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- Timeline This film has been released in 1967
- Release date:
- Dec 26, 1967
- Filming date:
- Sept 11 - Nov 3, 1967
- Filming location:
- Cornwalls, Kent, Weybridge, London, Nice (France)
Timeline
More from year 1967
Articles
“Magical Mystery Tour” screening in London
Oct 02, 2012
“Magical Mystery Tour” premiere on BBC 1
Dec 26, 1967
Filming of “Magical Mystery Tour” • Day 16
Nov 03, 1967
Filming of “Magical Mystery Tour” • Day 15
Oct 31, 1967
Filming of “Magical Mystery Tour” • Day 14
Oct 29, 1967
Filming of “Magical Mystery Tour” • Day 13
Oct 01, 1967
Editing of “Magical Mystery Tour”
September 25 to early December 1967
Filming of “Magical Mystery Tour” • Day 12
Sep 24, 1967
Filming of “Magical Mystery Tour” • Day 11
Sep 23, 1967
Filming of “Magical Mystery Tour” • Day 10
Sep 22, 1967
Filming of “Magical Mystery Tour” • Day 9
Sep 21, 1967
Filming of “Magical Mystery Tour” • Day 8
Sep 20, 1967
Filming of “Magical Mystery Tour” • Day 7
Sep 19, 1967
Filming of “Magical Mystery Tour” • Day 6
Sep 18, 1967
Filming of “Magical Mystery Tour” • Day 5
Sep 15, 1967
Filming of “Magical Mystery Tour” • Day 4
Sep 14, 1967
Filming of “Magical Mystery Tour” • Day 3
Sep 13, 1967
Filming of “Magical Mystery Tour” • Day 2
Sep 12, 1967
Filming of “Magical Mystery Tour” • Day 1
Sep 11, 1967
The Beatles meet to discuss their future
Sep 01, 1967
Alistair Taylor investigates the opportunity for a “Magical Mystery Tour”
Second half of April 1967
Paul McCartney and Mal Evans travel from Los Angeles to London
April 11-12, 1967
Paul McCartney and Jane Asher’s Denver vacation
April 06-08, 1967
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About
From Wikipedia:
Magical Mystery Tour is a 1967 British made-for-television musical film directed by and starring the Beatles. It is the third film that starred the band and depicts a group of people on a coach tour who experience strange happenings caused by magicians. The premise was inspired by Ken Kesey’s Furthur adventures with the Merry Pranksters and the then-popular coach trips from Liverpool to see the Blackpool Lights. Paul McCartney is credited with conceptualising and leading the project.
Much of Magical Mystery Tour was shot in and around RAF West Malling, a decommissioned military airfield in Kent, and the script was largely improvised. Shooting proceeded on the basis of a mostly handwritten collection of ideas, sketches and situations. The film is interspersed with musical interludes, which include the Beatles performing “I Am the Walrus” wearing animal masks and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band performing Vivian Stanshall and Neil Innes’ “Death Cab for Cutie”.
The film originally aired on BBC1, in black-and-white, on Boxing Day, 26 December 1967. A colour transmission followed on BBC2 on 5 January 1968. It was poorly received by critics and audiences, although its accompanying soundtrack was a commercial and critical success. The film received an American theatrical release in 1974 by New Line Cinema, and in select theatres worldwide in 2012 by Apple Films.
Background
The film was an attempt to combine the free-wheeling fun of Ken Kesey’s 1964 cross-country American bus tour aboard Furthur with the Merry Pranksters, and the then-popular coach (bus) trips from Liverpool to see the Blackpool Lights. John Lennon stated that “if stage shows were to be out, we wanted something to replace them. Television was the obvious answer.” Most of the band members have said that the initial idea was Paul McCartney’s, although he stated, “I’m not sure whose idea Magical Mystery Tour was. It could have been mine, but I’m not sure whether I want to take the blame for it! We were all agreed on it – but a lot of the material at that time could have been my idea.” According to McCartney, he had been creating home movies and this was a source of inspiration for Magical Mystery Tour.
The script of Magical Mystery Tour was largely improvised. The Beatles gathered together a group of people for the cast and camera crew, and told them to “be on the coach on Monday morning”. Ringo Starr recalled: “Paul had a great piece of paper – just a blank piece of white paper with a circle on it. The plan was: ‘We start here, and we’ve got to do something here …’ We filled it in as we went along.”
Plot
The situation is that of a group of people on a British mystery tour in a 1967 coach, focusing mostly on Richard B. Starkey (Ringo Starr) and his recently widowed Auntie Jessie (Jessie Robins). Other group members on the bus include the tour director, Jolly Jimmy Johnson (Derek Royle); the tour hostess, Miss Wendy Winters (Miranda Forbes, credited as Mandy Weet); the conductor, Buster Bloodvessel (Ivor Cutler); and the other Beatles (John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison).
During the course of the tour, “strange things begin to happen” at the whim of “four or five magicians”, four of whom are played by the Beatles themselves and the fifth by the band’s long-time road manager Mal Evans.
During the journey, Starkey and his Aunt Jessie argue continually. Aunt Jessie begins to have daydreams of falling in love with Buster Bloodvessel, who displays increasingly eccentric and disturbing behaviour. The tour involves several strange activities, such as an impromptu race in which each of the passengers employs a different mode of transportation (some run, a few jump into cars, a group of people pedal a long bike, while Starkey ends up beating them all with the bus). In one scene, the tour group walk through what appears to be a British Army recruitment office and are greeted by the army drill sergeant (Victor Spinetti). (Paul McCartney appears briefly as “Major McCartney”, on whose desk rests a sign reading “I you WAS”.) The sergeant, shouting incomprehensibly, appears to instruct the assembled onlookers on how to attack a stuffed cow.
The tour group also crawl into a tiny tent in a field, inside which is a projection theatre. A scene in a restaurant shows a waiter, named Pirandello (played by Lennon), continuously shoveling spaghetti onto the table in front of Aunt Jessie, while arriving guests step out from a lift and walk across the dining tables. The film continues with the tour’s male passengers watching a strip show (Jan Carson of the Raymond Revuebar). The film ends with the Beatles dressed in white tuxedos, highlighting a glamorous old-style dance crowd scene, accompanied by the song “Your Mother Should Know“.
