It’s a song that evokes the kind of dark psychedelia of Syd Barrett more than the whimsy of Summer of Love-era Beatles, and it provides one of the more genuinely interesting outside-the-box musical moments on …Tour.īased on a line from A Taste of Honey, “Your Mother Should Know” is a lot more interesting-one of McCartney’s odes to music hall. Pepper (where his lone writing credit is the Indian-driven “Within You, Without You”) his only writing on Tour is this psychedelic, mantra-like ode to…waiting. Harrison’s only songwriting contribution to Magical Mystery Tour is the droning “Blue Jay Way.” Harrison’s disengagement from the Beatles was most evident throughout 1967 he was a guitarist growing more bored with guitar-driven music, and like Sgt. In the film, it was the soundtrack to aerial shots of Greenland that were filmed after the main production was completed. It has a slinky groove courtesy of McCartney and Ringo’s chugging bottom, and an odd, wordless chorus of “La-la-las,” the only vocals on the track. & the MGs if they were locked in a room with copious amounts of LSD. The only Beatles (mostly) instrumental, “Flying,” sounds like Booker T. Even when applied in a song that sounds as maudlin as this. Also written by McCartney, “Fool” is another song that is hamstrung by kitschy production and tossed-off lyrics, but McCartney’s melodic skills are impossible to ignore. “The Fool on the Hill” is driven by flutes and a recorder, and would become one of the more popular songs from Magical Mystery Tour. Both songs attempt to announce the project as a whole, but “…Tour” feels like a production exercise surrounding a flimsier song. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” but it’s not as musically rich. The carnival-barker title track is an obvious “sequel” to “Sgt. We’ll know better next time.”ĭespite the failure of Magical Mystery Tour as a film, the EP/album proved to be a creative and commercial success the wide-ranging songs were an outlet for even weirder musical experiments than Pepper, and the inclusion of previously-released hit singles like “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane” on the American version made it a bit more listenable than its more lauded predecessor. It was a challenge and it didn’t come off. “We don’t say it was a good film,” said McCartney, shortly after the premiere. “It looked awful and it was a disaster,” bemoaned longtime Beatles’ producer George Martin. “BEATLES PRODUCE FIRST FLOP WITH YULE FILM” read Daily Variety’s headline. The film was released to television on December 26, 1967, and it would become one of the most reviled projects the Beatles were ever associated with. (Incidentally, it was Paul who’d suggested the promoters book Jimi). McCartney had wanted Jimi Hendrix to appear in the film, but he was booked to play the Monterey Pop Festival in the U.S. Mostly improvising, the film includes segments where John Lennon shovels spaghetti, McCartney skipping around France alone, George Harrison as a wizard, and appearances by the bands Traffic and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. The nonsensical story focused on a group of strange individuals taking a “mystery tour” in England, with Richard Starkey (aka Ringo Starr) and his widowed auntie as the focal point. “It was Lennon’s fascination with LSD that led the Beatles into druggy territory, but it was McCartney who was the chief architect of their most famous psychedelic albums.” “They’d get loads of crates of beer and an accordion player and all get pissed, basically-pissed in the English sense, meaning drunk. “Which people used to go on from Liverpool to see the Blackpool Lights,” a popular electric light display presented in the autumn months. “It was basically a charabanc trip,” George Harrison said during the Beatles Anthology in 1995. “Paul had a great piece of paper-just a blank piece of paper with a circle on it,” Ringo would later recall. His growing ambivalence and the death of Epstein meant that Paul McCartney was now more of a driving force in the Beatles, and that summer, McCartney had an idea for what the band should do to follow up Sgt. Lennon’s recreational drug use, spiraling marriage and newfound obsession with Japanese artist Yoko Ono made the Beatles less of a focus. But that August, they’d lost their longtime manager Brian Epstein, a severe blow to the group’s sense of unity-despite the fact that Epstein had become a somewhat more marginalized figure after the group decided to stop touring in the fall of 1966.Īnd John Lennon, who had been a catalyst for much of the band’s artistic growth since its inception, was suddenly less engaged. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and their hit single “All You Need Is Love” had become an anthem for that summer of flower power. They were riding a wave of commercial and critical acclaim following the release of Sgt. In 1967, the Beatles were experiencing staggering highs and lows.
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