Magical Mystery Tour (Stereo - 2009 remaster)

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Disc 1

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About

From the liner notes:

The Beatles devised, wrote and directed a television film called Magical Mystery Tour, which was broadcast on BBC TV at Christmas, 1967. It featured six new songs and these were released in the UK on the unique format of a double- EP on 8th December. Two seven inch records with three songs on each – were presented in a gatefold sleeve with a 28- page booklet of photos from the film, lyrics and the story told in a comic strip. As with albums, record buyers were offered the choice of a mono or stereo version. However, in the USA and some other countries, the EP format was no longer considered viable. Instead, the film songs appeared on one side of a twelve inch disc with the reverse side’s five tracks drawn from recent singles that had never surfaced on an LP. The album was eventually released in the UK in November, 1976 and was added to the ‘core’ Beatles catalogue when their music was transferred to CD in 1987. 

A perfect companion to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Magical Mystery Tour album rounds up all the other songs released in 1967. The double A -sided single ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ /’Penny Lane’ was released in February – the first new Beatles material for six months. ‘All You Need Is Love’ followed it in July – issued five weeks after Sgt. Pepper. An anthem for ‘the summer of love’, it was first heard on 25th June, 1967 by a massive global audience watching the historic TV programme Our World the first satellite link-up between countries from all five continents. Their sixteenth single ‘Hello, Goodbye’ had arrived in the shops at the end of November, 1967. 

By Christmas, The Beatles were at number one with ‘Hello, Goodbye’ and at number two with Magical Mystery Tour. ‘I Am The Walrus’ was on the flip-side of the single and also part of the EP package and so, for three weeks, the same song occupied the top two positions of the British chart. In the States, the Magical Mystery Tour album reached number one in the first chart of January, 1968 and stayed there for eight weeks. Its initial run in the Top LPs chart lasted for 59 weeks and it re-entered the list several times until the summer of 1970. 

Magical Mystery Tour contained the colourful recordings of what is often described as The Beatles’ ‘psychedelic’ period. At the end of 1968, the stark white cover of their new album signalled they had, once again, overturned any expectations of what they might do next … 
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Recording Notes 

Produced by George Martin
Orchestrations by George Martin
Principal Engineers: Geoff Emerick & Ken Scott 

The title track of Magical Mystery Tour was started on 25th April, 1967 – five weeks before the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and only four days after that LP was finished. The other songs on this album were recorded over a long period. The earliest ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ – dates from November 1966; the last – ‘Hello, Goodbye’ – from October of the following year. However, work on five of the six songs featured in the film was concentrated between August and October, 1967. 

The sessions for the film songs continued the experimentation evident throughout the recording of Sgt. Pepper. The Beatles’ ideas for arrangements were often a step ahead of what technology could provide. But it was a challenge that George Martin and the Abbey Road engineers rose to as ambitious ideas were converted into reality. Not surprisingly, the intricacy of their songs demanded more tracks than were available on a four-track tape and so extra ones were created by ‘bouncing down’. This process involved copying the first four tracks to another tape and simultaneously combining some of them to leave free as many tracks as were needed for additional overdubs. ‘Bouncing down’ was repeated several times to accommodate a complicated arrangement and, on this album, all the titles needed the procedure. Three songs even required copying to a fourth tape. 

One of these was ‘I Am The Walrus’, which evolved over nine unique tracks. These consisted of drums with tambourine, bass and additional drums, guitar, electric piano, lead vocal, eight violins, four cellos, three horns with contra bass clarinet and a choir of sixteen voices. There was a final overdub, which was only added during the mono mix. The sound of dialogue from a live radio broadcast being faded in and out of the song was not recorded on the four-track tape and so it meant it could not be replicated during the mix to stereo. 

The solution was to edit to the mono mix at the point where the radio effect first occurs but change the mono to fake stereo using ADT (Artificial! Automatic Double Tracking). The mock stereo continues until near the end of the song when it returns to mono and is panned between left and right. 

During 1967, there were a few occasions when The Beatles were unable to use Abbey Road at short notice and so they moved to independent studios in London. Despite visits to Olympic, De Lane Lea and Chappell, they still spent most of their time working in Studios Two and Three at Abbey Road. 

This remastered album has been created from the original stereo analogue master tapes. 

Remastered by Guy Massey and Steve Rooke
Project Co-ordinator: Allan Rouse 

Thanks to Simon Gibson 

Historical Notes: Kevin Howlett and Mike Heatley 
Recording Notes: Allan Rouse and Kevin Howlett 
Project management for EMI Records Ltd: Wendy Day and Guy Hayden 

All songs published by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC. 

copyright protection. All rights reserved. 
Artwork © 2009 Apple Corps Ltd. All photographs ©Apple Corps Ltd. 

Album Redesign: Drew Lorimer
Photo Retouching: Gavin O’Neill 

Photo editing and research: Aaron Bremner and Dorcas Lynn