The film is interspersed with musical interludes, which include the Beatles performing “I Am the Walrus” wearing animal masks, Harrison singing “Blue Jay Way” while waiting on Blue Jay Way Road, and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band performing Vivian Stanshall and Neil Innes’ “Death Cab for Cutie” sung by Stanshall.
Production – Filming
Shooting proceeded on the basis of a mostly handwritten collection of ideas, sketches and situations, which McCartney called the “Scrupt”. Magical Mystery Tour was ultimately the shortest of all Beatles films, although almost ten hours of footage was shot over a two-week period. The core of the film was shot between 11 September and 25 September 1967.
Lennon recalled in a later interview, “We knew most of the scenes we wanted to include, but we bent our ideas to fit the people concerned, once we got to know our cast. If somebody wanted to do something we hadn’t planned, they went ahead. If it worked, we kept it in.” At one point, Lennon had a dream in which he was a waiter piling spaghetti on a woman’s plate, so the sequence was filmed and included in the movie. Some of the older actors, such as Nat Jackley, were not familiar with productions without a script and were disappointed by the lack of one.
Much of Magical Mystery Tour was shot in and around RAF West Malling, a decommissioned military airfield in Kent, as it was not possible to book any London film studio at short notice. Many of the interior scenes, such as the ballroom sequence for “Your Mother Should Know”, were filmed in the disused aircraft hangars. The exteriors, such as the “I Am the Walrus” sequence and the impromptu race, were shot on the runways and taxi aprons. RAF Air Training Corps cadets can be seen marching in some scenes, and during “I Am the Walrus” a RAF Avro Shackleton is seen flying above the group. Some scenes were also shot in the nearby town of West Malling.
The mystery tour itself was shot throughout the West Country of England, including Devon and Cornwall, including three days filming women in bikinis at the Atlantic Hotel, Newquay. Most of the footage was not used in the finished film. The striptease sequence was shot at Paul Raymond’s Raymond Revuebar in London’s Soho district, and the sequence for “The Fool on the Hill” was shot around Nice, in the south of France.
The coach used in the film, a Plaxton-bodied Bedford VAL, carried the registration number URO 913E. The vehicle was new to coach company Fox of Hayes in 1967. The Hard Rock Cafe acquired the coach in 1988, and the vehicle is now completely refurbished. In the race, Starr himself drives the bus around the airfield racetrack. During the filming, an ever greater number of cars followed the colourful, hand-lettered bus hoping to see what its passengers were up to, until a running traffic jam developed. The spectacle ended after Lennon angrily tore the lettering off the sides of the bus.
Production – Editing
The eleven weeks that followed shooting were mostly spent on editing the film from ten hours to 52 minutes.Scenes that were filmed but not included in the final cut include:
For the psychedelic visual sequence during the song “Flying“, some of the flying footage from Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film Dr. Strangelove was re-used. As told by editor Roy Benson in the BBC Radio Documentary “Celluloid Beatles”, the film lacked footage to cover the sequence for the song “Flying“. Benson had access to the aerial footage filmed for the Dr. Strangelove B52 sequences, which was stored at Shepperton Studios. The use of the footage prompted Kubrick to call Benson to complain.
Reception
Magical Mystery Tour was broadcast in the UK on 26 December on BBC1, which at the time only broadcast in black and white for technical reasons. George Martin, the band’s producer, later said: “When it came out originally on British television, it was a colour film but shown in black and white, because they didn’t have colour on BBC1 in those days. So it looked awful and was a disaster.” Lennon later said: “What the BBC – stupid idiots – did, they showed it in black and white first. Can you imagine, around Christmas? And then they [the critics] reviewed it in black and white. It’s like reviewing a mono version of a stereo record.” It was the Beatles’ first critical failure. The film had a repeated showing on 5 January 1968, this time broadcast in colour, on BBC2, but there were only about 200,000 colour TV receivers in the UK at the time. As a result of the unfavourable reviews, networks in the US declined to show the film there. Beatles aide Peter Brown blamed McCartney for its failure. Brown said that during a private screening for NEMS management staff, the reaction had been “unanimous … it was awful”, yet McCartney was convinced that the film would be warmly received, and ignored Brown’s advice to scrap the project and save the band from embarrassment.
On 27 December, McCartney appeared on ITV’s The David Frost Programme to defend the film. He was introduced by David Frost as the “man most responsible” for Magical Mystery Tour. Hunter Davies, the Beatles’ official biographer at the time, said: “It was the first time in memory that any artist felt obliged to make a public apology for his work.” McCartney later spoke to the press, saying: “We don’t say it was a good film. It was our first attempt. If we goofed, then we goofed. It was a challenge and it didn’t come off. We’ll know better next time.” He also said, “I mean, you couldn’t call the Queen’s speech a gas, either, could you?” Writing in 1981, sociomusicologist Simon Frith said that the film was symptomatic of the transformation of “pop” into “rock”, the latter being concerned with art and self-expression over mass entertainment. He described Magical Mystery Tour as “a willfully inexplicable TV special which put most of the audience to sleep” and added: “The Beatles were no longer in control of their time. Whereas they had once been able to seize on any idea and ‘Beatlefy’ it, make it common currency, they were now running vainly after a trend that was determined to leave the common audience behind.”
Magical Mystery Tour had its first US presentation at the Fillmore East in New York City on 11 August 1968, shown at 8 and 10 pm, as part of a fundraiser for the Liberation News Service. It was not seen in commercial theatres in the US until 1974, when New Line Cinema acquired the rights for limited theatrical and non-theatrical distribution.
McCartney later said of the film: “Looking back on it, I thought it was all right. I think we were quite pleased with it.” He also commented in The Beatles Anthology DVD that the film features the band’s only video performance of “I Am the Walrus”. In a 1993 interview, Harrison said the negative response from the press was “understandable too because it wasn’t a brilliant scripted thing that was executed well. It was like a little home movie, really. An elaborate home movie.” As of 2019, the film carries a 64% approval rating at the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 14 reviews from professional critics, with an average rating of 5.3/10.
