A project without a script
After the Beatles stopped touring in 1966 and finished Sgt. Pepper, they had no obvious next step. Manager Brian Epstein died on 27 August 1967, a heavy blow that left the group without the person who had handled much of their business life. Within weeks, they began work on a television film, which became Magical Mystery Tour. The idea is usually credited mainly to Paul McCartney, who reportedly liked the notion of a coach trip of the kind taken by British holidaymakers, with the passengers never quite knowing where they were going.
There was no conventional script. Accounts describe a rough outline, a lot of improvisation and a crew of friends, professional actors and ordinary people. The coach left London in September 1967 and travelled through the west of England, with filming taking place over a couple of weeks and continuing at other locations, including a former air base, and in a studio. The Beatles directed the film themselves, which was unusual for a major pop act and later fed the idea that they were overreaching.
What the film contains
The film is a series of loosely connected episodes, with songs placed among them. It includes a sequence with the four wearing animal masks, a dream-like scene in which Ringo Starr’s aunt eats large quantities of spaghetti, and comic bits with cast members from British variety. The songs include “The Fool on the Hill”, filmed in part abroad, “Blue Jay Way”, “Flying” and “I Am the Walrus”. The title song opened the film. Where individual episodes work, it is usually because of the music. Where they do not, critics tended to see self-indulgence.
The footage was edited by the Beatles themselves, who worked with an editor in London over a period of weeks. This was longer than planned, and it affected the date on which the film reached viewers.
Broadcast and reception
The film was shown on BBC1 on Boxing Day, 26 December 1967, in the evening. Because BBC1 did not yet broadcast in colour, most viewers saw it in black and white, which lost much of the visual intent. A colour screening on BBC2 followed in early January 1968. The scheduling is a reminder of how television worked then: a handful of channels, with a national audience for a single evening’s programmes, and color television only just arriving on one channel.
The reviews were largely hostile. One national newspaper reportedly called it “rubbish” in its headline, and other critics were similarly unimpressed, though accounts of the exact wording differ, so it is best not to quote it too precisely. The audience was large, but many viewers seem to have been puzzled. It was widely considered the first notable commercial misstep in the group’s career. The film was not shown on American television in the same way, and in the United States it was known mainly through its music.
Defenders have noted that much of the criticism was shaped by the expectation that a Beatles special should resemble A Hard Day’s Night, which was scripted and directed by professionals. Magical Mystery Tour was more like the experimental material that was then appearing in the underground film movement, and viewers watching it as a Boxing Day entertainment, expecting something closer to classic television shows, did not know what to make of it. Later critics have been kinder, with some noting that the idea of musicians controlling their own film foreshadowed later experiments.
The EP and the album
The music was released separately. In the UK, six songs appeared in early December 1967 as a double EP with a booklet, a format that was unusual by then. In the United States, Capitol issued an album in late November 1967, which combined the six film songs on one side with other 1967 singles, including “Strawberry Fields Forever”, “Penny Lane”, “Hello, Goodbye”, “All You Need Is Love” and “Baby, You’re a Rich Man”, on the other. The American version sold strongly, and it later became the standard form of the record. When the Beatles’ catalogue was prepared for CD in the 1980s, the album format was adopted for it, which is why many people know the record as a full LP.
The songs have lasted better than the film’s first reputation. “I Am the Walrus” is the most analysed, in part because Lennon wrote deliberately nonsensical lyrics after hearing that a school was studying Beatles lyrics, according to common accounts. The record belongs to the period when the Beatles were exploring the psychedelic experimentation of the year, even as the film’s whimsy sometimes sat awkwardly with it.
Where it stands
Magical Mystery Tour was not the failure it seemed in January 1968, and was not the masterpiece defenders sometimes suggest. It is better understood as a risk by a group who had been told for years that anything they did would succeed. The reaction did not stop the group working, and later in 1968 they moved on to the new projects that led to the White Album. As a record of how a rock band handled creative freedom, and of how a British audience in 1967 responded, it remains an interesting document.