MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR
5. Flying
6. Blue Jay Way
10. Hello, Goodbye
11. Penny Lane
14. Across The Universe
[WWF Version]
15. You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)
16. Baby You're A Rich Man
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On December 8, 1967, just in time for the holiday rush, a new release by the Beatles appeared on shelves in record stores across their home country of England. This was a 19-minute-long double EP comprising two vinyl singles, each with one to two songs per side. The six songs included in the package were the soundtrack to a forthcoming film that the band had just finished making: Magical Mystery Tour. It topped the major EP chart, as well as hit the number two spot on an influential singles chart, held back from the top spot by only the band's most recent single, "Hello Goodbye." Although the success was even greater, things nonetheless panned out somewhat differently in the band's largest market. A full vinyl LP, again titled Magical Mystery Tour, had been released over a week earlier in the United States, that being on November 27, 1967. The six soundtrack recordings that made up the full EP in England were all featured on the first side of the album, though in a slightly rearranged sequence. If a listener chose to flip the record, they would find all five of the band's singles from throughout the year right there, collected for easy listening, starting with none other than "Hello Goodbye." The album topped the chart for weeks and was nominated for a Grammy two years later.
This was far from the first time that the group's American releases had differed significantly from those that the band had assembled themselves for their home market, but it was the first significant difference to crop up since they, in 1966, had renegotiated their contract with Capitol Records (their British label's stateside subsidiary), where the band had demanded an end to the slicing and dicing of their albums by label executives in the USA. So why, in late 1967, was there another Capitol album which differed signifcantly from the British release? The answer lies in the fact that, by the late 1960s, EPs were a dying format in the USA, and the Capitol suits wanted profit. So the band agreed to a compromise, resulting in the North American Magical Mystery Tour LP, which has since become the only North American-exclusive Beatles album to become canonized as part of their core catalogue, starting with its release on CD alongside their UK album catalogue in 1987.
From Billboard Magazine issue on November 25, 1967.
Besides the 11 EP and singles tracks that ended up on the North American LP, the band had recorded four other songs during the same period, all produced in the exact same layered, psychedelic-pop style used on the album. Three of these were reluctantly held over for the then-in-progress Yellow Submarine film, whose soundtrack would have to wait another two years for release. The end product included four new Beatles songs, two older ones which had already been released, and twenty minutes of orchestral soundtrack music which they were not involved in making. By including these four unique tracks on other albums ("Hey Bulldog" will feature on a later post) I hope to render this ill-fitting collection of music redundant. Alongside these songs, there's "You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)," which lay unfinished on the cutting room floor by the end of 1967. Intent on nabbing it for a solo single of his own, songwriter John Lennon dusted off the old tape and finished the song with the help of his bandmates in April 1969, the same day that guitarist George Harrison overdubbed a solo onto the song "Let It Be," whose B-side "You Know My Name" eventually became. Also, back in early February 1968, the group recorded what is arguably their last big psychedelic production, "Across The Universe." A radically different remix of the same basic performance was issued in 1970 on the Let It Be album, and another on the Let It Be... Naked remix album, but the version featured here, first released on a World Wildlife Fund charity LP in late 1969, is the original.
Seeing that the official album was somewhat slapped together after label executives refused to release the band's envisioned EP, I became quite interested in centralizing all of this leftover psychedelic Beatles music in a singular release. By starting out with the UK EP in its' original running order and then adding in everything else they recorded during those sessions after that, I hoped to arrive at a more cohesive and well-rounded collection of songs than the official version of Magical Mystery Tour has, as I've always found it to feel a bit slight when compared to the band's original British albums. While putting it together over the course of several years, I came to realize that there were slightly too many songs to fit on a single vinyl disk, so I decided to include with the album an (imaginary) bonus 7" single, to be played after the main 12" disk was over, as a coda of sorts.
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), the second CD I ever got.
It was highly influential in terms of music production at the time.