In The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe comments on the similarity between Magical Mystery Tour and the exploits of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. In 1978, the film was parodied by the Rutles in their Tragical History Tour, “a self-indulgent TV movie about four Oxford history professors on a tour around Rutland tea-shops”. In his Diaries 1969–1979: The Python Years, Michael Palin said that the Monty Python team had considered showing the film, which by then had become commercially forgotten, as a curtain-raiser to their own 1975 comedy film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. They received permission from all four Beatles to view the film again, and did so at the Apple offices on 10 January 1975. Although the Pythons were interested, the idea did not go ahead.
Following the January 1968 colour screening, the film was not televised in the UK until 21 December 1979, when it opened BBC2’s “The Beatles at Christmas” season. Its next UK broadcast took place on 1 November 1993 as part of MTV Europe’s “Beatles Day”.
Comic strip adaptation
A comic strip adaptation of the film’s plot was drawn by British caricaturist Bob Gibson and printed in the sleeve of the Magical Mystery Tour soundtrack album.
Bus tour of Liverpool
A tourist bus tour of Liverpool, marketed as the Magical Mystery Tour, has operated since 1983. The tour takes place on a replica of the Magical Mystery Tour bus and visits places around the city that are associated with the Beatles and their songs, such as their childhood homes, the Cavern Club, Strawberry Field and Penny Lane. The tour was originally operated by a Bedford VAL coach as in the film, but more modern vehicles are now used.
Restoration
The critical reception in 1967 had been so poor that no one had bothered to properly archive a negative, and later re-release versions had to be copied from poor-quality prints. By the end of the 1980s, MPI Media Group, through rights holder Apple Corps, had released the movie on video, and a DVD release followed many years later. It was also released in the VHS format.
A digitally restored version of the film was broadcast in the UK on BBC Two and BBC HD on 6 October 2012, following an Arena documentary on its making. Both were shown in the United States as part of Great Performances on PBS ten weeks later on 14 December.
On 22 August 2012, Apple Corps (via Apple Films) announced a re-release of the film on DVD and Blu-ray along with a limited theatrical release, remastered with 5.1 surround sound. The DVD/Blu-ray was released on 8 October worldwide, with the exception of North America (9 October). The new release included an audio commentary from McCartney and special features including interviews (from former Beatles and others involved with the project) and never-before-seen footage. Also released is a deluxe edition “collectors box” featuring the film on both DVD and Blu-ray, in addition to a 60-page book, and a reproduction of the original mono UK double 7″ vinyl EP.
The 2012 remastered Magical Mystery Tour DVD entered the Billboard Top Music Video chart at number 1 for the week ending 27 October 2012. […]
‘Magical Mystery Tour’ was co-written by John and I, very much in our fairground period. One of our great inspirations was always the barker. ‘Roll up! Roll up!’ The promise of something: the newspaper ad that says ‘guaranteed not to crack’, the ‘high class’ butcher, ‘satisfaction guaranteed’ from ‘Sgt. Pepper’. ‘Come inside,’ ‘Step inside, Love’; you’ll find that pervades a lot of my songs. If you look at all the Lennon—McCartney things, it’s a thing we do a lot.
I used to go to the fairgrounds as a kid, the waltzers and the dodgems, but what interested me was the freak shows: the boxing booths, the bearded lady and the sheep with five legs, which actually was a four-legged sheep with one leg sewn on its side. When I touched it, the fellow said, ‘Hey, leave that alone!’ These were the great things of your youth. So much of your writing comes from this period; your golden memories. If I’m stuck for an idea, I can always think of a great summer, think of a time when I went to the seaside. Okay, sand sun waves donkeys laughter. That’s a pretty good scenario for a song.
John and I remembered mystery tours, and we always thought this was a fascinating idea: getting on a bus and not knowing where you were going. Rather romantic and slightly surreal! All these old dears with the blué rinses going off to mysterious places. Generally there’s a crate of ale in the boot of the coach and you sing lots of songs. It’s a charabanc trip. So we took that idea and used it as a basis for a song and the film.
Because those were psychedelic times it had to become a magical mystery tour, a little bit more surreal than the real ones to give us a licence to do it. But it employs all the circus and fairground barkers, ‘Roll up! Roll up!’, which was also a reference to rolling up a joint. We were always sticking those little things in that we knew our friends would get; veiled references to drugs and to trips. ‘Magical Mystery Tour is waiting to take you away,’ so that’s a kind of drug, ‘it’s dying to take you away’ so that’s a Tibetan Book of the Dead reference. We put all these words in and if you were just an ordinary person, it’s a nice bus that’s waiting to take you away, but if you’re tripping, it’s dying, it’s the real tour, the real magical mystery tour. We stuck all that stuff in for our ‘in group’ of friends really.
Magical Mystery Tour was the equivalent of a drug trip and we made the film based on that. “That’ll be good, a far-out mystery tour. Nobody quite knows where they’re going. We can take ’em anywhere we want, man!’ Which was the feeling of the period. ‘They can go in the sky. It can take off!’ In fact, in the early script, which was just a few fireside chats more than a script, the bus was going to actually take off and fly up to the magicians in the clouds, which was us all dressed in red magicians’ costumes, and we’d mess around ina little laboratory being silly for a while.
Paul McCartney – From “Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now” by Barry Miles, 1997
I got the general impression there was something wrong with it. Aren’t we entitled to have a flop? It’s hard, because it’s our first, but we’ll get used to the idea. The lesson is good for us, and we’re not bitter about it.
Paul McCartney – from New Musical Express, January 6, 1968
We got a rough idea of what we wanted, then we got Spotlight, the actors’ directory, choosing actors and actresses who looked about right. We had no idea whether they could act. Ivor Cutler, I liked him. It was a bit like Fellini, just getting faces. But he’s a director, that’s the difference.
We hired a coach, had it painted with Magical Mystery Tour on the side and said, ‘We’ll just go down to Devon, film every day, get off and do some set pieces here and there. We’ll think it up as we went along.’ And I suppose that’s what’s wrong with it. It hasn’t got much structure.
It was cheeky, cos people in film school were dying to make a movie, trained to the hilt, and there was us, the beat boys: ‘Hey, we’ll have a go! I can do that!’
