# Deep Tracks - The Beatles - "Magical Mystery Tour"



## Guest (Sep 9, 2018)

View attachment 107643


Please *choose up to seven selections *for this particular poll.

On all polls created if you click on the number of votes following the song title the username of all voters and their chosen selections will appear.

The tunes themselves will be found below the poll itself as links rather than as embedded videos due to bandwidth issues for those who wish to reacquaint themselves with a tune that may have receded a bit too far into the past to be remembered with the clarity that came when they were first released...

Next up is - The Beatles - "Magical Mystery Tour"

"Magical Mystery Tour" is an album by the Beatles that was released as a double EP in the United Kingdom and an LP in the United States. Produced by George Martin, it includes the soundtrack to the 1967 film of the same name.

The EP was issued in the UK on 8 December 1967 on the Parlophone label, while the Capitol Records LP release in the US occurred on 27 November and featured eleven tracks with the addition of songs from the band's 1967 singles. The first release as an eleven-track LP in the UK did not occur until 1976.

Despite widespread media criticism of the Magical Mystery Tour film, the soundtrack was a critical and commercial success and a number one Grammy-nominated album in the US. When EMI issued the Beatles' catalogue on compact disc in 1987, the track listing of the 1967 US LP was adopted rather than the six-song UK release.

After the Beatles completed "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" in April 1967, Paul McCartney wanted to create a film that captured a psychedelic theme similar to that represented by author and LSD proponent Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters on the US West Coast.

Titled "Magical Mystery Tour", the film was to be unscripted: various "ordinary" people were to travel on a coach and have unspecified "magical" adventures. The Beatles recorded the song "Magical Mystery Tour", but the film idea then lay dormant as the band continued recording songs for the United Artists animated film "Yellow Submarine" and, in the case of "All You Need Is Love", for their appearance on the Our World satellite broadcast on 25 June.

Designed as a television special, "Magical Mystery Tour" included six new songs: the title track, "I Am the Walrus", "The Fool on the Hill", "Blue Jay Way", "Flying" and "Your Mother Should Know".

The number of songs 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. One idea considered was to issue an EP which 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.

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. The Beatles were displeased about this, since they believed that tracks released on a single should not then appear on a new album.

The first side of the Capitol LP contained the film soundtrack songs (like earlier British Beatles soundtrack albums), while the second side contained both sides of the band's two singles released up to this point in 1967, along with "Hello, Goodbye", which would be issued as their new single in November.

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.

In a 1968 interview, John Lennon told Rolling Stone magazine: "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."

As part of the unusual format, the Beatles decided to package the two EPs in a gatefold sleeve with a 24-page booklet. The latter contained song lyrics, colour photos from film production, and colour story illustrations in the comic strip style by Beatles Book cartoonist Bob Gibson.

When preparing the US release, Capitol enlarged the photos and illustrations to LP size to serve as a booklet inside a gatefold album sleeve.

"Magical Mystery Tour" was issued in the UK on 8 December 1967, just over two weeks before the film was broadcast by BBC-TV. It retailed at the sub-£1 price of 19s 6d (equivalent to £16 today).

With the broadcast rights for North America assigned to NBC, the Capitol album was scheduled for a mid-December release. The company instead issued the album on 27 November.

In Britain only, the film was then screened on Boxing Day to an audience estimated at 15 million. It was savaged by reviewers, giving the Beatles their first critical failure.

"Magical Mystery Tour" was number 1 on Billboard's Top LPs listings for eight weeks at the start of 1968 and remained in the top 200 until 8 February 1969.

It was nominated for a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1969.

In Britain, the EP peaked at number 2 on the national singles chart, behind "Hello, Goodbye", and became the Beatles' ninth release to top the national EP chart compiled by Record Retailer.

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."

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"

The album review in Rolling Stone consisted of a single-sentence quote from John Lennon: "_There are only about 100 people in the world who understand our music._"


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## Guest (Sep 9, 2018)

"*Magical Mystery Tour*" -






"*The Fool On The Hill*" -






"*Flying*" -






"*Blue Jay Way*" -






"*Your Mother Should Know*" -






"*I Am The Walrus*" -






"*Hello, Goodbye*" -






"*Strawberry Fields Forever*" -






"*Penny Lane*" -






"*Baby, You're A Rich Man*" -






"*All You Need Is Love*" -


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

My favorite Beatles album. Spooky Tooth, though, did a great cover of _I Am The Walrus_: "We are the eggmen" sounds even more authoritative than "I am the eggman."--we're talking about a movement here, and perhaps one to be reckoned with.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Some of their best songs imo, in particular the Walrus, Penny Lane and Strawberry fields.


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## Guest (Sep 9, 2018)

Strange Magic said:


> My favorite Beatles album. Spooky Tooth, though, did a great cover of _I Am The Walrus_: "We are the eggmen" sounds even more authoritative than "I am the eggman."--we're talking about a movement here, and perhaps one to be reckoned with.


Link only - 



 - (Live version)

The studio version appeared on 1970's "The Last Puff" - credited to "Spooky Tooth featuring Mike Harrison".


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

The Americans got it right - adding singles and b-sides to the five-track EP made it into a worthwhile album. By this time McCartney was the one coming up with conceptual ideas in order to try and keep the Beatles fresh, but this _de facto_ style of leadership would be at the heart of a lot of the later friction.

The actual film may have seemed like a throwaway semi-_cinéma vérité_ vanity project but, as with the ill-fated _Let It Be_ little over a year later, at least it showed that they were willing to try something different. Nevertheless, the backlash which greeted _The Magical Mystery Tour_ was probably their first real slagging off by the British media, and it must have stung despite the band's apparent indifference.

Next stop: _Pepperland_


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## Fredx2098 (Jun 24, 2018)

I love this album. Pretty much all but the three most famous tracks coincidentally. I cannot believe I was the first person to vote for Blue Jay Way. Flying, Blue Jay Way, and I Am the Walrus are my top favorite tracks on the album. Another of my favorite songs is "Hey Bulldog". I like that and "I Am the Walrus" for their more in-your-face psychedelic style.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Fredx2098 said:


> I love this album. Pretty much all but the three most famous tracks coincidentally. I cannot believe I was the first person to vote for Blue Jay Way. Flying, Blue Jay Way, and I Am the Walrus are my top favorite tracks on the album. Another of my favorite songs is "Hey Bulldog". I like that and "I Am the Walrus" for their more in-your-face psychedelic style.


I would have voted for every song (but I wasn't allowed)!


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Also my favourite Beatles album, with some of their best songs all in one album. Who cares of about a "concept" album? Blue Jay Way is an overlooked great song with interesting time changes.


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