FEATURE
Looking Ahead to Fifty-Five Years of The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour Double E.P.
Ranking the Six Tracks
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I have written a feature previously…
IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles set off by coach to the Westcountry to film the Magical Mystery Tour movie/PHOTO CREDIT: Potter/Express/Getty Images
about The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour. It was released as an album in the U.S. in 27th November, 1967. It consisted of songs from the film soundtrack of Magical Mystery Tour, plus some singles from the band. In the U.K., on 8th December, 1967, it was released as a five-track E.P. Many do not consider Magical Mystery Tour to be cannon when it comes to The Beatles’ music. Maybe not as recognised as their studio albums, I do really love the E.P. Six very different and incredible tracks, I think that it should be re-released on vinyl and remastered. Later in the same year as The Beatles released the seminal Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearst Club Band, Magical Mystery Tour was going to suffer in comparison. Perhaps goofier than Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the E.P. is trimmer and does not include songs like Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane (both of which are on the U.S. album). Regardless, I wanted to look ahead to the fifty-fifth anniversary of Magical Mystery Tour as an E.P. by ranking the six tracks. They are all fantastic, but I think there are a couple that stand out from the pack – and most people can probably guess which one I am going to put at the top spot! Before getting to the song rankings, here is some information from The Beatles Bible, about Magical Mystery Tour’s filming and recording:
“Released as a six-song double EP in the United Kingdom and an 11-song album in the US and elsewhere, Magical Mystery Tour was the soundtrack to the television film of the same name, which was first broadcast by the BBC on 26 December 1967.
In the wake of the death of Brian Epstein on 27 August 1967, The Beatles found themselves suddenly without direction. Whereas since 1962 they had been carefully guided by their manager, at the peak of their career they were unused to making their own business decisions or having absolute autonomy over their future.
On 1 September 1967, five days after Epstein’s body was discovered in his London home, The Beatles met at Paul McCartney’s house at 7 Cavendish Avenue in St John’s Wood, London. The previous day an announcement had been issued stating that the band would continue to be managed by NEMS Enterprises – now under the guidance of Epstein’s brother Clive – until further notice.
During the 1 September meeting The Beatles agreed to continue with Magical Mystery Tour, a project begun in April shortly after the completion of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Crucially, this was a time when McCartney began steering many of the group’s decisions, encouraging them to continue during a period in which they might easily have collapsed amid a lack of direction.
I was still under a false impression. I still felt every now and then that Brian would come in and say, ‘It’s time to record,’ or, ‘Time to do this.’ And Paul started doing that: ‘Now we’re going to make a movie. Now we’re going to make a record.’ And he assumed that if he didn’t call us, nobody would ever make a record. Paul would say, well, now he felt like it – and suddenly I’d have to whip out twenty songs. He’d come in with about twenty good songs and say, ‘We’re recording.’ And I suddenly had to write a fucking stack of songs.
John Lennon, 1972
Anthology
McCartney’s concept for Magical Mystery Tour was to produce a television special about a group of ordinary people taking a mystery trip on a coach. The film would take in various locations in England and France, and would be mostly improvised and take advantage of the encounters they had on the road.
Magical Mystery Tour was Paul’s idea. It was a good way to work. Paul had a great piece of paper – just a blank piece of white paper with a circle on it. The plan was: ‘We start here – and we’ve got to do something here…’ We filled it in as we went along.
We rented a bus and off we went. 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. To get the actors we looked through the actors’ directory, Spotlight: ‘Oh, we need someone like this, and someone like that.’ We needed a large lady to play my auntie. So we found a large lady.
Ringo Starr
Anthology”.
To celebrate a big anniversary for an undoubtably excellent E.P. and a vital moment in Beatles history, I am borrowing from The Beatles Bible once more when it comes to song information and details. Whilst there are Beatles fans who write off Magical Mystery Tour or do not consider it essential listening, I would argue that the E.P. and L.P. versions…
SHOULD not be forgotten.
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SIX: Blue Jay Way
“Written by: Harrison
Recorded: 6, 7 September; 6 October 1967
Producer: George Martin
Engineer: Geoff Emerick
Released: 8 December 1967 (UK), 27 November 1967 (US)
Available on:
Magical Mystery Tour
Love
Personnel
George Harrison: vocals, Hammond organ
John Lennon: backing vocals
Paul McCartney: backing vocals, bass
Ringo Starr: drums, tambourine
Peter Willison: cello
‘Blue Jay Way’, George Harrison’s songwriting contribution to the Magical Mystery Tour soundtrack, was written while he was waiting for The Beatles’ publicist Derek Taylor, who was lost in fog in the Los Angeles canyons.
