Magical Mystery Tour

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Editorial reviews

Album Description
Recorded at Abbey Road Studios, Olympic Sound Studios, De Lane Lea and Chappell Recording Studios, London, England between November 24, 1966 and November 7, 1967. The first six songs on Magical Mystery Tour were the soundtrack to the Beatles' TV movie of the same name. The film was an experimental mess, but the experimental pop of the album included 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 well have 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. EMI. 2005.

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Amazon.com
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. (I consider Joni Mitchell's "Car on the Hill" from Court and Spark to be a companion piece about sitting in the Hollywood Hills, waiting for somebody to show up.) 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

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Customer reviews

review by: jumbuk date: 2008-11-25 rating:
Reliving the 60s
I had the original vinyl EP (wonder where it is now?) and I bought the CD a year or two back mainly for nostalgia.

All the Beatles stuff from around this time has a strange feel. It's a combination of that very English sound and a kind of world-weary feel that suddenly they had aged 100 years in the space of a few months. The songs have a dreamy spaced out feel but at the same time can be very aware and simultaneously almost childish. Listening to this again, it's hard to believe that they had been writing songs like Please Please Me only a couple of years back. Life would never be the same again.

. . . Oh yeah, and it's a good album, even if it's cobbled together from the EP plus a few singles!

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review by: date: 2008-11-16 rating:
second cd's are no good
I ordered Magical Mystery Tour at a second-hand price. After a minimal amount of playing, it became useless. Unplayable. I will never do this again.

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review by: date: 2008-11-01 rating:
Setback
The Fab Four lost their manager, Brian Epstein, in late August, 1967. Somewhat rudderless, and with time on their hands because they were no longer performing live, the group needed a new project after their groundbreaking "Sgt. Pepper" release earlier that summer. They decided to make a TV movie, and, unfortunately, decided to handle it themselves. "Magical Mystery Tour" was filmed hastily in September 1967, and demonstrates, conclusively, that, for all their musical brilliance, the Beatles themselves were no filmmakers. "Tour" is basically a nonsensical mishmash lacking "Pepper"'s unifying structure of an alter-ego to the band, and the music, despite major works such as Paul McCartney's poignant "Fool On The Hill" and John Lennon's "I Am The Walrus" (a signature song of the psychedelic era), is, on the whole, a notch below the great mid-period efforts "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver", and below "Pepper" as well--the preceding three studio albums.
"Magical Mystery Tour" aired on the BBC over the Christmas 1967 holidays, in glorious black-and-white, and was not shown at all on a major network in the US for years. The soundtrack was originally released as a double-EP in the UK. The U.S. release (which actually preceded the EPs) was a full-length LP which collected the rest of the Beatles' non-Pepper 1967 output on the second side, and included a rather-sappy cartoon booklet illustrating the movie. This full-length LP eventually replaced the double-EP as the official "Magical Mystery Tour" release, and is crucial to any Beatles collection because of that second side, which collects major singles like "Penny Lane" (Paul's sunny, fanciful depiction of an actual Liverpool roundabout) and its flip side, marketed as another A-side, John's druggy, dreamy "Strawberry Fields Forever", another real location from the Fab Four's native city--in this case, an orphanage. "Fields" is an important song for its use of recording studio technique--two different versions of the song are clipped together. As with "Walrus", it remains a benchmark of psychedelia, as created by the flagship group of the era. This music, dating from the same time period as the "Sgt. Pepper" sessions, is part and parcel of that period in the Fab Four's musical development.

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review by: date: 2008-10-24 rating:
MILES OF ENTERTAINMENT
I HAVE MOST OF THE BEATLES ON LP'S - BUT NOW THAT I AM A SENIOR CITIZEN, I GO FOR DAILY WALKS & TAKE MY "CD" WALKMAN WITH ME, THE BEATLES MAKE WALKING A "BREEZE" BY ENTERTAINING ME! GLAD YOU ARE AROUND AMAZON!!!!!!


review by: floyd date: 2008-10-10 rating:
The Beatles, "Magical Mystery Tour", The Beatles 1967
The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour often is not mentioned due too the fact Sgt. Peppers came out that same year. On this album The Beatles are obviously becoming more experimental and using many more affects and trying too be more psychedelic. Well it worked on songs such as, "Flying", and "Blue Jay Way", are extremly psychedelic songs using lots of affects. This album was also the last of The Beatles making really acid rock albums and after 1967 The Beatles started too fall apart. The songs on here have all remained classics, "Hello Goodbye", "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Penny Lane", and "All You Need Is Love". This album is for any of those who have a taste for psychedelic music buy today and is for any Beatles fan.

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