Magical Mystery Tour

The Beatles first recorded the film's title song, with sessions taking place at EMI Studios in London between 25 April and 3 May. An instrumental jam was recorded on 9 May for possible inclusion in the film, although it was never completed.[18] According to Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn, the Magical Mystery Tour sessions "began in earnest" on 5 September; filming started on 11 September, and the two activities became increasingly "intertwined" during October.[19] Most of the 16 September session was dedicated to taping a basic track for McCartney's "Your Mother Should Know", only for McCartney to then decide to return to the version he had previously discarded, from 22–23 August.[20] The latter sessions marked the Beatles' first in close to two months[21][22] and took place at a facility new to the band – Chappell Recording Studios in central London – since they were unable to book EMI at short notice.[19]

Many Beatles biographers characterise the group's post-Sgt. Pepper recording sessions of 1967 as aimless and undisciplined.[23] The Beatles' use of psychedelic drugs such as LSD was at its height during that summer[24] and, in author Ian MacDonald's view, this resulted in a lack of judgment in their recordings as the band embraced randomness and sonic experimentation.[23][nb 2] George Martin, the group's producer, chose to distance himself from their work at this time, saying that much of the Magical Mystery Tour recording was "disorganised chaos". Ken Scott, who became their senior recording engineer during the sessions, recalled, "the Beatles had taken over things so much that I was more their right-hand man than George Martin's".[26][nb 3]

Early, pre-overdub mixes of some of the film songs were prepared on 16 September,[28] before the Beatles performed the music sequences during a six-day shoot at RAF West Malling, a Royal Air Force base in Kent.[29] The recording sessions continued alongside editing of the film footage, which took place in an editing suite in Soho and was mostly overseen by McCartney.[30] The process led to a struggle between him and Lennon over the film's content.[31][nb 4] The Beatles also recorded "Hello, Goodbye" for release as a single accompanying the soundtrack record.[35] That his film song "I Am the Walrus" was relegated to the B-side of the single, in favour of McCartney's pop-oriented "Hello, Goodbye", was another source of rancour for Lennon.[36][37] He later recalled, "I began to submerge."[38]

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in September 1967

During this time, the band's commitment to the Maharishi's teachings remained strong.[39] Barrow later wrote that Lennon, Harrison and Ringo Starr were "itching" to travel to India and study with their teacher, but they agreed to postpone the trip and complete the film's soundtrack and editing.[40] Harrison and Lennon promoted Transcendental Meditation with two appearances on David Frost's TV show The Frost Programme, and Harrison and Starr visited the Maharishi in Copenhagen. All four band members attended the 17 October memorial service for Epstein, held at the New London Synagogue on Abbey Road, close to EMI Studios, and the 18 October world premiere of How I Won the War, a film in which Lennon had a starring role.[41] Recording for Magical Mystery Tour was completed on 7 November.[42] That day, the title song was given a new barker-style introduction by McCartney (replacing Lennon's effort, which was nevertheless retained in the version used in the film)[43] and an overdub of traffic sounds.[42]

Three pieces of incidental music were recorded but omitted from the soundtrack record.[44] In the case of "Shirley's Wild Accordion", the scene was cut from the film.[45] Featuring an accordion score by arranger Mike Leander, it was performed by Shirley Evans with percussion contributions from Starr and McCartney,[35] and recorded at De Lane Lea Studios in October.[46] "Jessie's Dream" was taped privately by the Beatles and copyrighted to McCartney–Starkey–Harrison–Lennon,[35] while the third item was a brief Mellotron piece used to orchestrate the line "The magic is beginning to work" in the film.[44][nb 5]

