#The beatles magical mystery tour movie“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 catalog-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 catalog-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. 'penny lane,' a wistful fantasy featuring a beautiful trumpet solo, was mccartney at his melodic best, the am foil to lennon's fm headiness.Though wedged between the comparatively giant Sgt. lennon's strangely arranged 'strawberry fields forever,' whose two halves blend different takes of the same song, one slowed down to match the pitch of the other, was a trippy reverie its bridges, orchestrated with horns, cellos, and backward cymbals, are sheer brilliance. but it also featured george harrison's mystical 'blue jay way' (about his house in hollywood) and john lennon's 'i am the walrus,' which wedded a stream-of-consciousness lyric to a fierce drum beat, layers of strings, odd voices and some dialogue from shakespeare's 'king lear.' mccartney's 'hello goodbye,' which led off the assorted singles, featured some neatly arranged contrapuntal vocals, and may well have been about the dissolving partnerships (songwriting and otherwise) between mccartney and lennon. the soundtrack side was dominated by paul mccartney pop tunes, including the bittersweet piano ballad 'fool on the hill' and 'your mother should know,' an impossibly catchy bit of vaudevillian pop. the film was an experimental mess, but the experimental pop of the album included some of their most memorable productions. the first six songs on 'magical mystery tour' were the soundtrack to the beatles' tv movie of the same name. it contains archival footage, rare photographs and never-before-heard studio chat from the beatles, offering a unique and very personal insight into the studio atmosphere. directed by bob smeaton, the documentary is included as quicktime files on each album. Whether you want one hour as the young Beatles in the black suits, or a whole evening of entertainment with multiple costume changes and projected video accompaniment, Magical Mystery Tour will work. Re-mastered at abbey road, housed in a triple panel card package with historical notes and a mini documentary on the album. Magical Mystery Tour is the top-rated Beatles Tribute band on all of Gigmasters, and the proud recipient of their 20 Rising Star Award.
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