As for that main disk though, I decided to close off side one in style with the celebratory fanfare of "All You Need Is Love" (which never had enough finality to properly deserve being the closer on the official album), preceded by the short singalong buildup of "All Together Now," which also serves to strip things back slightly after the dreamy haze of sound called "Blue Jay Way." Side two starts out fairly quietly with "Strawberry Fields Forever," which is then followed by two poppier Paul McCartney-written singles, "Hello Goodbye" and "Penny Lane." George Harrison's "Only A Northern Song" and "It's All Too Much" (both from the Yellow Submarine soundtrack) follow, bringing the total number of his compositions on the record from one to three. After that, the disk closes with the World Wildlife Fund version of "Across The Universe," in my opinion the best song (lyrically-speaking) that the group ever made. If not for the bonus single, "Across The Universe" would make for a lovely closer.
The first track on this single is one of the band's silliest and most theatrical songs, "You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)," after which comes the psychedelic afterparty of "Baby You're A Rich Man," which, in my interpretation given this context, is about being wealthier in philosophical and/or spiritual ways after taking the Magical Mystery Tour for a spin. Both tracks happen to have an unusually large bass response compared to other Beatles songs, so placement on a single is quite ideal as they can hold, as far as I know, quite a bit more bass than a 12" LP. Lastly, I would be remiss to not mention that the fantastic New Zealand-based musician Fathom (instagram & youtube) helped me to iron out the final kinks in the song flow. Please check Nancy out, as alongside her own wonderful music she also records Beatles covers on instruments that she builds and invents. Lovely stuff.
The Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab edition of the North American version of Magical Mystery Tour.
Included are both the mono and stereo mixes of the album. Unlike the mono mixes (which are all taken from the 2009 Mono CD box set), many of the stereo mixes (especially in the album's second half) were made long after the album was recorded, even as recently as the late '90s. Audio technology advanced light years during that roughly 30-year gap, so inevitably the mixes do sound a little bit different, though not jarring by any means. All tracks on the stereo version are taken from the stereo remasters from 2009, except for "Only A Northern Song" and "You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)." The former had its' various instruments recorded onto two separate sets of tapes, which were incredibly difficult to sync up perfectly. As a result, no stereo mix was made during the 1960s, and listeners would have to wait until the Yellow Submarine Songtrack (1999) to hear it as a stereo remix: that CD is the source I used. The latter track, however, was remixed to stereo for the Anthology 2 (1996) archival compilation, but I had to edit out the second section of the song in order for it to match the song structure of the mono mix, which John Lennon had originally (and rightly) edited out for its' prospective single release. The stereo remix also faded out the spoken section which concludes the song, whereas it maintains a steady volume in the mono mix. I left that as is. The cover artwork of the two mixes of the album also varies slightly, with the mono one having far fewer stars around the band's name. The cover art itself is that of the UK EP, as the North American cover doesn't look as nice to me, and also has the tracklist of the official release clearly written on it.
Interestingly enough, every song on this album except for "Across The Universe" and the two tracks on the bonus single has been released with accompanying video! For the six songs that make up the UK Magical Mystery Tour EP, the film of the same name contained musical sequences for each of them (and all are linked in the tracklist, except for the "Flying" video, which I could not find in full on YouTube), although some are very different edits compared to what is in the actual film. Several other songs had music sequences in the Yellow Submarine film, and the rest all had music videos (Some, like "Hello Goodbye," even have several) or TV broadcasts (like for "All You Need Is Love"). I have half a mind to edit together a full film out of these videos, but have other things to spend my time on in this short life, unfortunately.
While "Across The Universe" was being recorded, George Harrison was in the middle of
recording his debut solo album, the fabulous spaghetti-western-meets-indian-classical melange
which is the soundtrack to the film Wonderwall Music. The backing track for the Beatles'
"The Inner Light" was originally recorded for this project.
Time to wrap things up. In terms of how this album compares to the Beatles records that come before and after it chronologically, those being Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) and The Beatles (a.k.a. The White Album) (1968), it plays like a more expansive and more all-over-the-place listening experience than Sgt. Pepper's, with its expanded length (and playful disjointedness) foreshadowing the diverse and fractured soundscapes of their self-titled double album that would come the year after. So now it's time to strap in and roll up (as the Beatles surely were) because this Magical Mystery Tour wants to take you away! Happy listening!
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