The song was composed in the Hollywood hills on 1 August 1967. Harrison was visiting California with his wife Pattie, plus Neil Aspinall and Alexis Mardas. They were staying at a rented house in Blue Jay Way, high in the Hollywood hills, which belonged to the manager of Peggy Lee.
The Beatles’ former publicist Derek Taylor had become delayed on his way to meet them. The jetlagged Harrison found a Hammond organ in the house and began writing the song as an outlet for his ennui.
Derek Taylor got held up. He rang to say he’d be late. I told him on the phone that the house was in Blue Jay Way. And he said he could find it OK… he could always ask a cop. So I waited and waited. I felt really knackered with the flight, but I didn’t want to go to sleep until he came. There was a fog and it got later and later. To keep myself awake, just as a joke to pass the time while I waited, I wrote a song about waiting for him in Blue Jay Way. There was a little Hammond organ in the corner of this house which I hadn’t noticed until then… so I messed around on it and the song came.
George Harrison
Harrison’s stay in the house was arranged by Brian Epstein, who called The Beatles’ attorney Robert Fitzpatrick to enquire whether a house could be leased. Fitzpatrick persuaded the owner of the house, another entertainment attorney named Ludwig Gerber, to lend Harrison his LA residence.
Ludwig Gerber was a former US Army colonel who had managed Peggy Lee for many years. He was also a film producer and lawyer. In his house there was a Hammond S-6 organ, which Harrison used for writing the song while waiting for Taylor to arrive.
In the Magical Mystery Tour film, Harrison ‘performed’ the song while playing a keyboard chalked onto the ground. One of the movie’s most psychedelic sequences, Harrison’s appearance is subjected to dated camera techniques involving prism refractions to create multiple images” – The Beatles Bible
FIVE: The Fool on the Hill
“Written by: Lennon-McCartney
Recorded: 6, 25, 26 September; 20 October 1967
Producer: George Martin
Engineer: Ken Scott
Released: 8 December 1967 (UK), 27 November 1967 (US)
Available on:
Magical Mystery Tour
Anthology 2
Love (iTunes bonus track)
Personnel
Paul McCartney: vocals, piano, acoustic guitar, bass, recorder
John Lennon: harmonica, Jew’s harp
George Harrison: acoustic guitar, harmonica
Ringo Starr: drums, maracas, finger cymbals
Christopher Taylor, Richard Taylor, Jack Ellory: flutes
The ‘Fool On The Hill’ was Paul McCartney’s major contribution to the Magical Mystery Tour EP and album. In the companion TV film it appeared over a sequence shot on a hilltop near Nice in France.
Now that’s Paul. Another good lyric. Shows he’s capable of writing complete songs.
John Lennon
All We Are Saying, David Sheff
The song was composed on the piano at McCartney’s father’s house in Liverpool, “hitting a D 6th chord”.
‘The Fool On The Hill’ was mine and I think I was writing about someone like Maharishi. His detractors called him a fool. Because of his giggle he wasn’t taken too seriously. It was this idea of a fool on the hill, a guru in a cave, I was attracted to.
Paul McCartney
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
The Beatles’ 1968 authorised biography contains a lengthy passage in which writer Hunter Davies observed Lennon and McCartney as they composed ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’, at McCartney’s house in London. A fascinating insight into their songwriting processes, it showed how they were content to be distracted while waiting for inspiration to arrive.
Paul then went back to his guitar and started to sing and play a very slow, beautiful song about a foolish man sitting on the hill. John listened to it quietly, staring blankly out of the window, almost as if he wasn’t listening. Paul sang it many times, la la-ing words he hadn’t thought of yet. When at last he finished, John said he’d better write the words down or he’d forget them. Paul said it was OK. He wouldn’t forget them. It was the first time Paul had played it for John. There was no discussion.
The Beatles, Hunter Davies
McCartney decided to go to France to film the Magical Mystery Tour sequence, taking with him Mal Evans and cameraman Aubrey Dewar. Despite having no money or passport with him, he managed to talk his way through customs. The sequence was filmed in the mountains near Nice, shortly after sunrise.
I just ad-libbed the whole thing. I went, ‘Right, get over there: let me dance. Let me jump from this rock to this rock. Get a lot of the sun rising. Get a perfect shot and let me stand in front of it.’ I just had a little Philips cassette to mime to and roughly get the feeling of the song. There was no clapper because there was no sound… It was very spontaneous, as was the whole of Magical Mystery Tour. Later, when we came to try to edit it all, it was very difficult because I hadn’t sung it to synch.
We shouldn’t have really had just one cameraman, it was anti-union. That was another reason to go to France. The unions wouldn’t have allowed it in Britain, nor probably in France, but they didn’t know we were doing it.