I somehow ended up as the guy who was gonna get it all together, ring ’em, book ’em. Everyone seemed happy to let me do it, I don’t think anyone else wanted the bother. But as a film, generally … if nothing else, just for the ‘I Am the Walrus’ sequence. I think ‘Fool on the Hill’ is good too. A couple of the musical sequences make it. It’s got an anarchic sway that I like.
What happened is that we totally presented it in the wrong way. We had it on Boxing Day, in the traditional Bruce Forsyth slot – you know – which is everyone sitting there after Christmas, just recovering from the piss-up the night before. ‘Uh, what’s on there?’ It’s Brucie: ‘Bring me sunshine … Hey! Having a good Boxing Day?’ But instead it was ‘Maagicalll Mystereee Tooour … Hey maan,’ with eggheads and everything.
People were up in arms. ‘Beatles’ bomb flops!’ Terrible. They came round to my house the next day. ‘What did you think then, Paul?’ ‘Oh, I don’t know, I thought it was rather good.’ Ha! Tried to bluff my way out. I took it in the neck, cos I had kind of directed it. But the credits said ‘Directed by the Beatles’, cos I didn’t want to ego-trip.
Paul McCartney – From “Conversations with McCartney” by Paul du Noyer, 2016
I knew that Paul was really only doing the Mystery Tour as a project to keep the Beatles doing something. He said it was a kind of therapy that he thought would stop them from panicking and make them feel they were continuing as normal—and normal was working.
Tony Bramwell – From “Magical Mystery Tours: My Life with the Beatles“, 2005
The next topic was the Magical Mystery Tour film, which on paper sounded original and creative and all those artistic things, but which looked as if it might turn out to be a nightmare. Alistair Taylor was sent off to hire a sixty-seater coach for the Mystery Tour. […]
“It’s going to be great,” Paul said and they all nodded in agreement. The title track to Magical Mystery Tour was already in the can and sessions for the rest of the soundtrack were booked at Abbey Road. They needed a script. They needed more songs. They needed organization. They needed Brian.
However, Brian was gone. Paul picked up the phone and called Denis O’Dell at Twickenham Studios, to ask him if he would produce Mystery Tour for them. During the conversation, in which John and Paul grabbed the phone from each other, they went even further and asked Denis if he would become head of Apple Films. Paul turned to me. “You can be his assistant, Tone,” he decided. […]
Now that it did look as if we were hurtling ahead into a complex film, George, who had been brooding, suddenly said he wanted to postpone the Magical Mystery Tour. He desperately wanted to go to India to study Hinduism and couldn’t wait. John said, “Yeah, let’s go.” Ringo said he’d go along for the ride. “Listen, we’re gonna to stay here and do the Mystery Tour,” Paul said firmly. “Then we can go to India.” […]
Tony Bramwell – From “Magical Mystery Tours: My Life with the Beatles“, 2005
Paul visualized the film as being the kind of day out we all remembered from our childhood in Liverpool, when our mums would see an ad in the window of the local news agent for “a mystery coach trip.” They were cheap days out to stop us kids from getting bored during the long summer holidays. We nearly always ended up at Blackpool, the traditional northern seaside resort with its piers, its brightly lit fairgrounds and miles of sandy beaches.
“It’s a whole bunch of people, fat ones, thin ones, little ones, mad ones, like you get in real life. It’s what they do, what they talk about, the fun they have, their eccentricities. You can’t script it, it happens,” Paul explained, frustrated when the actors asked, “Where’s the script?”
Tony Bramwell – From “Magical Mystery Tours: My Life with the Beatles“, 2005
We were supposed to be on The Magical Mystery Tour. The Beatles used to come and see us sometimes, like at certain concerts like the Saville Theater, and Paul told me about this little scene he had. They were planning to do a film and he wanted us to be in this film. We weren’t known then when asked us. He was trying to help us, but we got a nice break before they got the movie together.
Jimi Hendrix – From “Eyewitness: Jimi Hendrix” by Johnny Black, 2004
Paul had a tendency to come along and say, well, he’s written his ten songs, let’s record now. And I said, well, give us a few days and I’ll knock a few off. He set Magical Mystery Tour up and had worked it out with Mal Evans, and then he came and showed me what his idea was, the story and how he had it all, the production and everything. George and I were sort of grumbling, you know, ‘Fuckin’ movie, oh well, we better do it’.
John Lennon, 1970 – From “The Beatles Diary Volume 1: The Beatles Years” by Barry Miles
“Magical Mystery Tour” was one sheet of paper with a circle drawn on it, and it was marked like a clock, only there was only one o’clock, five o’clock, nine o’clock and eleven o’clock. The rest we had to fill in. That’s how we did that. I was just sitting in the garden and Paul phoned, and said, ‘I’ve got this idea.’ That’s how it used to be. If someone wanted to do something, all we would do was follow ‘em. We would all go and do it.
Ringo Starr – From “The Beatles: Off the Record” by Keith Badman, 2008
FOUR VIEWPOINTS OF THE MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR BY THE FAN CLUB SECRETARIES WHO TRAVELLED WITH THE BEATLES
FIRST REPORT BY FREDA KELLY
The Wednesday before the lads started to film “M.M.T.” I was up in Liverpool sorting through the latest mountain of mail from club members when Tony Barrow, Senior Press Officer at NEMS, telephoned me. Tony had been asked by the lads to see if I’d like to join them on the special bus to go off filming in Devon and Cornwall. Would I LIKE to?!? LIKE was an understatement! It was a marvellous surprise.
Then Tony went on to say there would be a total of four bus seats reserved for Fan Club girls and we discussed the problem of how to fill the other three spaces. What a difficult job — 40,000 Beatle People on our membership lists and only THREE places to be filled! And time was short too! Eventually I decided to send out telegrams to Area Secretaries who are based not too far from the London region. The first three girls to telephone Tony Barrow and say they could manage to get the week off would be the three “M.M.T.” passengers. There wasn’t a fairer way of doing it in such a short time. Anyway Sylvia from Sussex, Barbara from Essex and Jeni from London were able to accept The Beatles’ invitation and we all met up at 10.30 a.m. the following Monday morning in Allsop-place which is just beside The London Planetarium and the Waxworks.
