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Behind The Scenes Of The Beatles' 'Magical Mystery Tour'

David Bianculli

The Beatles look out of the Magical Mystery Tour coach skylight, on location in England in September 1967. Apple Films Ltd/Channel Thirteen hide caption

The Beatles look out of the Magical Mystery Tour coach skylight, on location in England in September 1967.

On Friday night on PBS, Great Performances presents a documentary about the making of a Beatles TV special from 1967 — Magical Mystery Tour — then shows a restored version of that special . Magical Mystery Tour has the music from the U.S. album of the same name, but it's not the album. It's a musical comedy fantasy about the Beatles and a busload of tourists taking a trip to unknown destinations.

It was written and produced in 1967, which was an incredibly fertile period for the Beatles. "Strawberry Fields Forever" came out that year, as well as "Penny Lane" and the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. That was followed, a month later, by the live TV premiere of "All You Need is Love," broadcast globally. The Beatles, it seemed, could do no wrong. And then they did Magical Mystery Tour, which was televised by the BBC the day after Christmas — on Boxing Day — as a holiday special. A quarter of the British population watched it — and many of those hated it.

Back then, the 53-minute program was filmed in color but wasn't broadcast that way. Imagine the Sgt. Pepper cover in black and white, and you can imagine how much was lost in the translation. Reception to the TV special was so poor that the show wasn't even picked up in the United States — just the soundtrack. Eventually, the special was syndicated to some local TV stations and toured the college film circuit along with Reefer Madness. That's when I first saw it. But on a national level, Magical Mystery Tour has never been televised in the United States — until now.

On Friday — as always, check local listings — Magical Mystery Tour will be preceded by the new one-hour companion documentary , Magical Mystery Tour Revisited. This may be the first case on record in which a documentary about a film is longer than the film itself — but it's worth it.

The documentary, produced by Jonathan Clyde of Apple Films and directed by Francis Hanly, is wonderfully thorough. It explains how the idea for Magical Mystery Tour came about, and how Paul McCartney originally drew the concept as a pie chart — then shows the chart. It covers the origins of each number written specifically for the show, from the title song and "The Fool on the Hill" to "I Am the Walrus" and "Your Mother Should Know." It presents lots of outtakes and new interviews with McCartney and Ringo Starr, as well as Martin Scorsese, Terry Gilliam and Peter Fonda. It also includes a vintage interview with George Harrison, whose assessment of the 1967 TV special is as unfiltered as the program itself.

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It's a fine documentary — better, to be honest, than Magical Mystery Tour itself. But Magical Mystery Tour is so much fun to watch if you're a Beatles fan, that it serves up one joy after another. John Lennon serving shovels of spaghetti as a waiter in a dream sequence. John and George in a strip club, watching the house band singing a song called "Death Cab for Cutie" — which, incidentally, inspired the name of a much more recent rock band. And the closing production number, "Your Mother Should Know," which has the Beatles in white suits, dancing in unison down a giant staircase.

In addition to the PBS double feature, Magical Mystery Tour is also now available as a deluxe boxed set from Apple. It includes Blu-ray and DVD versions of the original special, a vastly shortened version of the documentary, and lots of extras, including outtakes and complete scenes that were cut out of the program before its 1967 premiere. These extras are every bit as entertaining as Magical Mystery Tour, and one segment is a minor revelation: singer-songwriter Ivor Cutler, seated at an ornate white organ in the middle of the English countryside, performing his composition "I'm Going in a Field." It must have been hypnotically bizarre then. It's hypnotically bizarre now .

It's no secret that I'm almost ridiculous in my enthusiasm for the Beatles. But for me, all this new Magical Mystery Tour material -- the restored TV special, the documentary, the boxed set — is like a perfectly timed holiday gift. The boxed set is expensive — but the Great Performances double feature is free. All you need is ... a TV set.

