Hogg released in 1970. Its footage captures The Beatles on the brink of breaking up in 1969. Beatles fans will know that Hogg filmed the band over weeks, culminating in hours of footage that Peter Jackson recently expanded on in his three-part documentary, The Beatles: Get Back . The film documents The Beatles rehearsing and recording songs planned to appear on Let It Be , but in Hogg's version of the documentary, which was initially meant to be a television documentary to go along with a proposed television performance (or possibly a televised lived performance abroad), the group quickly flounders on their vision for the album. Let It Be focuses on the drama forming in the band more than anything else, with Paul quietly fuming about Yoko Ono's presence and Paul and George's tense fight that results in George's brief exit from the band. 

Why It’s Worth A Watch: Despite its lack of direction and vision, Let It Be was a good concept. The Beatles were recording their most innovative and inspiring track at the time, but, unfortunately, they were also on four different paths, with no idea of how to merge. The Beatles collectively said that Let It Be focused too much on their dissension at the time and was, therefore, horrible to watch. After the plan for the concert telecast fell through, Let It Be became a feature film and has not been made available on home video since the 1980s. Only bad bootleg copies gave fans a look, but Let It Be will be available to stream for the first time in May 2024. 

The Era: Let It Be takes place during The Beatles' last era, characterized by the songs they performed and recorded in the documentary and the songs on Abbey Road , which was recorded after Let It Be but released before. There weren't as many psychedelic motifs in their writing anymore, just unusual yet wonderful storytelling, which they'd become masters in within rock ‘n’ roll. 

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Magical Mystery Tour DVD

A typically Beatlesque film (i.e. atypical) originally produced for television, this short film was intended to be an off-the-wall road movie with the Beatles and three dozen or so friends on a psychedelic bus. Shot with only a vague script and only bare outlines of scenes, the movie was meant to document a trip to the seaside resort town of Blackpool, England. Made in September of 1967, The Beatles' brilliant rock album is transformed into colorful and energetic images. The film also contains the only live version of John Lennon's "I Am the Walrus." Third of the Beatles films to include Victor Spinetti, famous for his mohair sweater wearing role as the television director in A Hard Day's Night and as the determined scientist with the laser in Help!  the movie was originally shown on BBC TV on December 26, 1967 inexplicably in black and white. Tracklist