A man came over to me on the pavement and said “I’m sure I’ve seen your skull before”! That was certainly an off-beat introduction — to Scotsman Ivor Cutler, the off-beat comedian who turned out to be one of the artistes engaged to take part in the show. Well, we were all there but the bus wasn’t ! It was being decorated with colourful “Mystery Tour” signs. So, with Paul and the rest of the cast, we filled in our spare hour by drinking tea in a London Transport staff canteen and the hospitality was very welcome.
PHOTOGRAPHERS
At last we got under way, with a crowd of press photographers watching our departure and hurrying to their cars before we went out of sight.
At Virginia Water, a place not too far from Weybridge, we picked up George, Ringo and John. Now the party was complete.
Before starting to film, the boys moved people around and asked us to keep our new seats all the time so that whenever we happened to be in camera range we’d be seen in the same part of the bus. What’s more we were to wear the same clothes all through the week — which created a washing problem as the days went by! I was moved up from the back of the coach and Paul came over to chat. “Have these for a slim figure like yours” he said handing me a box of Maltesers !
We stopped at a restaurant called The Pied Piper for lunch. The Beatles got their meals in no time, the staff being overwhelmed to find such distinguished customers arriving unexpectedly. I sat at a table with Sylvia, Jeni and Barbara and we still hadn’t got our orders when the lads were onto their second course. George looked over and asked why we were still waiting. Then he went straight into the kitchen and emerged again a moment later with my lunch. “The others are coming right away” he told the girls.
I won’t try to tell you the story of the show or too much about the actual filming because you’ll be able to read all those details in next month’s special issue. Just let me say that the four of us girls are seen in quite a lot of scenes during the show. We are just four passengers on the Magical Mystery Tour bus — along with an amazing assortment of other passengers ranging from an elderly couple to a little 5-year-old girl named Nicola, from little George Claydon to big Jessie Robins (who plays Ringo’s auntie).
When the film cameras were not rolling I found lots of opportunities to talk to each of the Beatles. A lot of the time we “talked shop”, and discussed Fan Club details. They were particularly interested to hear the reactions of members to the “Sgt. Pepper” album and about the hundreds Of ‘Thank You’ letters I’d had from people who thought the Sgt. Pepper Souvenir Poster was one of the best-ever Fan Club bonus gifts.
RINGO’S FILM
I chatted for ages with Richie. We talked about everything from Mo’s new baby to the offer Richie had just received to appear with stars like Marlon Brando and Richard Burton in the Hollywood film “Candy”. The offer was a great secret at the time and it wasn’t announced in the papers until weeks afterwards. Richie was obviously very excited about the idea of making his solo film debut and it was nice to be able to share his private pleasure. Incidentally, all through the week Richie collected his empty ciggie packets (plus some from the other three lads) and gave them to me at the end of the filming. This means that some of the thousands of members who have been asking me for souvenirs of this sort will be getting what they want. I can’t give EVERYONE a packet so I’ll have to pick out names from a hat to decide who gets this particular bundle of souvenirs!
EVERYWHERE
We filmed in all kinds of different places including little wayside pubs, a chip shop in Taunton, and a tent in a field near Newquay. It really was a Mystery Tour, you know. We didn’t know where we were going from day-to-day. Eventually we spent THREE nights in Newquay instead of just the ONE which was planned. This was because the lads found such a wealth of useful scenery locations in that area there seemed no point in moving on and packing up all our cases again.
Sometimes the team would split up so that two lots of filming could be done at once. One day Paul and Richie took us girls off with them in the bus to film bits of dialogue between Jessie Robins and Ivor Cutler. Meanwhile John and George stayed behind at the Atlantic Hotel, Newquay, to film with comedian Nat Jackley who had this very funny sequence to do with a lot of girls around the hotel’s outdoor swimming pool.
Oh yes, I nearly forgot the day we lunched in Plymouth in a big restaurant just a few yards from the famous Hoe. More than 40 of us poured into the place and took the staff by surprise. They thought they’d finished serving lunch for the day! During the meal John started singing “Freda Kelly is a Nelly” at the top of his voice. Paul added “And she has pimples on her knees!”
It was a marvellous week, one I wouldn’t have missed for anything. Just to make it even more marvellous all the people on the tour were good friends by the end of the week. The professional actors and actresses mixed in with all us “amateur passengers” and we had a great time. I can’t wait to see the finished television film. I know it’s going to be unlike anything ever seen on telly and that the mystery tour show will be another feather in The Beatles’ caps.
SECOND REPORT BY JENI CROWLEY
MONDAY: Everyone was told to be at Allsop-place by 10.45 a.m. Everyone, that is, except the coach which arrived two hours late! Still, it must have taken time to fix all the gay posters and signs all over the bus. Meanwhile everyone was getting to know one another.
Paul had arrived on time and he spent ages sitting on the pavement talking to comedian Ivor Cutler. I went over to Paul and one of the first things he told me was that we’d have to wear the same clothes throughout the tour. Help! When John, George and Ringo joined us at Virginia Water they had to use the back part of the bus as a dressing room to change into their extraordinary film gear. John discovered the buttons had come off the back of his trousers. He needed them because he was wearing braces. Jokingly I offered to sew them on. He took me up on the offer. It would have been easier if he hadn’t been wearing the trousers at the time! After lunch the lining ripped away, button and all, and I had to use WHITE cotton to sew BROWN trousers!
TUESDAY: Today we rode from Teignmouth to Newquay. You may have read in the papers how we had to try and cross a bridge which was too narrow for the coach. Eventually our driver, Alf, had to turn back through the traffic jam we’d managed to cause. After lunch in Plymouth we stopped in a small village to film a scene with Derek Royle (who plays the tour courier). The party took the opportunity of getting off the bus to buy sweets and Cornish ice cream. In the confusion of people coming and going George plonked himself down next to me. We talked about various topics — including transcendental Meditation and life in general. I got so engrossed I didn’t even notice we’d arrived at the hotel. We must have been chatting for well over an hour.
