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: #1841 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

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.

I AM THE WALRUS!!!
Terrific album!!! one of the best masterpieces of the best group in the world, this was made by Capitol records in late 1967, from the EP-MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR (containing six songs) with the three latest beatles singles (STRAWBERRY FIEDS FOREVER/PENNY LANE, ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE/BABY YOU'RE A RICH MAN and HELLO-GOODBYE/I AM THE WALRUS); what a great work!! Capitol created a monster!!! all the album has a big quality and some of the best work of the fab-four; excellent songs like MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR, FOOL ON THE HILL and YOUR MOTHER SHOULD KNOW; this is a beatle-treasure!!

Good although marred by not being a proper album
You can't actually put a collection of Beatles songs from this period together and not get something good. Some of John and Paul's greatest songs are on here and George's song is one of his minor greats. The problem is, though this is an album in length it wasn't conceived as one and does not get the TLC and careful planning that an album would have got. Whereas Sgt. Pepper's album cover is regarded as a classic piece of pop art this one might win a raspberry. The songs fit together okay but not as well as they would on an album and the ending is somewhat of a let down. I guess I just don't think 'Baby you're a rich man' is that good a song. It had a right to be a B side but it shouldn't finish a Beatles album. There are lots of problems that need sorting out in the Beatles canon. We need the Let it Be DVD, a proper release of Magical Mystery Tour with extra footage and we need this album to be signed off properly. I think the Beatles have accepted that it is pretty much an album in the same way the name 'The White Album' turned out to be a better name than 'The Beatles'. Otherwise, this material would have ended up on the Past Masters series with the other EPs and singles. Nonetheless, we need a better album cover and a modern stereo mix or alternate take to show this has been given the attention their albums were.