• The Beatles

‘Magical Mystery Tour’: Inside Beatles’ Psychedelic Album Odyssey

By Douglas Wolk

Douglas Wolk

The year leading up to the release of the Magical Mystery Tour album in November 1967 was turbulent but fantastically fertile for the Beatles – they were working on its songs more or less simultaneously with the ones that ended up on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the Yellow Submarine soundtrack. With touring no longer a question, they had the luxury of fine-tuning their songs at length in the studio; the same band that had recorded its first album in a single day was now tinkering with individual recordings for weeks on end. 

If Sgt. Pepper was a blueprint for the Beatles’ new utopianism – a culture of vivid sensory experience, for which they could be the entertainers and court jesters – the Magical Mystery Tour project was an attempt to literally take that idea into the world. Paul McCartney ‘s concept was that the Beatles would drive around the British countryside with their friends, film the result and shape that into a movie over which they would have total creative control. But like a lot of Sixties attempts to turn utopian theory into practice, the movie fell on its nose: The Beatles simply weren’t filmmakers.

“You gotta do everything with a point or an aim, but we tried this one without anything – with no point and no aim,” McCartney admitted the day after it premiered. The Magical Mystery Tour soundtrack, on the other hand, did what the movie was supposed to do – despite being a grab bag of the group’s 1967 singles and songs recorded specifically for the film, it holds together surprisingly well as an addendum to Pepper , giving us an image of the psychedelic Beatles refining their enhanced perceptions into individual pop songs so potent that they changed the whole landscape of music.

The songs that would end up on Magical Mystery Tour began taking shape in late 1966, well before McCartney was struck by his cinematic vision. From November 24th, 1966, to mid-January 1967, the Beatles worked extensively on a pair of new songs, intended for what would become Sgt. Pepper : John Lennon ‘s “Strawberry Fields Forever” and McCartney’s “Penny Lane,” both reminiscences of the Liverpool of their childhood. By the end of January, though, EMI was demanding a new Beatles single – there hadn’t been one since “Yellow Submarine” the previous August, an impossibly long gap in those days. George Martin wasn’t happy about pulling “Penny Lane” and “”Strawberry Fields Forever” off the album-in-progress, but there wasn’t much else in the can. Released on February 17th, the single was a worldwide hit, and a statement of purpose for the rest of the Beatles’ recordings that year: reflective, druggy, a little nostalgic, and more inventively orchestrated and arranged than anything else around.

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Magical Mystery Tour (1967)

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Let yourself go — The Beatles will come and take you away in Magical Mystery Tour.

Originally produced for television, this short film as an off-the-wall road movie starring the Beatles and a couple dozen friends on a psychedelic bus tour.

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Magical Mystery Tour

Released 26th December 1968

"We said to everyone: 'Be on the coach on Monday morning.' I told them all, 'We're going to make it up as we go along, but don't worry - it'll be all right.'" Paul

"It was good. We would get off the bus: 'Let's stop here,' and go and do this and that. Go on the beach, draw a heart, dance. Then we'd put the music to it. It took two weeks to film and a long time to edit." Ringo

"In the time that had elapsed since A Hard Day's Night and Help! - although it was probably only two years - it was as if we'd gone through five hundred years mentally. We didn't see any way of making a similar film of four jolly lads nipping around singing catchy little tunes. It had to be something that had more meaning." George

"They thought we were stepping out of our roles. They'd like just to keep us in cardboard suits that were designed for us. Whatever image they have for themselves, they're disappointed if we don't fulfil it. And we never do, so there's always a lot of disappointment." John

Away in the sky, beyond the clouds, live 4 or 5 Magicians. By casting wonderful spells they turn the Most Ordinary Coach Trip into a Magical Mystery Tour. If you let yourself go, the Magicians will take you away to marvellous places. Maybe you've been on a Magical Mystery Tour without even realising it. Are you ready to go?

The Beatles produced this film around a coach journey across England. It features a series of musical vignettes, interspersed with scenes of comedy and fantasy. It includes tracks such as Magical Mystery Tour, The Fool On the Hill, Your Mother Should Know, and I Am The Walrus.