WEDNESDAY: At the Atlantic Hotel we were told we would be wanted for a swimming pool scene with Nat Jackley and we’d need bikinis. Eventually things were rearranged because some local girls (already clad in bikinis) joined in the swimming pool sequence while our party went off in the bus with Paul and Ringo. Ringo ad-libbed his way through a hilarious scene with Jessie Robins (playing his auntie). That evening Paul and Ringo discovered that the hotel had a games room so they went down for a game of billiards. Ringo turned out to be a VERY good player but Paul insisted he had a bad cue — although he tried EVERY ONE available!!! Much later Spencer Davis came over while we were all sitting in the ballroom listening to the hotel band. Spencer and his family were holidaying for a few days in a village close to Newquay.
THURSDAY: Today and Friday turned out to be my favourite days — although we were supposed to be heading for home today, but filming got delayed because of bad weather. Today we filmed in a field. Within minutes of our arrival hundreds of holidaymakers gathered and the police were called to cope with a traffic jam! In this scene John, Paul, Sylvia and I had to crouch in a small tent. It was difficult enough trying to keep my balance without having to swat wasps and avoid sitting on beetles. Paul kept telling us to keep very still and the wasps would go away. One did — but not until after it had crawled all over Paul’s motionless mouth! This evening after getting a refreshing wash, Sylvia, Paul, Ringo, yours truly and a few others took Spencer Davis up on his invitation to come over to the little pub he was staying at and have a bit of a party. We didn’t get back until three in the morning!
FRIDAY: The last day and a lot of sad ‘Goodbyes’ to be said. We stopped the coach once or twice to film everybody GETTING BACK ON! One stop was at a country pub. George and I stood with John, shared his cheese and dipped it into tomato sauce which may sound a bit off but, believe me, is very tasty. Travelling back towards London this evening we sang songs and carols while Shirley Evans played an accordion. Soon, too soon, it was all over. George, Ringo and John got off first. Paul stayed with us until the bus reached Baker-street. I hope you enjoy watching the film as much as we enjoyed helping to make it. It was a fabulous week !
THIRD REPORT BY BARBARA KING
I remember sitting alone in the coach on Monday thinking “What have I let myself in for”. On the train coming into London that morning I’d been saying to myself “I might even MEET THEM”.
Little did I dream that I would finish up spending most of those five days with The Beatles, getting to know them well. People have asked me what THEY are REALLY like. I just answer that they are four very nice people but just ordinary like you and me. I’m sure they don’t believe me. When Paul got out of his car in Allsop-place I just couldn’t believe my eyes. I remember very clearly driving in the bus through pouring rain and stopping near Virginia Water to pick up the other Beatles. John clambered aboard and said “Hello Happy Everybody!” and I felt my pulse to see if it was still there.
The next day, Tuesday, Freda, Jeni, Sylvia and I sat at a table next to John, Paul, George and Ringo for lunch in Plymouth. In that Steak Bar I remember how rude people were, persistently bothering the four lads while they were trying to eat.
On the Wednesday morning in Newquay Sylvia and I went for a walk while we were waiting for the coach to leave the hotel. In a sweet shop one woman said to another something about The Beatles having left. Sylvia turned round and said: “Oh! They can’t go without us!” The woman looked at her and must have thought “Who the hell does she think she is!”
On the Thursday morning I decided to do a bit of local window shopping because it didn’t look as though we’d be taking off for a while. When I got back to the bus The Beatles and all the other 40 passengers were waiting for me. “We nearly went without you, Barbara” said Paul as I climbed onto the coach. He gave me such a warm smile that it cheered me up tremendously. That day we filmed in a tent in a field.
Suddenly it was Friday. All us of girls felt a sinking feeling because it would soon be over and we’d be back to reality. No more magic, no more mystery, no more dreamy Beatles. We all sang and drank beer from bottles as the bus rolled along towards London. Some of us tried to get the boys to sing THEIR songs but they stuck to the old-timers.
I had the experience of my life, a week I can never forget. I’d like to thank Freda, The Beatles and everybody for a wonderful week. I’m just beginning to believe it REALLY HAPPENED To ME! BARBARA KING
FOURTH REPORT BY SYLVIA NIGHTINGALE
MONDAY: I arrived at the meeting place arranged to find that the coach was going to be late. Only one Beatle — Paul — was there, surrounded by fans with autograph books. Cause of the delay was the fact that the coach was being draped with way-out psychedelic stickers and signs all over the blue and yellow paintwork.
TUESDAY: we descended upon an unprepared Berni Grand Hotel in Plymouth for lunch. By this time we had a convoy of at least TWENTY cars following us — most of these carrying London press people, reporters and photographers. I had decided to wear hippy gear for the trip and The Beatles constantly reminded me of the fact. They so delicately referred to me as “Zippy-Hippy” and “Miss Freak-out”. As I was eating lunch to the jingle of my bells John turned to me and said “You younger generation with all your bells!” At a little place called Bodmin everybody tucked into ice cream and lollys while a bit of roadside filming was done. I was given an orange ice lolly and Ringo was sucking a red one. “Do you want to swap?” he said “It’s quite clean. I mean I’ve licked it all over for you!” Long after The Beatles had gone to bed hopeful fans waited outside the Atlantic Hotel in Newquay as word got round the town that the group was staying there.
WEDNESDAY: we were supposed to be leaving Newquay this morning but The Beatles changed their minds and we got the message that we’d all be staying on for the rest of the week.
On the bus I pointed out to Ringo that his trousers were splitting in an embarrassing place. “Can you sew them up for me?” he said to my surprise. I did so — to the astonishment of fans peering through the coach windows. “Is that O.K. ?” I asked when the job was done “Fine” said Ringo as he staggered off down the coach bent double!
Last thing before bed I stood at the front doors of the hotel to get some fresh air. Fans were still waiting for a glimpse of The Beatles. “Ere, are you one of them ?” asked one little boy. I wasn’t sure how to answer that!
