Studio - 9. Magical Mystery Tour
1.History of the project.
1.1. Magical Mystery Tour film.
After Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Paul McCartney wanted to create a film based upon the Beatles and their music. The film was to be unscripted: various "ordinary" people (including John Lennon's uncle Charlie) were to travel on a charabanc bus and have unspecified "magical" adventures, in the manner of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters.
The Magical Mystery Tour movie was made, but the hoped-for "magical" adventures never happened. During the filming, an ever greater number of cars followed the hand-lettered bus, hoping to see what its passengers were up to, until a running traffic jam developed. The spectacle ended after Lennon angrily tore the lettering off the sides of the bus.
Magical Mystery Tour was the first Beatles film project following the death of manager Brian Epstein in August 1967, and there has been much speculation that the absence of Epstein's judgment contributed to its undisciplined production, as seen, for instance, in the absence of a screenplay and professional direction. The film originally appeared twice on BBC-TV over the 1967 Christmas holidays (first in black and white, then in colour on BBC2), but was savaged by critics on its release[1]; it was, however, noted by Steven Spielberg in film school (according to McCartney in one of the interviews for The Beatles Anthology: "I've read that people like him have sort of said, 'When I was in school that was a film we really took notice of...' like an art film, you know, rather than a proper film.)
1.2. Film soundtrack.
The movie's soundtrack was far more favourably received, and was nominated for a Grammy Award for best album in 1968.[2] and reached number 1 in the U.S for eight weeks. It was released in the UK in December 1967 as a double EP housed in a 24-page book featuring pictures from the film and a comic strip based on events of the film. The American version was released in late November 1967 as an LP; its cover depicts the EP's artwork in an orange border, with a list of song titles above it, and the album included, until the 1980s, the EP set's 24-page photo/comic booklet blown up to LP-size. Capitol Records released Magical Mystery Tour as full-length album because EPs were not as popular in the US as they were in the UK. The Magical Mystery Tour LP was divided into two halves: The first side was the film soundtrack, and the second side was a collection of A- and B-sides released in 1967, with the songs "Penny Lane", "Baby You're a Rich Man" and "All You Need Is Love" presented in fake "processed" stereo. In addition, all stereo versions, from both the LP and EPs, of "I Am the Walrus", were in true stereo only through the second verse, after which the song "reverts" to fake stereo.[3]
1.3. Release.
When standardising The Beatles' releases for Compact Disc in the late 1980s, the American LP version (which was imported into the UK, peaked on the British album charts at #31 as an American import, and was issued by Parlophone Records in Britain in 1976) was included with the British album line-up instead of the British EP, with true stereo recordings replacing the earlier processed ones (except for the portion of "I Am the Walrus"). (The true-stereo version of the Magical Mystery Tour LP was first issued in Germany in 1971, but the 1976 Parlophone issue used the Capitol masters with the fake stereo.) Capitol quietly reissued the Magical Mystery Tour LP using the German masters in the US with catalogue number C1-48061 in true stereo. The remaining Beatles non-LP single sides were compiled in the two-volume Past Masters compilation.
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