All of which leads to the question that looms so large lo these many years later: How the heck did this turd get dropped? The focus of this current promotional push, however, is the movie-that chaotic hodgepodge of muddled scenes of the boys in weird animal costumes gallivanting in the English countryside, sashaying down a grand staircase dressed in white tails and top hats, ogling the girls at a strip club while the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band performs a tune called “Death Cab for Cutie” onstage and meandering hither and yon in a tour bus full of “typical” English sightseers, the caricatures of which are unkind to say the least. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band-which this critic maintains is not only the most overrated album in the band’s catalog, but in all of rock history. The unheralded gem here is “Flying,” one of the Beatles’ rare instrumentals and even rarer whole-group compositions.Īs an album, Magical Mystery Tour ranks well below the band at its absolute best, Revolver and Rubber Soul, though it’s certainly more rewarding than Let It Be, Yellow Submarine or, arguably, Sgt. Lennon’s “I Am the Walrus” is one of his lesser psychedelic fantasies Macca’s “The Fool on the Hill” is one of his loveliest ballads, though “Your Mother Should Know” is another cloying Tin Pan Alley-type ditty a la “She’s Leaving Home” and “When I’m Sixty-Four” the title track is what it is (and what was needed to frame the film) and “Blue Jay Way” finds George Harrison lost in a psychedelic fog sans rhythm or melody. The tunes recorded for the film are less consistent and less satisfying. The single sides include two John Lennon classics, the otherworldy “Strawberry Fields Forever” and the searing and vastly underappreciated “Baby, You’re a Rich Man,” as well as the hippie-dippy sing-along “All You Need Is Love.” For his part, Paul McCartney gives us one pop gem, “Hello, Goodbye,” and one of his less annoying romps through rose-colored nostalgia, “Penny Lane.” with recent singles as a more satisfying LP, and that set is now considered the “official” release in the remastered catalog. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band that June at the start of the fabled Summer of Love, the Beatles recorded six new songs for their nascent film project. In the second half of one of the busiest years in their career, following the release of Sgt. (Oh, where was Richard Lester when they needed him?)īefore we get to the movie, let us briefly look at the album, which is how most American fans know the project. No matter it does little to illuminate how the Fab Four went so horribly wrong with the first film they produced themselves. ![]() ![]() The documentary is featured on the new DVD, though it inexplicably is shortened to 19 minutes. ![]() The PBS series Great Performances finally aired the 52-minute film on American television for the first time a few weeks ago, preceded by a new hour-long documentary about its making. And make no mistake: a spectacular, disastrous, largely incomprehensible and nearly unwatchable mess it was and remains. Nearly half a century on, the fascinating thing about Magical Mystery Tour the film is the rare glimpse it offers into one of the best rock bands of all time at its unadulterated worst.
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