Paul McCartney
FOUR: Your Mother Should Know
“Written by: Lennon-McCartney
Recorded: 22, 23 August; 16, 29 September 1967
Producer: George Martin
Engineers: John Timperley, Geoff Emerick, Ken Scott
Released: 8 December 1967 (UK), 27 November 1967 (US)
Available on:
Magical Mystery Tour
Anthology 2
Personnel
Paul McCartney: vocals, piano, bass
John Lennon: backing vocals, organ
George Harrison: backing vocals, guitar
Ringo Starr: drums, tambourine
‘Your Mother Should Know’ was written by Paul McCartney at his home in London. It took its title from the screenplay of A Taste Of Honey, and the music harked back to Busby Berkeley showtunes and the golden age of music hall.
I wrote it in Cavendish Avenue on the harmonium I have in the dining room there. My Aunty Jin and Uncle Harry and a couple of relatives were staying and they were in the living room just across the hall, so I just went to the dining room and spent a few hours with the door open with them listening. And I suppose because of the family atmosphere ‘Your Mother Should Know’ came in. It’s a very music-hall kind of thing, probably influenced by the fact that my Aunty Jin was in the house.
Paul McCartney
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
It’s likely that ‘Your Mother Should Know’ was briefly considered for the Our World satellite broadcast of 25 June 1967. The Beatles went instead with ‘All You Need Is Love’, a simpler message and one more readily understood by a worldwide audience. But the idea of a big old-fashioned singalong clearly stayed with McCartney when planning the Magical Mystery Tour film.
The big prop was that great big staircase that we danced down, that was where all the money went: in that particular shot on that big staircase. I said, ‘Sod it, you’ve got to have the Busby Berkeley ending,’ and it is a good sequence. Just the fact of John dancing, which he did readily. You can see by the fun expression on his face that he wasn’t forced into anything.
Paul McCartney – The Beatles Bible
THREE: Flying
“Written by: Harrison–Lennon–McCartney–Starkey
Recorded: 8, 28 September 1967
Producer: George Martin
Engineers: Geoff Emerick, Ken Scott
Released: 8 December 1967 (UK), 27 November 1967 (US)
Available on:
Magical Mystery Tour
Personnel
John Lennon: vocals, organ, Mellotron, sound effects
Paul McCartney: vocals, guitar, bass
George Harrison: vocals, guitar
Ringo Starr: vocals, drums, maracas, sound effects
A mostly instrumental recording with wordless vocals from all four Beatles, ‘Flying’ was recorded as incidental music for the Magical Mystery Tour film.
Originally titled ‘Aerial Tour Instrumental’, it was the first Beatles recording to have a songwriting credit featuring all four members.
‘Flying’ was the only Beatles instrumental released by EMI. The group had previously recorded ‘Cry For A Shadow’ in Hamburg in 1961, and ‘12-Bar Original’ during the Rubber Soul sessions in 1965.
In the Magical Mystery Tour film, ‘Flying’ was used to accompany landscape scenes of Iceland taken from an aeroplane. These sequences were unused outtakes from Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film Dr Strangelove.
Paul McCartney revealed the background to ‘Flying’ in Barry Miles’ biography Many Years From Now:
‘Flying’ was an instrumental that we needed for Magical Mystery Tour so in the studio one night I suggested to the guys that we made something up. I said, ‘We can keep it very very simple, we can make it a twelve-bar blues. We need a little bit of a theme and a little bit of a backing.’ I wrote the melody. The only thing to warrant it as a song is basically the melody, otherwise it’s just a nice twelve-bar backing thing. It’s played on the Mellotron, on a trombone setting. It’s credited to all four, which is how you would credit a non-song.
Paul McCartney
Many Years From Now” – The Beatles Bible
TWO: Magical Mystery Tour
“Written by: Lennon-McCartney
Recorded: 25, 26, 27 April, 3 May, 7 November 1967
Producer: George Martin
Engineer: Geoff Emerick
Released: 8 December 1967 (UK), 27 November 1967 (US)
Available on: Magical Mystery Tour
Personnel
Paul McCartney: vocals, piano, bass
John Lennon: vocals, acoustic rhythm guitar, percussion
George Harrison: vocals, lead guitar, percussion
Ringo Starr: drums, percussion
Mal Evans, Neil Aspinall: percussion
David Mason, Elgar Howarth, Roy Copestake, John Wilbraham: trumpets
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.
Paul McCartney
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
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.
Paul McCartney
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
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.