In their new songs, the Beatles continued the studio experimentation that had typified Sgt. Pepper[50] and the psychedelic sound they had introduced in 1966 with Revolver.[51] Author Mark Hertsgaard highlights "I Am the Walrus" as the fulfilment of the band's "guiding principle" during the sessions – namely to experiment and be "different".[49] To satisfy Lennon's request that his voice should sound like "it came from the moon", the engineers gave him a low-quality microphone to sing into and saturated the signal from the preamp microphone.[52] In addition to the song's string and horn arrangement, Martin wrote a score for the sixteen backing vocalists (the Mike Sammes Singers), in which their laughter, exaggerated vocalising and other noises evoked the LSD-inspired mood that Lennon sought for the piece.[53] The orchestral arrangement and the vocal score were recorded on a separate four-track tape, which Martin and Scott then manually synchronised with the tape containing the band's performance.[52] The track was completed with Lennon overdubbing live radio signals found at random, finally settling on a BBC Third Programme broadcast of Shakespeare's The Tragedy of King Lear.[35]

According to musicologist Thomas MacFarlane, Magical Mystery Tour shows the Beatles once more "focusing on colour and texture as important compositional elements" and exploring the "aesthetic possibilities" of studio technology.[54] "Blue Jay Way" features extensive use of three studio techniques employed by the Beatles over 1966–67:[55] flanging, an audio delay effect;[56] sound-signal rotation via a Leslie speaker;[57] and (in the stereo mix only) reversed tapes.[58] In the case of the latter technique, a recording of the completed track was played backwards and faded in at key points during the performance,[59] creating an effect whereby the backing vocals appear to answer each line of Harrison's lead vocal in the verses.[58] Due to the limits of multitracking, the process of feeding in reversed sounds was carried out live during the final mixing session.[59][nb 6] A tape loop of decelerated guitar sounds was used on "The Fool on the Hill"[61] to create a swooshing bird-like effect towards the end of that song.[62] Lennon and Starr prepared seven minutes' worth of tape loops as a coda to "Flying", but this was discarded,[63][64] leaving the track to end with a 30-second burst of Mellotron sounds.[57]

Although he recognises Sgt. Pepper as the highpoint of the Beatles' application of sound "colorisation", musicologist Walter Everett says that the band introduced some effective "new touches" during this period. He highlights the slow guitar tremolo on "Flying", the combination of female and male vocal chorus, cello glissandi and found sounds on "I Am the Walrus", and the interplay between the lead vocal and violas on "Hello, Goodbye".[65] In MacFarlane's description, the songs reflect the Beatles' growing interest in stereo mixes, as "remarkable sonic qualities" are revealed in the placement of sounds across the stereo image, making for a more active listening experience.[66]

Magical Mystery Tour included six tracks, a number that posed a challenge for the Beatles and their UK record company, EMI, as there were too few for an LP album but too many for an EP.[67] One idea considered was to issue an EP that played at 33⅓ rpm, but this would have caused a loss of audio fidelity that was deemed unacceptable. The solution chosen was to issue the music in the innovative format of a double EP.[68] It was the first example of a double EP in Britain.[68][69]

According to music journalist Rob Chapman, each of the new tracks "represents a distinct facet of the group's psychedelic vision". He gives these as, in order of the EP's sequencing: celebration, nostalgia, absurdity, innocence, bliss and dislocation.[70] Musicologist Russell Reising says that the songs variously further the Beatles' exploration of the thematic links between a psychedelic trip and travelling, and address the relationship between travel and time.[71] Ethnomusicologist David Reck comments that despite the Beatles' association with Eastern culture at the time, through their championing of the Maharishi, just two of the EP's songs directly reflect this interest.[72]

"Magical Mystery Tour" was written as the main theme song shortly after McCartney conceived the idea for the film.[73] In Hunter Davies' contemporary account of the 25 April session, McCartney arrived with the chord structure but only the opening refrain ("Roll up / Roll up for the mystery tour"), necessitating a brainstorming discussion the following day to complete the lyrics.[74] Like "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", the song serves to welcome the audience to the event and uses a trumpet fanfare.[75][76]

