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. 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. In the wake of the death of Brian Epstein on 27 August 1967, The Beatles found themselves suddenly without direction. “ 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. 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: Regardless, I wanted to look ahead to the fifty-fifth anniversary of Magical Mystery Tour as an E.P. is trimmer and does not include songs like Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane (both of which are on the U.S. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the E.P. Pepper’s Lonely Hearst Club Band, Magical Mystery Tour was going to suffer in comparison. Later in the same year as The Beatles released the seminal Sgt. Six very different and incredible tracks, I think that it should be re-released on vinyl and remastered. Maybe not as recognised as their studio albums, I do really love the E.P. Many do not consider Magical Mystery Tour to be cannon when it comes to The Beatles’ music. In the U.K., on 8th December, 1967, it was released as a five-track E.P. It consisted of songs from the film soundtrack of Magical Mystery Tour, plus some singles from the band. Asked why he thought people didn’t like it, McCartney said he wasn’t sure-he liked it fine.IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles set off by coach to the Westcountry to film the Magical Mystery Tour movie/ PHOTO CREDIT: Potter/ Express/Getty ImagesĪbout The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour. “All You Need Is Love,” debuted to an estimated 400 million people in the world’s first live international satellite TV production (Our World), did receive wide acclaim, and while cynicism and embarrassment about 1967’s Summer of Love would set in as soon as a few years later, it probably deserves more.Īs for the movie that gave the album its name, press coverage of it was so uniformly hostile (not to mention viewer feedback to the BBC switchboard so sustained) that McCartney went on the BBC the day after it first aired to defuse the tension. “Baby, You’re a Rich Man” probably doesn’t get the credit it deserves. And if “I Am the Walrus” was Lennon’s dark foray into contradiction and surreality, McCartney’s “Hello, Goodbye” was its bright counterpart. The yin-yang of McCartney’s “Penny Lane” and Lennon’s “Strawberry Fields Forever” (originally released on the same 7-inch record) arguably says more about what ground the band covered in seven minutes than any other two songs in their catalogue-the former baroque, charming, and upbeat the latter dense and melancholy-variations on a theme of seemingly simple pasts refracted, dreamlike, through the present. Designed primarily as a consumer service, the second half of Magical Mystery Tour collected what they’d offered in 1967. While the band had helped rechristen the album format as an artistic statement unto itself, they were still releasing singles-as in tracks that weren’t associated with any album. There was a rare instrumental (“Flying”), a foggy Harrison drone (“Blue Jay Way”), and an invocation of the past by McCartney that blurred lines between sweet and eerie (“Your Mother Should Know”). What had started out as a string of acid playground rhymes turned into Lennon’s angriest song this side of 1970 (“I Am the Walrus”), while McCartney’s simple sentimentality had taken on a quality that felt stoic, almost abstract (“The Fool on the Hill”). Still, this was The Beatles in 1967-momentum was strong. The album was released as a companion to a meandering, band-directed movie, and its first half is probably one of the lowest-stakes sides in the band’s catalogue-a relief, in a way, from how high-stakes their music had become. Pepper’s and 1968’s White Album, Magical Mystery Tour nevertheless played a part in The Beatles' story, and put a cap on a year in which the band made yet more music nobody was totally prepared for them to make. Though wedged between the comparatively giant Sgt.
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