THURSDAY : We used the morning looking for locations to do more filming. The Beatles found a suitable field, as remote as possible. But there were crowds in no time. George sat down in the middle of the cornfield and drifted into meditation while the cameras were being set up. At four in the afternoon we had lunch — a special one because it was being filmed. We tucked in to the accompaniment of music played by the groovy band we’d listened to in the ballroom the previous evening. Later Jeni and I went to the small party Spencer Davis was throwing for the boys. We left in the small hours feeling very depressed about the return trip to London. The tour had had a rare quality of magic and fantasy about it but everything on this earth comes to an end and we had to accept the fact.
FRIDAY: I must have shown my misery this morning because John said “Don’t we look ‘appy then!” and grinned. We had lunch at a fish and chip shop and the funniest thing was the way people rushed off to tell their neighbours that The Beatles were there. There was a steady flow of sightseers while our chip-eating was being filmed! Later we stopped at a transport cafe for tea. To my surprise there wasn’t even ONE record by The Beatles on the juke box!
I must admit I’d been very nervous about meeting The Beatles for the first time. Now I wonder how I could have been. They made us feel as though we belonged by chatting as if we were all old friends. I have realised for the first time how genuine and groovy they are, always cheerful, friendly and full of jokes.
I consider myself very lucky and I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. Well… would you ?
SYLVIA NIGHTINGALE
From The Beatles Monthly Book, November 1967
MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR – BY MAL AND NEIL
“MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR” marks the beginning of a very important new stage in the career of The Beatles. For the first time they have created their own show for television. They have worked out the scenes, hired the cast, written the basic script, composed the songs and incidental soundtrack music, directed the actual shooting and edited the finished film. And, of course, they have taken part in the show—playing the parts of four Magical Mystery Tour coach passengers PLUS a number of other roles which we’ll talk about later.
ONE POINT OF PARTICULAR INTEREST IS THAT IF EVERYBODY LIKES “MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR” AND IF THE BEATLES THEMSELVES ARE SATISFIED WITH THE FINISHED JOB, IT IS PRETTY CERTAIN THEY WILL MAKE THEIR NEXT FULL-LENGTH CINEMA FILM IN THE SAME WAY. THAT IS ONE OF THE FIRST MAJOR PROJECTS THE BEATLES WILL BE DISCUSSING IN THE NEW YEAR. THEY ARE WELL AWARE THAT THERE HAS BEEN AN UNREASONABLY LONG GAP BETWEEN THE SCREENING OF “HELP!” AND THE START OF WORK ON THEIR THIRD MOTION PICTURE. ON THE OTHER HAND, IF ALL GOES ACCORDING TO PLAN, THE THIRD PICTURE WILL NOW BE SOMETHING REALLY SPECIAL WITH THE BEATLES LOOKING AFTER EVERY ASPECT OF THE SCRIPTING, THE SHOOTING, THE DIRECTION AND THE EDITING JUST AS THEY HAVE DONE WITH “MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR.”
THE BEGINNING: As long ago as January 1967 The Beatles decided that Personal Appearances — whether in the form of full-scale concert tours or just the odd stage performance — were OUT. They realised that to do any more stage shows would be a STEP BACKWARDS. During the previous four years they had toured the world appearing not only throughout Great Britain but also in Germany. France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Manila, United States of America and Canada.
Their first nationwide U.K. tour (apart from a few dates in Scotland the previous month) had been with The Helen Shapiro Show in February 1963. Their final series of 1966 concerts had taken them across America and up to Canada, finishing with a final performance in San Francisco at the end of August.
CURRENT STYLE
AT THE START OF 1967 THE BEATLES REALISED THAT THERE WAS NO POINT IN GIVING ANY MORE CONCERTS SINCE THEY’D HAVE TO RELY UPON USING OLD OUT-OF-DATE MATERIAL, SONGS WHICH COULD BE PUT ACROSS WITH THREE GUITARS AND DRUMS, AND THAT WOULD NOT BE REPRESENTATIVE OF THEIR CURRENT STYLE OF WRITING OR COMPOSING. THE OBVIOUS ALTERNATIVE TO TOURING WAS TO PRODUCE THEIR OWN OCCASIONAL TELEVISION SHOWS WHICH COULD BE SEEN ALL OVER THE WORLD, IN COUNTRIES THEY HAD VISITED FOR CONCERT TOURS AS WELL AS NEW COUNTRIES THEY’D NEVER GOT AROUND TO.
So the first decision to make television films dates back almost twelve months. Early in April, Mal was with Paul in Denver, Colorado, for Jane’s 21st birthday. During that trip to America Paul thought of building a TV show around a coach tour. In Mal’s diary for April 7 he wrote: “Getting quite excited about planning the television film. Idea going at the moment is to make it about some sort of Mystery Tour (Roll Up! Roll Up!). Paul is getting lots of ideas and we’re jotting them down as we go.”
The same week his diary had an entry reading: “Took charge of Hertz rented car. Drove Paul and Jane up into the Rockies for what I can only describe as a real Magical Mystery Trip.” If you look back at the July issue of THE BEATLES MONTHLY BOOK you’ll see those very words in Mal’s report on his trip with Paul to America!
Flying home to London (Tuesday April 11) Paul worked on the first words for a “Magical Mystery Tour” song. On the plane he borrowed a pad of paper from the stewardess and drew a big circle, dividing it up into sections. The circle represented 60 minutes, the sections were marked off into bits for songs and sketches. When we got home this was the sheet of paper Paul used to describe to the others what he had in mind. There were lots of sections of the circle left blank. The others threw in extra ideas and, one by one, the blank sections were filled until The Beatles decided they had the makings of a 60-minute TV programme.
THE PLANNING:
In the Bag O’ Nails discotheque club one night towards the end of April we (Neil and Mal!) were brought into the group’s discussions on possible items for the “Coach Show”. Basically it was agreed that the plan should be “all-inclusive, non-exclusive”. This meant trying to fit into the show something for everyone, as wide a variety as possible.
On April 25 the backing track for the song “Magical Mystery Tour” was recorded. Two nights later voices were added and on May 3 trumpet accompaniment was put on.
