scapp70's Full Review: Magical Mystery Tour by The Beatles
It is the end of 1967, The Beatles are still reaping in from the huge success of their Sgt. Pepper album that was released just six months earlier in June. The Beatles produce six new songs that sound more psychedelic than anything that they have released in the past.
The Beatles were scheduled to make another movie, this time without the help of Richard Lester, the comedic director who worked with them on A Hard Day's Night and Help!. Also, with the very recent death of their tour manager, Brian Epstein, The Beatles were very much left to their own devices. Bass player, and lead vocalist Paul McCartney is the only one of The Beatles with that "Go go" attitude, so he pretty much directed the film and wrote the majority of the songs for it.
Speaking of McCartney, the album opens up with one of his tracks, Magical Mystery Tour. With lots of reverb and some bus noises, McCartney produced a song that ended up sounding like Sgt Pepper's little brother, the song I mean. This is the only heavy song from Paul out of the three he penned for the film. The song, also like Pepper is the title track and gives you the idea of what the movie is loosely about, as Pepper would have done with the concept he dreamed up for that. The version of this song that appears in the film is different than this version found on the CD. The psychedelic quality is interwoven as early as this first track, which they began recording only four days after they wrapped up with Pepper.
The Fool On The Hill has Paul, not only on lead vocals, but also on the piano, acoustic guitar, recorder and bass guitar, on this ballad. Well, sort of like a ballad anyway, it's really like classical music with a contemporary pop vocal on top of it. Flying is the first song written by all four Beatles. It's an instrumental that serves as incidental music for the film. All four Beatles sing some ?La la la's? toward the end of the song, and I always prefer when all four sing. When Ringo is thrown into the mix, they have a much fuller sound to their voices all together.
George has one song on this disc and he delivers his most psychedelic contribution with Blue Jay Way. It is deliberately slow, with heavy drums and a very prominent organ. The whole song hardly deviates from the one note, which again shows George's love of Eastern Indian music.
Paul gives us a 1940's Standard style song with Your Mother Should Know. There's nothing psychedelic about this song, it's poppy and straight, but when you have the visual from the movie that goes along with the song, it contains the flow that the previous songs have.
I Am The Walrus is the last song here from the soundtrack of the movie Magic Mystery Tour. Walrus is written by John Lennon, it is one of the heaviest rock songs from The Beatles ever, yet it still maintains the psychedelic feel of the time period, and quite experimental. Lennon admits to writing the song during several acid trips. Lennon would tell McCartney about a year later that he couldn't keep up with the pace McCartney set with songwriting, citing that Walrus was his only contribution to the soundtrack, and Paul had three out of the six. Walrus was released as the b-side to Hello Goodbye. This song was always like the younger brother of Your Mother Should Know, despite it's straightforward Pop sound.
The first release from The Beatles in 1967 was a single. It was a double A-side withStrawberry Fields Forever on one side and Penny Lane on the other. Strawberry Fields is kind of a rock ballad that builds into a bit heavier with Ringo's drums very busy and the big orchestra and Indian instruments. The song was recorded twice, and Lennon liked bits from both versions, so he asked producer George Martin to mix it into one song. Problems arose when Martin realized that the two songs were in different keys, so what Martin did was slow one version down and layer it atop of one another. The end result just so happened to turn out sounding quite psychedelic, and it was chalked up to Lennon's credit as genius. Penny Lane is McCartney's own brand of Pop music again.
The first song that was written specifically for their 1969 animated film, Yellow Submarine was John and Paul's joint effort Baby You're A Rich Man. The song evolved from two separate songs, John's One of the Beautiful People was used for the verses, and Paul had written a little snippet of a song which was used for the chorus. Despite the rock genre it falls into, the song ended up being very different from other Beatles songs, maybe that it sounds more accessible. The "rich man" that they are singing about is said to be their late manager Brian Epstein. A joke that he is a rich man, because The Beatles are rich, and because of them - made him rich in effect. There's a crazy rumor that John sang instead of ♫baby you're a rich man too♫ that maybe he sang the alternate version that went ♫baby you're a rich fâg Jew♫ which would be an awful dig at Epstein who was both Jewish and reportedly a homosexual. It's probably not true, although I wouldn't put it past Lennon.
The last song on this album opens with La Marseillaise, a French anthem to introduce All You Need Is Love. This song ended up being the theme song for the Summer of Love. The single was released smack in the middle of the summer, in July of 1967 - perfect timing. The song went straight to the top of the charts at number one, and stayed there for three weeks. The Beatles recorded a backing track for the song and then performed and recorded the song live on June 25, 1967 on one of the first global satellite feeds for the world to see. The program was called Our World, and it would include some countries to contribute cultures and such so that the world can see and learn that the world is small, and peace in our reach or something. Anyway, who better than to represent the UK but The Beatles. The song has a lengthy fade that repeats the chorus a number of times, and the small orchestra would perform something that sounded ad-libbed inputting little pieces of other songs here and there, such as Greensleeves, In The Mood from Glenn Miller, some Bach, and even The Beatles would sing their own She Loves You in this section.
Sometimes listeners or reviewers may complain that the album doesn't have enough continuity and then take points away. Yet when you realize that the first 6 songs are from one soundtrack, and the remainder is taken from 3 different singles released at different times throughout that year, you understand that continuity was never intended. Yet, I would take a point away for Blue Jay Way and maybe Hello Goodbye, while not bad songs - they're not among the best from The Beatles. Yet, with a song like I Am The Walrus and also Strawberry Fields Forever you have to put these points back - and we end up with a five star album.
the songs
1. Magical Mystery Tour
2. The Fool On The Hill
3. Flying
4. Blue Jay Way
5. Your Mother Should Know
6. I Am The Walrus
7. Hello Goodbye
8. Strawberry Fields Forever
9. Penny Lane
10. Baby You're A Rich Man
11. All You Need Is Love
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦More Beatles-related Epinions from Scapp70♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
The first six songs on Magical Mystery Tourwere the soundtrack to the Beatles TV movie of the same name. The film was an experimental mess, but the ex...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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