"Your Mother Should Know" is a song in the music hall style[58] similar to McCartney's "When I'm Sixty-Four" from Sgt. Pepper.[77] Its lyrical premise centres on the history of hit songs across generations.[78] He originally offered it for the Our World broadcast, but the Beatles favoured Lennon's "All You Need Is Love" for its social significance.[79] McCartney later said he wrote the song as a production number for Magical Mystery Tour,[80] where it provides the film's closing, Busby Berkeley–style dance sequence.[81] In author Doyle Greene's view, the lyrics advocate generational understanding in the manner of "She's Leaving Home" but, unlike in the latter song, to the point of "maternal authority and youth compliance", and contrast sharply with the confrontational message of the EP's next track.[82][nb 7]

"I Am the Walrus" was Lennon's main contribution to the film and was primarily inspired by both his experiences with LSD and Lewis Carroll's poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter"[83] from Through the Looking Glass.[84] The impetus came from a fan letter Lennon received from a student at his former high school, Quarry Bank, in which he learned that an English literature teacher there was interpreting the Beatles' lyrics in a scholarly fashion. Amused by this, Lennon set out to write a lyric that would confound analysis from scholars and music journalists.[85] In addition to drawing on Carroll's imagery and Shakespeare's King Lear, he reworked a nursery rhyme from his school days,[86] and referenced Edgar Allan Poe[87] and (in the vocalised "googoogajoob"s) James Joyce.[62] Author Jonathan Gould describes "I Am the Walrus" as "the most overtly 'literary' song the Beatles would ever record",[88] while MacDonald deems it "[Lennon's] ultimate anti-institutional rant – a damn-you-England tirade that blasts education, art, culture, law, order, class, religion, and even sense itself".[87]

McCartney wrote the melody for "The Fool on the Hill" during the Sgt. Pepper sessions but the lyrics remained incomplete until September.[89] The song is about a solitary figure who is not understood by others, but is actually wise.[90] In Everett's interpretation, the fool's innocence leaves him adrift from and unwilling to engage with a judgmental society.[91] McCartney said the idea was inspired by the Dutch design collective the Fool, who derived their name from the tarot card of the same name, and possibly by the Maharishi.[92][nb 8] A piano ballad, its musical arrangement includes flutes and bass harmonicas,[94] and a recorder solo played by McCartney.[62] The song's sequence in Magical Mystery Tour involved a dedicated film shoot, featuring McCartney on a hillside overlooking Nice, in the South of France,[95] which added considerably to the film's production costs.[96]

"Flying" is an instrumental and the first Beatles track to be credited to all four members of the band. It was titled "Aerial Tour Instrumental" until late in the sessions[97] and appears in the film over footage of clouds[98] and outtakes from Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove.[99][nb 9] The track's musical structure is similar to a 12-bar blues[44] and set to what music historian Richie Unterberger terms a "rock–soul rhythm".[101] It consists of three rounds of the 12-bar pattern, led first by guitars, then Mellotron and organ, and finally a chanted vocal chorus.[44]

"Blue Jay Way" was named after a street in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles where Harrison stayed in August 1967. The lyrics document his wait for music publicist Derek Taylor to find his way to Blue Jay Way through the fog-ridden hills, while Harrison struggled to stay awake after the flight from London to Los Angeles.[78] MacDonald describes the song as Harrison's "farewell to psychedelia", since his subsequent visit to Haight-Ashbury led to him seeking an alternative to hallucinogenic drugs and opened the way to the Beatles' embrace of Transcendental Meditation.[105] The composition marked a rare example of the Lydian mode being used in pop music[106] and, in Reck's view, incorporates scalar elements from the Carnatic raga Ranjani.[107][nb 10]

Because EPs were not popular in the US at the time, Capitol Records released the soundtrack as an LP by adding tracks from that year's non-album singles.[67][108] The first side contained the film soundtrack songs, although in a different order from the EP.[109] Side two contained both sides of the band's two singles released up to this point in 1967, along with "Hello, Goodbye", which was issued as a single backed by "I Am the Walrus". Three of the previously released tracks – "Penny Lane", "Baby, You're a Rich Man" and "All You Need Is Love" – were presented in duophonic (or "processed") stereo sound on Capitol's stereo version of the LP.[67]

