Magical Mystery Tour

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This article is about the Beatles' EP and LP. For the song, see Magical Mystery Tour (song). For the film, see Magical Mystery Tour (film).
Magical Mystery Tour
File:TheBeatlesMagicalMysteryTouralbumcover.jpg
Soundtrack album / compilation by The Beatles
Released 27 November 1967 (US LP)
8 December 1967 (UK double EP)
Recorded 25 April – 7 November 1967
Studio EMI and Olympic Studios, London
Genre
Length 36:35
Label Capitol, Parlophone
Producer George Martin
The Beatles North American chronology
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
(1967)Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band1967		 Magical Mystery Tour
(1967)		 The Beatles
(1968)The Beatles1968
Alternative cover
Double EP - UK Release cover
Double EP - UK Release cover

Magical Mystery Tour is a record by the English rock group the Beatles that was released as a double EP in the United Kingdom and an LP in the United States. Produced by George Martin, both versions include the six-song soundtrack to the 1967 film of the same name. The EP was issued in the UK on 8 December 1967 on the Parlophone label, while the US release took place on 27 November, after Capitol Records had compiled an eleven-track LP through the addition of songs from the band's 1967 singles. The EP was also released in Germany, France, Spain, Yugoslavia, Brazil, Australia and Japan.[1] The first official release as an eleven-track LP in the UK did not occur until 1976.

Despite widespread media criticism of the Magical Mystery Tour film, the soundtrack was a critical and commercial success and a number one Grammy-nominated album in the US. In 1987, when EMI issued the Beatles' catalogue on compact disc, the track listing of the 1967 US LP was adopted rather than the six-song UK release. Along with the rest of the group's studio albums, Magical Mystery Tour was remastered and released on 9 September 2009 for the first time since its CD release.

History of the project

Magical Mystery Tour film

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Main article: Magical Mystery Tour (film)

After the Beatles recorded Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Paul McCartney wanted to create a film based upon the group and their music. The film was to be unscripted: various "ordinary" people were to travel on a 1964 Bedford VAL coach and have unspecified "magical" adventures. The Magical Mystery Tour film was made and included six new Beatles songs. The film originally screened on BBC-TV over the 1967 Christmas holidays but was savaged by critics.[2]

Initial release formats

The number of songs used in the film posed a challenge for the Beatles and their UK record company EMI, as there were too few for an LP album but too many for an EP.[3] One idea considered was to issue an EP which played at 33⅓ rpm but this would have caused a loss of audio fidelity that was deemed unacceptable. The solution chosen was to issue an innovative format of two EPs packaged in a gatefold sleeve with a 28-page booklet containing the lyrics, colour photos from film production, and colour story illustrations by Beatles Book cartoonist Bob Gibson.[3] Of the package, Bob Neaverson wrote: "While it certainly solved the song quota problem, one suspects that it was also partly born of the Beatles' pioneering desire to experiment with conventional formats and packaging".[4] The package was released in the UK on 8 December, in time for the Christmas market, at the sub £1 price of 19s 6d[3] (equivalent to £16 today).

EPs were not popular in the US at the time so Capitol Records decided to release the soundtrack as an LP by adding tracks from that year's non-album singles.[3] The first side of the LP contained the film soundtrack songs (like earlier British Beatles soundtrack albums), and the second side had the remaining A-side and B-sides released in 1967, with the last three of these five songs – "Penny Lane", "Baby, You're a Rich Man" and "All You Need Is Love" – presented in duophonic, fake "processed" stereo sound.[3][5] Capitol took the EP-set's 28-page booklet, consisting of 24 pages of colour photos and illustrations, and four pages for the song lyrics on its center leaves, and enlarged the photos and illustrations to LP-size to be included as a 24-page booklet inside a gatefold album sleeve. The lyrics to the film songs were also printed inside the gatefold itself. Several years later Capitol quit including the 24-page booklet, and removed mention of it from the album cover.

Reception

Professional ratings
Retrospective reviews
Review scores
Source Rating
AllMusic 5/5 stars[6]
The A.V. Club A[7]
Consequence of Sound A+[8]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music 4/5 stars[9]
MusicHound 3/5[10]
Paste 94/100[11]
Pitchfork Media 10/10[12]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide 3.5/5 stars[13]
Sputnik Music 4.5/5 stars[14]

Magical Mystery Tour was number 1 on Billboard's Top LPs listings for eight weeks at the start of 1968, and remained in the top 200 until 8 February 1969.[15] It was nominated for a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1968.[16] In Britain, the EP peaked at number 2 on the national singles chart,[17] behind "Hello, Goodbye".[18] On the UK listings compiled by Melody Maker magazine, however, it replaced "Hello, Goodbye" at number 1, for a week.[19]

