Product Description

The first six songs on MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR were the soundtrack to the Beatles' TV movie of the same name. The film wasan experimental mess, but the experimental pop of the albumincluded some of their most memorable productions. 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. 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 wellhave been about the dissolving partnerships (songwriting and otherwise) between McCartney and Lennon. 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. "Penny Lane", a wistful fantasy featuring a beautiful trumpet solo, was McCartney at his melodic best,the AM foil to Lennon's FM headiness.

Track Listing

1. Magical Mystery Tour
2. Fool On The Hill
3. Flying
4. Blue Jay Way
5. Your Mother Should Know
6. I Am The Walrus
7. Hello Goodbye
8. Strawberry Fields Forever
9. Penny Lane
10. Baby You're A Rich Man
11. All You Need Is Love

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1141 in Music
• Released on: 1987-09-22
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
The album feels even more like a collection of singles (instead of an actual movie soundtrack) than Help! or A Hard Day's Night, but maybe that's because every song sounds like it could have been a hit single--with the natural exception of the goofy/weird instrumental "Flying". Even George's "Blue Jay Way" paints a vivid sound-portrait in fascinating detail. And although the goofy TV movie may have been mostly Paul's baby, this album features the two 45 rpm masterpieces that sum up the quintessential best of Lennon and McCartney at this stage of their development: Paul's "Penny Lane" and John's "I Am the Walrus". --Jim Emerson

Customer Reviews

Most Classic Songs of All Beatles albums?
This album often isn't very highly rated by some critics perhaps because the first side contains songs from the rather self indulgent TV programme of the same name. The second side has songs not in the film but what songs!

Of the 11 songs on the album I'd say 6 are all time classics that even non Beatles fans would instantly recognise:
Magical Mystery Tour, I am the Walrus, Hello Goodbye, Strawberry Fields Forever,Penny Lane and All you Need is Love.

My favourites: the genius/nonsense of I am the Walrus and the Double A side single Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane.

Perhaps it doesn't work as a "concept" album but it certainly works as a demonstration of their songwriting abilities at their peak.
Perhaps an ideal gift for someone not that familiar with the Beatles who wants "try them out".

Roll up , roll up ....step right this way.
Originally released in late 1967 as a 6 song double E.P. and subsequently expanded to an 11 song album Magical Mystery Tour is the soundtrack to a one hour television film made by the Beatles( It was Paul McCartney,s idea to have a film based around magical adventures) shown twice over the Christmas period in 1967. The film is a bit of a mess, a charming mess , but a mess none the less. The album is actually much better and features many of my favourite Beatles songs.
Magical Mystery Tour was the first project for the band after the death of their manager and mentor Brian Epstein in August 1967 and many blamed the films sloppy production on the fact is lacked his mature judgement . The music though was far more favourably received than the film .When the soundtrack was released in the U.S. it became a full L.P. with the films soundtrack on side one and a collection of A & B sides on side two. This has now become the version of the films soundtrack that everyone is now familiar with.
Side one contains the same songs as the original E.P. but in a different order. Not that this matters once the vivacious title track kicks in with its blaring trumpets courtesy of four session musicians and with Beatles compadres Mal Evans and Neil Aspinall on percussion. "The Fool On The Hill" is one of McCartney,s more poignant and genuinely moving ballads with plaintive flute and Lennon and Harrison on harmonica. "Flying"" the brief churning instrumental is credited to the entire band leading into George Harrisons woozy "Blue Jay Way" before the wistful insanely catchy "Your Mother Should Know" which brilliantly elucidates McCartney's genius for melody.
However the real tour de force is Lennon's utterly berserk avant garde masterpiece "I Am The Walrus". Whether the tale is apocryphal or not , i don,t know, but apparently Lennon got the stirring rhythmic spine of the song from lying in bed in a New York hotel listening the sirens constantly blaring outside.Either way the dramatic orchestration , vertiginous arrangement juxtaposed with Lennon's barking lyrics( his typically sardonic response to academics over analysing Beatles songs) is arguably the finest example of the bands ability to match memorable tunes with sonic innovation. It,s my favourite Beatles and not even Oasis,s clodhopping cover can diminish it.
Talking off innovation . "Strawberry Fields Forever" a song that could merit a full review on its own. McCartney played the mellotron ( an instrument introduced to the band by Mike Pinder of The Moody Blues) and also wrote the first verse. George Martin utilises some of the studio trickery he learnt working for the BBC,s radiophonic workshop manipulating tape. Strawberry Fields refers to an orphanage in Liverpool and was released as a double A side with "Penny Lane" which kept the Liverpool theme going and is as effervescent a pop song as The Beatles ever produced with it,s fizzing trumpets and McCartney,s joyous vocal.
Another typically jaunty McCartney song the more throwaway but none the less sprightly enjoyable "Hello Goodbye " along with Lennon-McCartney collaboration "Baby You,re A Rich Man"( recorded for The Beatles animated film "The Beatles - Yellow Submarine [1968]" ) make up side two .Along with of course Lennon's. "All You Need Is Love"featuring it,s star laden backing band including Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Marianne Faithfull ,Eric Clapton, Graham Nash and George Martin on piano. The song became the centre piece of the 1967 Our World satellite broadcast neatly encapsulating the summer of love.
For a somewhat thrown together affair Magical Mystery Tour is surprisingly cohesive and is every bit as experimental and arguably more consistent than the far more garlanded Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. That's a truly great album too lest there be any misunderstanding but amongst the pantheon of brilliant Beatles albums -The Beatles: the White Album, Abbey Road, Revolver ,Rubber Soul -Magical Mystery Tour more than holds its own.

A Forgotten Gem
The UK version of Magical Mystery Tour was originally just a 6 song EP to tie in with the band's television movie aired on Boxing Day 1967. Wanting to release a full album to cash in on the Christmas market, their American label added four recent non-album singles and a B-side onto the end. It is this 11 track version which has since become standard.

Released mere months after Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, arguably the most famous album of all time, MMT was destined to be comparatively forgotten. Apart from anything else, it just isn't as good...

That said, it contains four of the Beatles' most famous (and best) songs: I Am the Walrus, Strawberry Fields Forever, Penny Lane, and All You Need Is Love. These four are uniformly superb. I Am the Walrus was a deliberate attempt by Lennon to write nonsensical lyrics in which nobody could possibly find any meaning. All You Need Is Love is another Lennon composition, and the ultimate hippy anthem. Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever had been released as a double A-side earlier in the year, famously becoming one of very few Beatles singles not to reach Number One, ironic considering they are undoubtedly two of the band's greatest songs.

As for the other tracks, there is the druggy Magical Mystery Tour, McCartney's strangely profound The Fool on the Hill, instrumental Flying, another great single in Hello Goodbye, and the slightly baffling (but still good) music-hall style of Your Mother Should Know and Baby You're A Rich Man.

This just leaves Harrison's one solo contribution to the album, Blue Jay Way, a dark and creepy oddity amongst all the blissed-out psychedelia. Named after a real street in LA, the lyrics recount Harrison waiting for his friends, who have become lost in the fog while looking for his hard-to-find house. There is a real sense of despair and desolation lurking at its edges, pointing the way forward to the sinister sounds of The White Album a year later.

In all, Magical Mystery Tour features several of the band's finest songs. It doesn't hold up quite so well as the `proper' albums that flank it in the Beatles chronology, but it still belongs in any music fan's collection. This was the end of the band's psychedelic phase, and in many ways the end of them recording as anything more than a collection of solo artists. Music would never be the same again.