The Beatles were displeased about this reconfiguration, since they believed that tracks released on a single should not then appear on a new album.[67][110] Lennon referred to the LP at a May 1968 press conference to promote Apple Corps in the US,[111] saying: "It's not an album, you see. It turned into an album over here, but it was just [meant to be] the music from the film."[112]

Reviewing the EP a month before the film's screening, Nick Logan of the NME enthused that the Beatles were "at it again, stretching pop music to its limits". He continued: "The four musician-magicians take us by the hand and lead us happily tripping through the clouds, past Lucy in the sky with diamonds and the fool on the hill, into the sun-speckled glades along Blue Jay Way and into the world of Alice in Wonderland ... This is The Beatles out there in front and the rest of us in their wake."[158][159] Bob Dawbarn of Melody Maker described the EP as "six tracks which no other pop group in the world could begin to approach for originality combined with the popular touch".[116] In Record Mirror, Norman Jopling wrote that, whereas on Sgt. Pepper "the effects were chiefly sound and only the album cover was visual", on Magical Mystery Tour "the visual side ... has dominated the music", such that "Everything from fantasy, children's comics, acid (psychedelic) humour is included on the record and in the booklet."[160]

Among reviews of the American LP, Mike Jahn of Saturday Review hailed Magical Mystery Tour as the Beatles' best work yet, superior to Sgt. Pepper in emotion and depth, and "distinguished by its description of the Beatles' acquired Hindu philosophy and its subsequent application to everyday life".[161] Hit Parader said that "the beautiful Beatles do it again, widening the gap between them and 80 scillion other groups." Remarking on how the Beatles and their producer "present a supreme example of team work", the reviewer compared the album with Their Satanic Majesties Request and opined that "I Am the Walrus" and "Blue Jay Way" alone "accomplish what the Stones attempted".[162] Rolling Stone was launched in October 1967 with a cover photo of Lennon from How I Won the War;[163] in its fourth issue, the magazine's review of Magical Mystery Tour consisted of a single-sentence quote from him: "There are only about 100 people in the world who understand our music."[164][nb 15]

Having been one of the few critics to review Sgt. Pepper unfavourably,[166] Richard Goldstein of The New York Times rued that the new songs furthered the gap between true rock values and studio effects, and that the band's "fascination with motif" was equally reflected in the elaborate packaging. Goldstein concluded: "Does it sound like heresy to say that the Beatles write material which is literate, courageous, genuine, but spotty? It shouldn't. They are inspired posers, but we must keep our heads on their music, not their incarnations."[167] Rex Reed of HiFi/Stereo Review wrote a scathing critique in which he derided the group's "farcical, stagnant, helpless bellowing" and "confused musical ideas". Reed said that exchanging drugs for meditation as their subject matter had left the Beatles "totally divorced from reality", and he especially ridiculed "I Am the Walrus" on an LP he deemed a "platter of phony, pretentious, overcooked tripe".[168] In his May 1968 column in Esquire, Robert Christgau considered three of the new songs to be "disappointing", among which "The Fool on the Hill" "may be the worst song the Beatles have ever recorded". Christgau still found it a valid album, "for all the singles, which are good music, after all; for the tender camp of 'Your Mother Should Know'; and especially for Harrison's hypnotic 'Blue Jay Way,' an adaptation of Oriental modes in which everything works, lyrics included".[169]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[170]
Blender	[171]
Consequence of Sound	A+[172]
The Daily Telegraph	[173]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music	[174]
MusicHound Rock	3/5[175]
Paste	94/100[176]
Pitchfork	10/10[177]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[178]
Sputnikmusic	4.5/5[179]