Reviewing the EP a month before the film's screening, Nick Logan of the NME enthused that the Beatles were "at it again, stretching pop music to its limits". He continued: "The four musician-magicians take us by the hand and lead us happily tripping through the clouds, past Lucy in the sky with diamonds and the fool on the hill, into the sun-speckled glades along Blue Jay Way and into the world of Alice in Wonderland … This is The Beatles out there in front and the rest of us in their wake."[20] In Record Mirror, Norman Jopling wrote that, whereas on Sgt. Pepper "the effects were chiefly sound and only the album cover was visual", on Magical Mystery Tour "the visual side … has dominated the music", such that "Everything from fantasy, children's comics, acid (psychedelic) humour is included on the record and in the [EP] booklet."[21]

The album review in Rolling Stone consisted of a single-sentence quote from John Lennon, reading: "There are only about 100 people in the world who understand our music."[22] Writing in Saturday Review, Mike Jahn hailed Magical Mystery Tour as the Beatles' "best album yet", superior to Sgt. Pepper in emotion and depth, and "distinguished by its description of the Beatles' acquired Hindu philosophy and its subsequent application to everyday life".[23]

Robert Christgau of Esquire considered three of the five new songs to be "disappointing", including "The Fool on the Hill", which, he wrote, "may be the worst song the Beatles have ever recorded". Christgau still found the album "worth buying", however, "for all the singles, which are good music, after all; for the tender camp of 'Your Mother Should Know'; and especially for Harrison's hypnotic 'Blue Jay Way,' an adaptation of Oriental modes in which everything works, lyrics included".[24] Hit Parader said: "and the beautiful Beatles do it again, widening the gap between them and 80 scillion other groups." Remarking on how the Beatles and their producer "present a supreme example of team work", the reviewer compared the album with the Rolling Stones' concurrent release, Their Satanic Majesties Request, and opined that "I Am the Walrus" and "Blue Jay Way" alone "accomplish what the Stones attempted".[25]

The 2012 remastered Magical Mystery Tour DVD entered the Billboard Top Music Video chart at number 1, while the CD album climbed to number 1 on the Billboard Catalog Album Chart, number 2 on the Billboard Soundtrack albums chart, and re-entered at number 57 on the Billboard 200 albums chart for the week ending 27 October 2012.[26]

Release history

In 1969 and 1971, the previously unavailable true-stereo mixes were created,[3] which allowed the first true-stereo version of the Magical Mystery Tour LP to be issued in Germany in 1971.[27] As an American import, the LP had peaked on the British album charts at number 31 in January 1968.[28][29] Due to continued public demand, EMI officially released it in the UK in November 1976,[3] but using the Capitol masters with fake-stereo.

When standardising the Beatles' releases for the worldwide Compact Disc release in 1987, the US LP version of Magical Mystery Tour (in true-stereo) was included with the otherwise British album line-up. [30]

The inclusion of the 1967 singles on CD with this album meant both that the Magical Mystery Tour CD would be of comparable length to the band's CDs of its original albums, and that those three singles would not need to be included on Past Masters, a two-volume compilation designed to accompany the initial CD album releases and provide all non-album tracks (mostly singles) on CD format.[31]

In 1992 the EP version of Magical Mystery Tour was reissued in both mono and stereo as part of a box set containing CD versions of the Beatles original UK EPs. The album (along with the Beatles' entire UK studio album catalogue) was remastered and reissued on CD in 2009. Acknowledging the album's conception and first release, the CD incorporates the original Capitol LP label design. The remastered stereo CD features a mini-documentary about the album. Initial copies of the album accidentally list the mini-documentary to be one made for Let It Be. The mono album was reissued as part of The Beatles in Mono CD and LP box sets.

Country Date Label Format Catalogue Notes
United States 27 November 1967 Capitol mono LP MAL 2835
stereo LP† SMAL 2835
United Kingdom 8 December 1967 Parlophone mono double EP MMT 1-2 6-track soundtrack only
stereo double EP SMMT 1-2
New Zealand 1970[32] World Record Club/Apple stereo LP* SLZ 8308 / PCSM 6084 With different cover artwork and titled Magical Mystery Tour and Other Splendid Hits(3 label variations known to exist).EMI(NZ) released this LP on the Apple label cat. no. PCSM 6084 The last 4 songs are in mono.
Germany 1971 Hör Zu/Apple stereo LP SHZE 327 With different cover artwork. The first issue with all tracks in true-stereo
United Kingdom 1973[33] EMI stereo cassette TC-PCS 3077 Titled Magical Mystery Tour & other titles
United Kingdom 19 November 1976 Apple, Parlophone stereo LP† PCTC 255 Also in a limited edition yellow vinyl, sold individually, not part of a boxed set.
Worldwide 21 September 1987 Apple, Parlophone, EMI stereo Compact Disc CDP 7 48062 2
United States 1988[32] Capitol stereo LP C1-48061
United Kingdom 15 June 1992[34] Parlophone stereo/mono CDs‡ CDMAG 1 6-track soundtrack only
Japan 11 March 1998 Toshiba-EMI CD TOCP 51124
Japan 21 January 2004 Toshiba-EMI LP TOJP 60144 Remastered
Worldwide 9 September 2009 Apple, Capitol mono CD‡ Remastered
stereo CD 0946 3 82465 2 7
Worldwide 9 September 2014 Apple, Capitol mono LP MAL 2835 5099963380613 Remastered
† With "Penny Lane", "Baby, You're a Rich Man" and "All You Need Is Love" in fake-stereo.