" Having been involved in feature films such as A Hard Day’s Night and Help! The Beatles wanted to make a film that was in keeping with the spirit of the times. So in the summer of 1967 we came up with a scenario that would keep the project extremely freewheeling.

At the time Richard Lester, the director of our first two films, was quoted in Rolling Stone as saying “ They should make their next film themselves, just the way they make an album. I mean that it should grow organically rather than having the professional cult of film making superimposed upon it. ”

I took over most of the responsibility of pulling this together. We remembered mystery tours from when we were growing up in Liverpool which would take people on a bus trip without them knowing the ultimate destination. So that’s what we did. We wrote a basic story outline starting with a hand drawn pie-chart, recorded some songs, engaged some likely looking actors and along with a few friends set off in our brightly coloured bus heading towards the south west coast of England.

Most of the dialogue was improvised and would involve us talking to the actors, deciding a basic idea for a scene and filming it right away. None of us knew our destination, as in the mystery tours of our childhood, but we had a very enjoyable few days and then returned to London to sort out all the footage we had shot.

It turned out to be a wacky, impromptu romp that puzzled a few people at the time but as the years have gone by it now stands as a fond reminder of that period in our lives."

Paul McCartney, August 2012.

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The Magical Mystery Tour

Details: 1967, UK, 55 mins

Direction: The Beatles

With: Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band ,  Ivor Cutler ,  The Beatles and Victor Spinetti

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Related articles, fab furore: is it time to re-evaluate the beatles' magical mystery tour.

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The Beatles perform I Am The Walrus in Magical Mystery Tour - video

In this clip from their 1967 film Magical Mystery Tour, the Beatles perform I Am The Walrus

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Magical Mystery Tour

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Magical Mystery Tour streaming: where to watch online?

You can buy "Magical Mystery Tour" on Apple TV as download or rent it on Apple TV online.

Originally produced for television, this short film as an off-the-wall road movie starring the Beatles and a couple dozen friends on a psychedelic bus tour.

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Magical Mystery Tour Reviews

Magical Mystery Tour might not be a masterpiece or have a real script but it's still a film that's worth watching--plus, the music rocks.

Full Review | Jan 25, 2022

My feelings on finding myself almost alone in praising the Beatles television film Magical Mystery Tour are amazement, and the sad conviction that as a mass the public is more stupid and ignorant than it is as individuals, and does not like to be told so.

Full Review | Mar 21, 2018

Entirely larky...for Beatlefans, what's not to like? [Blu-ray]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 10, 2012

A big, nasty, ugly, boring mistake. With killer musical numbers.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/10 | Sep 16, 2010

A must-see for Beatles buffs and anyone interested in how the '60s looked as they were happening (rather than in slick, retrospective recreations); others might want to take a pass.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 6, 2007

Fun, psychedlic, and great Beatles music.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 9, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 6, 2005

Here's a clue for you all...the Walrus was Paul!

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 2, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 12, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 7, 2005

I would recommend a new generation of Beatle fans to put MMT: The Movie near the bottom of their to-do list, but never to scratch it off entirely. It remains a necessary curiosity item and slightly ahead of its time.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 17, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Aug 30, 2002

Bizarre, plotless, mishmash that still fascinates

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 21, 2002

As 60 minutes of self-indulgent psychedelics, it's nearly impossible to watch.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

Magical Mystery Tour (1967 TV Movie)

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Magical Mystery Tour

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Screenplay by Paul McCartney and Mal Evans Directed by Paul McCarney Co-Directed by John Lennon and George Harrison John Lennon - Himself Paul McCartney - Himself George Harrison - Himself Ringo Starr - Himself Jan Carson- Stripper George Claydon- Photographer Ivor Cutler -- Mr. Bloodvessel Shirley Evans - Accordionist Nat Jackley - Rubber Man Nicola Hale - Little Girl Jessie Robins - Ringo's Aunt Derek Royle - Jolly Jimmy Victor Spinetti - Army Sergeant Miranda Forbes - Hostess Wendy Winters Maggie Wright - Starlet Nat Jackley - Happy Nat

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