In his review for Blender, Paul Du Noyer writes: "They lost the plot with their dopey TV film, but 1967 was still their zenith as songwriters. For once, the U.S. release went better than the British original ... The result was simply the best set of Beatles tunes so far on a single disc."[171] AllMusic critic Richie Unterberger opines that the psychedelia is "even spacier in parts" than on Sgt. Pepper, but "there's no vague overall conceptual/thematic unity to the material, which has made Magical Mystery Tour suffer slightly in comparison. Still, the music is mostly great."[170] Scott Plagenhoef of Pitchfork describes the EP-exclusive tracks as "low key marvels".[177] He says that while the album lacks a progressive quality from the band's previous work, it "is quietly one of the most rewarding listens in the Beatles' career", and the mixed nature of the collection "matters little when the music itself is so incredible".[121]

Writing in The Rolling Stone Album Guide, Rob Sheffield says that the album is "a lot goopier than Sgt. Pepper, though lifted by the cheerful 'All You Need Is Love' and the ghostly 'Strawberry Fields Forever.' Her Majesty the Queen had the best comment: 'The Beatles are turning awfully funny, aren't they?'"[180] Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph writes that the combination of soundtrack and singles means the album lacks cohesion, but he still finds it an "intriguing psychedelic companion piece" to Sgt. Pepper and highlights "I Am the Walrus" as a "mad, surrealist epic ... in which Lennon takes the concept of lyrical and musical nonsense and just explodes it all over the speakers".[173] Reviewing for Mojo in 2002, Charles Shaar Murray said Magical Mystery Tour was the Beatles album he turned to most often following Harrison's death the previous year and that it evokes an era "when society still seemed to be opening up rather than closing down".[181] Given its experimental qualities, he deemed it "the other half of the double-album that Sgt. Pepper should have been".[182] Writing for Paste, Mark Kemp views Magical Mystery Tour as a work of "symphonic sprawl" that marks the culmination of a five-year period in which the Beatles led pop music's expansion into world music, psychedelia, avant-pop and electronica, while bringing the genre a bohemian audience for the first time. He says that while the album resembles a Sgt. Pepper "Part 2", it "breathes easier and includes stronger songs" and benefits from the lack of a "forced concept".[176]

Among Beatles biographers, Jonathan Gould says the album's resequencing of the EP songs heightens the project's "Pepper redux" quality, with its opening title track recalling "Sgt. Pepper" and "I Am the Walrus" providing the "weighty end" in the manner of "A Day in the Life". He similarly views "The Fool on the Hill" as the "Fixing a Hole"–style "cool, contemplative ballad", just as Harrison provides "another droning epic" and McCartney offers "another archaic number" in "Your Mother Should Know", which he finds a "halfhearted attempt at satiric nostalgia".[183] Chris Ingham, writing in The Rough Guide to the Beatles, says that the soundtrack's reputation suffers from its association with the film's failure, yet while three of the tracks are rightly overlooked, "The Fool on the Hill", "Blue Jay Way" and "I Am the Walrus" remain "essential Beatlemusic".[184]

Magical Mystery Tour was ranked at number 138 in Paul Gambaccini's 1978 book Critic's Choice: Top 200 Albums,[185] based on submissions from a panel of 47 critics and broadcasters.[186][187] In 2000, it was voted 334th in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums.[188] In his book The Ambient Century, Mark Prendergast describes it as "the most psychedelic album The Beatles ever released" and, along with Revolver, an "essential purchase".[189] He ranks the album at number 27 in his list of "Twentieth-century Ambience – the Essential 100 Recordings".[190] In 2007, the album was included in Robert Christgau and David Fricke's "40 Essential Albums of 1967" for Rolling Stone. Christgau wrote in an accompanying essay: "Because it begins with the lame theme to their worst movie and the sappy 'Fool on the Hill,' few realize that this serves up three worthy obscurities forthwith – bet Beck knows the sour-and-sweet instrumental 'Flying' by heart. Then it A/Bs three fabulous singles."[191]