* With "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Penny Lane", "Baby, You're a Rich Man" and "All You Need Is Love" in mono.

‡ Available only as part of a boxed set.

Track listing

Album

All songs written and composed by Lennon–McCartney except where noted. 

Side one: Film soundtrack
No. Title Lead vocals Length
1. "Magical Mystery Tour"   Paul McCartney with John Lennon 2:48
2. "The Fool on the Hill"   Paul McCartney 3:00
3. "Flying" (Lennon/McCartney/Harrison/Starkey) (Instrumental) 2:16
4. "Blue Jay Way" (Harrison) George Harrison 3:50
5. "Your Mother Should Know"   Paul McCartney 2:33
6. "I Am the Walrus"   John Lennon 4:35
Side two: 1967 singles
No. Title Lead vocals Length
1. "Hello, Goodbye"   Paul McCartney 3:24
2. "Strawberry Fields Forever"   John Lennon 4:05
3. "Penny Lane"   Paul McCartney 3:00
4. "Baby, You're a Rich Man"   John Lennon 3:07
5. "All You Need Is Love"   John Lennon 3:57
Total length:
 36:35

Double EP

Side one
No. Title Length
1. "Magical Mystery Tour"   2:48
2. "Your Mother Should Know"   2:33
Side two
No. Title Length
3. "I Am the Walrus"   4:35
Side three
No. Title Length
4. "The Fool on the Hill"   3:00
5. "Flying"   2:16
Side four
No. Title Length
6. "Blue Jay Way"   3:50
Total length:
 19:08

Personnel

Engineers
Additional musicians
  • "Magical Mystery Tour" – Mal Evans and Neil Aspinall on percussion, David Mason, Elgar Howarth, Roy Copestake and John Wilbraham on trumpets
  • "The Fool on the Hill" – Christoper Taylor, Richard Taylor and Jack Ellory on flute[35]
  • "I Am the Walrus" – Sidney Sax, Jack Rothstein, Ralph Elman, Andrew McGee, Jack Greene, Louis Stevens, John Jezzard and Jack Richards on violins, Lionel Ross, Eldon Fox, Brian Martin and Terry Weil on cellos and Neill Sanders, Tony Tunstall and Morris Miller on horns, Peggie Allen, Wendy Horan, Pat Whitmore, Jill Utting, June Day, Sylvia King, Irene King, G. Mallen, Fred Lucas, Mike Redway, John O'Neill, F. Dachtler, Allan Grant, D. Griffiths, J. Smith and J. Fraser on backing vocals
  • "Hello, Goodbye" – Ken Essex, Leo Birnbaum on violas.
  • "Strawberry Fields Forever" – Mal Evans on percussion, Tony Fisher, Greg Bowen, Derek Watkins and Stanley Roderick on trumpets and John Hall, Derek Simpson, Peter Halling, Norman Jones on cellos.
  • "Penny Lane" – Ray Swinfield, P. Goody, Manny Winters and Dennis Walton on flutes, Leon Calvert, Freddy Clayton, Bert Courtley and Duncan Campbell on trumpets, Dick Morgan and Mike Winfield on English horns, Frank Clarke on double bass and David Mason on piccolo trumpet
  • "Baby, You're a Rich Man" – Eddie Kramer on vibraphone
  • "All You Need Is Love" – George Martin on piano, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Marianne Faithfull, Keith Moon, Eric Clapton, Pattie Boyd Harrison, Jane Asher, Mike McCartney, Maureen Starkey, Graham Nash and wife Rose Eccles Nash, Gary Leeds and Hunter Davies on backing vocals, Sidney Sax, Patrick Halling, Eric Bowie and Jack Holmes on violins, Rex Morris and Don Honeywill on sax, David Mason and Stanley Woods on trumpets, Evan Watkins and Henry Spain on horns, Jack Emblow on accordion, Brian Martin and Peter Halling on cello

Charts

Album
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