The Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour”.

It was 8.35pm on Tuesday 26 December 1967 when in Great Britain the state broadcaster, BBC1, broadcast the film which had just finished shooting and starring the Beatles, essentially “directed” by themselves. Critics’ opinion was almost unanimously negative; it was as if the press had finally found a way to target Liverpool’s previously always “untouchable” four.
Let’s be clear, the criticisms were not unfounded, although to a large extent the incomprehension aroused by the work had been amplified by the fact that it had been shot in color and was broadcast in black and white, and by the surreal humor with which it was permeated, certainly not suitable to the atmosphere of the post-Christmas evening (the film was still seen by 20 million spectators, and the BBC had paid 10 million for the rights.

000 pounds).
What was instead positively reviewed was the soundtrack, released a few days before Christmas, on 8 December, in the form of a double EP. It contained six songs: we remember them below, taking the information from “The (most) white book of the Beatles” by Franco Zanetti, published by Giunti.

Magical Mystery Tour (Lennon-McCartney)

The song “Magical Mystery Tour” began work on April 25th. Four days after closing the album “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, the Beatles were in fact back at Abbey Road, where McCartney, who at that moment only had a title and three chords, tried to enthuse his colleagues and convince them to contribute to the construction of the song. The song remained dormant until November 7, when the Magical Mystery Tour project was revived and completed. John’s speech was eliminated from the album version (“When a man buys a ticket for a Magical Mystery Tour he knows what to expect. We guarantee him the trip of a lifetime, and that’s just what he gets. The incredible Magical Mystery Tour!”), however preserved in the version of the song heard in the introductory sequence of the film.

Your Mother Should Know (Lennon-McCartney)

The song was written by McCartney at his home in London between April and May 1967.

“I wrote it on Cavendish Avenue, on the harmonium I kept in the dining room. I had Aunt Gin and Uncle Harry and a couple of other relatives as guests, who were in the living room, on the other side of the hall; I went into the dining room and worked for a few hours leaving the door open so they could hear me. I guess it’s because of the family atmosphere that I came up with a song like that, very much in the music hall genre – Auntie Gin’s influence.” “Your mother should know” is included in the film “Magical Mystery Tour” in the sequence in which the Beatles, in white tailcoats, dance down a staircase (the so-called “Busby Berkeley ending”).

I Am The Walrus (Lennon-McCartney)

The song is the result of the juxtaposition of different song fragments born from different inspirations.

Lennon: “I had the line ‘I am he as you are he as we are all together’, just these two lines typed up, and then two weeks later I wrote two more, and then I wrote the rest down, and then at that point I had a whole verse and maybe another half verse.” In the “eggman” of the chorus many have seen a reference to Humpty-Dumpty, the protagonist of a children’s nursery rhyme; but there are those who claim specific merit regarding the inspiration for the “eggman”. Eric Burdon: “The Eggman was me – some of my friends call me ‘Eggs’.” Banned by the BBC due to the phrases “pornographic priestess” and “let your knickers down”, the song was included in a famous scene from Magical Mystery Tour. Ian MacDonald: “Constituting the final tidal wave of Lennon’s inspiration for the Beatles, “I am the walrus” is – with the exception, perhaps, of Dylan’s anti-nuclear surrealist nightmare “A hard rain’s a-gonna fall” – the most idiosyncratic song of protest never written. Although the author continued to write extraordinary songs for the group, he was no longer able to rise to such wonderfully high levels.”

The Fool On The Hill (Lennon-McCartney)

“The fool on the hill” was sketched by Paul on the piano in his father’s house probably in early March 1967, and McCartney himself says it was inspired by the idea of ​​a character like the Maharishi Yogi, the guru of transcendental meditation who his detractors called him “a fool”. The song was recorded and completed in some sessions between the months of September and October 1967, and reduced by about a minute and a half from its original duration, which reached four and a half minutes. “The fool on the hill” is included in the film “Magical Mystery Tour” with a sequence shot almost a month after official filming concluded (November 3). It was made with little more than artisanal means by Paul, Mal Evans and the cameraman Aubrey Dewar at dawn on October 31st on a hill behind Nice, France.

Flying (Harrison-Lennon-McCartney-Starkey)

Originally titled “Aerial Tour Instrumental”, “Flying” boasts a record: it is the first Beatles song to be signed by all four members of the group. Furthermore, being considered an instrumental, “Flying” is also the first and only instrumental officially released by the Beatles on Parlophone/EMI. “We needed an instrumental for the film, so one evening in the studio I proposed recording it specifically,” recalls McCartney. The working title of “Flying” refers to McCartney’s initial idea for “Magical Mystery Tour,” according to which “the bus would at some point take flight and take the magicians into the clouds.” In fact, in the film Flying accompanies images of flight, the presence of which was made possible with a casual expedient. Denis O’Dell, producer of “Magical Mystery Tour,” had collaborated with Stanley Kubrick in 1964 on “Dr. Strangelove.” O’Dell remembered that there were many aerial shots taken during the making of that film that remained unused (they were shots of flyovers of the North Pole), and made them available to McCartney – without Kubrick’s knowledge, who later complained about it .

Blue Jay Way (Harrison)

“Blue Jay Way” was born on August 1, 1967 in Hollywood, during George Harrison’s trip to California in the company of his wife Pattie, Neil Aspinall and “Magic” Alex Mardas. Harrison recalls: “’Blue Jay Way’ was written around the time I was renting a house in Los Angeles, on Blue Jay Way, and had just arrived there from England. I was waiting for Derek and Joan Taylor, who were living in Los Angeles at the time, to come to me. And I wrote a song about me waiting. The fog had descended; and for a while my friends couldn’t find the house.” In the film “Magical Mystery Tour” Harrison mimes “Blue Jay Way” by “playing”, sitting cross-legged, a keyboard drawn on the floor; the sequence (which includes images of the other three Beatles pretending to play a cello) makes extensive use of prismatic refraction effects and abundant artificial smoke.