Paul McCartney
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles - The Beatles Bible
ONE: I Am the Walrus
“Written by: Lennon-McCartney
Recorded: 5, 6, 27, 29 September 1967
Producer: George Martin
Engineers: Geoff Emerick, Ken Scott
Released: 24 November 1967 (UK), 27 November 1967 (US)
Available on:
Magical Mystery Tour
Anthology 2
Love
Personnel
John Lennon: vocals, pianet electric piano
Paul McCartney: bass guitar, tambourine
George Harrison: electric guitar
Ringo Starr: drums
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, J Fraser: backing vocals
Sidney Sax, Jack Rothstein, Ralph Elman, Andrew McGee, Jack Greene, Louis Stevens, John Jezzard, Jack Richards: violins
Lionel Ross, Eldon Fox, Bram Martin, Terry Weil: cellos
Gordon Lewin: clarinet
Neil Sanders, Tony Tunstall, Morris Miller: horns
John Lennon’s final masterpiece of 1967 found him at his surrealistic, sneering best. ‘I Am The Walrus’ was included on the soundtrack of the Magical Mystery Tour TV film, and first released as the b-side of ‘Hello, Goodbye’.
Lennon had wanted ‘I Am The Walrus’ to be The Beatles’ next single after ‘All You Need Is Love’, but Paul McCartney and George Martin felt that ‘Hello, Goodbye’ was the more commercial song. The decision led to resentment from Lennon, who complained after the group’s split that “I got sick and tired of being Paul’s backup band”.
The song was written in August 1967, at the peak of the Summer of Love and shortly after the release of Sgt Pepper. Lennon later claimed to have written the opening lines under the influence of LSD
The first line was written on one acid trip one weekend, the second line on another acid trip the next weekend, and it was filled in after I met Yoko.
John Lennon, 1980
All We Are Saying, David Sheff
‘I Am The Walrus’ was a composite of three song fragments. The first part was inspired by a two-note police siren Lennon heard while at home in Weybridge. This became “Mr city policeman sitting pretty…”
Hunter Davies recounted the beginnings of the second part in his authorised 1968 biography of The Beatles:
He’d written down down another few words that day, just daft words, to put to another bit of rhythm. ‘Sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the man to come.’ I thought he said ‘van to come’, which he hadn’t, but he liked it better and said he’d use it instead.
The third part of ‘I Am The Walrus’ started from the phrase “sitting in an English country garden” which, as Davies noted, Lennon was fond of doing for hours at a time. Lennon repeated the phrase to himself until a melody came.
I don’t know how it will all end up. Perhaps they’ll turn out to be different parts of the same song – sitting in an English garden, waiting for the van to come. I don’t know.
John Lennon
The Beatles, Hunter Davies
The lyrics
‘Walrus’ is just saying a dream – the words don’t mean a lot. People draw so many conclusions and it’s ridiculous… What does it really mean, ‘I am the eggman’? It could have been the pudding basin for all I care. It’s not that serious.
John Lennon
Anthology
The song’s title came from Lewis Carroll’s poem ‘The Walrus And The Carpenter’, from the book Through The Looking Glass. Lennon later realised with dismay that he’d identified with the villain of the piece.
It never dawned on me that Lewis Carroll was commenting on the capitalist system. I never went into that bit about what he really meant, like people are doing with the Beatles’ work. Later, I went back and looked at it and realised that the walrus was the bad guy in the story and the carpenter was the good guy. I thought, Oh, shit, I picked the wrong guy. I should have said, ‘I am the carpenter.’ But that wouldn’t have been the same, would it?
John Lennon, 1980
All We Are Saying, David Sheff
The eggman of the chorus – while possibly a reference to Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty – was more likely The Animals’ lead singer Eric Burdon, following a particularly notable incident recounted to Lennon at a London party.
It may have been one of my more dubious distinctions, but I was the Eggman – or, as some of my pals called me, ‘Eggs’.
The nickname stuck after a wild experience I’d had at the time with a Jamaican girlfriend called Sylvia. I was up early one morning cooking breakfast, naked except for my socks, and she slid up beside me and slipped an amyl nitrate capsule under my nose. As the fumes set my brain alight and I slid to the kitchen floor, she reached to the counter and grabbed an egg, which she cracked into the pit of my belly. The white and yellow of the egg ran down my naked front and Sylvia slipped my egg-bathed cock into her mouth and began to show me one Jamaican trick after another. I shared the story with John at a party at a Mayfair flat one night with a handful of blondes and a little Asian girl.
‘Go on, go get it, Eggman,’ Lennon laughed over the little round glasses perched on the end of his hook-like nose as we tried the all-too-willing girls on for size.
Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood
Eric Burdon with J Marshall Craig” – The Beatles Bible