NOW THERE WAS A LONG DELAY BECAUSE THE BBC INVITED THE BEATLES TO TAKE PART IN A ‘LIVE’ WORLD WIDE TELEVISION PROGRAMME FOR WHICH THEY WOULD WRITE A SPECIAL SONG. THE SONG WAS “ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE”, THE PROGRAMME, SEEN AT THE END OF JUNE, WAS “OUR WORLD’. AS YOU KNOW “ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE” BECAME THE MAIN SIDE OF THE BEATLES’ NEXT SINGLE AND THEY PUT “BABY, YOU’RE A RICH MAN” ON THE SECOND SIDE.
So we jump forward to the second half of August to find the next bit of “Magical Mystery Tour” activity — that was after the holiday in Greece and George’s trip to California. On Thursday August 24, only a few days before he died, Brian had a long chat with John, Paul, George and Ringo and everybody talked about “things to be done” for the rest of the year. Brian was very enthusiastic about “Magical Mystery Tour” and wanted us to go ahead right away with filming the show.
DECIDED TO GO ON
It goes without saying that Brian’s death caused confusion of thought amongst all of us. At first the majority agreed that it would be best to take a good long break, accept Maharishi’s invitation to spend two or three months with him in India and shelve all other plans until afterwards. BUT, as the days went by, everyone began to realise that it made much more sense to go ahead with “Magical Mystery Tour” and take a break AFTER the production was completed.
On Friday September 1 there was a general conference and get-together at Paul’s house. While everyone added ideas, Paul sat at his typewriter and with one over-worked finger put down a list headed “Main Points”. Underneath he put: “Coach Tour (Three Days) with people on board. Week beginning Sept. 4—Cameraman, Sound, Cast, Driver. Hotels to be arranged for 2 nights. “Magical Mystery Tour” Emblem to be designed. Yellow coach to be hired (Sept 4 to Sept 9). Microphone system in coach. Must be good all-round vision. Tour “staff” Driver, Courier, Hostess. Three staff uniforms required. Coach destination—Cornwall??? After coach — Shepperton Studios (One Week).”
On another sheet he typed out a sequence of arrangements to be made: “Write outline script. Decide cast. Engage cast. Decide when shooting starts. Sets for studios. Fix completion date.”
In fact shooting could not start until Monday September 11, a week later than Paul’s proposed starting date for the coach. Even then we had one of the most hectic weeks of our lives preparing everything in time! The coach tour took five days to film (in Devon and Cornwall) and it was far too late to book space at Shepperton Film Studios for the following seven days. So we hired a couple of disused aircraft hangars at West Malling R.A.F. station just outside Maidstone in Kent.
By September 11 when we all set off by bus for Cornwall, The Beatles had a big sheaf of papers filled with outline scripts to describe the scenes they wanted to film. In total there were 43 people on the big yellow and blue bus. This included a full technical crew (camera and sound men). The rest? Most of them were cast as ‘ordinary passengers’, a cross-section of types you’d find on any average Mystery Tour bus. We had an elderly couple, a mother and her little daughter named Nicola, a bunch of teenage girls (including Freda Kelly and three Fan Club Area Secretaries) and other assorted people. In addition we had the key characters—played by actors, actresses and so forth. The part of the Courier went to Derek Royle, the Tour Hostess was played by Mandy Weet, Scottish comedian Ivor Cutler was a strange bloke who THOUGHT he was the Tour Courier, actress Jessie Robins was Ringo’s Auntie Jessie, Maggie Wright was cast as Paul’s friend “Maggie, The Lovely Starlet”, Little George Claydon was the Amateur Photographer and veteran music hall comic Nat Jackley was Happy Nat the Rubber Man. Who is missing? Well, Alf Manders the bus driver played HIMSELF and so did Shirley Evans who is a professional accordion player.
THE FILMING :
We needn’t go into great detail in this part of our story because most of you will have read the four reports written for last month’s issue by Freda, Jeni, Barbara and Sylvia the four Fan Club Girls.
On the first day there was an immediate delay because the “Magical Mystery Tour” posters took longer to fix than anyone expected. George, Ringo and John were to meet up with the bus at Virginia Water on the A30, not too far from Weybridge. Meanwhile Paul was waiting with the rest of the cast in a side street close to the London Planetarium. His time wasn’t wasted because, at the last moment, white uniforms had to be purchased for the Driver, Courier and Hostess. Paul and Mal nipped off to look for a suitable shop and found one in Soho.
A bit of filming was done on the way down to Teignmouth but it was raining hard and nothing more than a few ice-breaking shots inside the bus could be attempted under such conditions.
The arrival at Teignmouth was much more spectacular than we had imagined it would be. People lined both sides of the street with policemen to hold them back. The hotel foyer was just jammed with cameramen, reporters and sightseeing holidaymakers!
Tuesday wasn’t much better so far as weather is concerned. We got a few bits of dialogue filmed — the bit where Miss Wendy Winters the Tour Hostess introduces herself to the passengers, for instance. We NEARLY went to Widdicombe Fair but the bus couldn’t get across a narrow bridge and we had to turn back! When we stopped in a village to film the Courier (“Jolly Jimmy Johnson”) getting on and welcoming everyone to the tour, a small shop gave us free Cornish ice cream!
On the Wednesday the sun shone and a lot of good work was done. Paul and Ringo took off for Newquay in the bus to do scenes involving Ivor Cutler and Jessie Robins. Meanwhile John and George took charge of the second film unit and shot a hilarious sequence with Nat Jackley and a lot of locally-recruited bikini girls beside the hotel pool!
FAVOURITE JACKET STOLEN
Thursday was another busy, bright day – slightly spoiled for George because some fan had broken into the bus overnight and pinched his favourite old denim jacket.
And on Friday we headed back towards London. The weekend break was welcome but on Tuesday it was back to work with a very heavy filming schedule out at West Malling R.A.F. base. So heavy that, instead of driving 50 miles to and from the location each day, we decided to put up close to Maidstone in a hotel until the end of the week.
At West Malling all the main scenes were filmed. Before going out there we’d done the special Strip Club sequence with Jan Carson and The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band in Paul Raymond’s Revuebar, Soho. During the rest of the week we did the Magicians’ Laboratory sequence, Aunt Jessie’s Nightmare, a Recruiting Office scene with Victor Spinetti cast as a Sergeant, the Marathon Race (with four midget wrestlers, five clergymen, a Rugby team, a dozen tiny children playing Tug O’ War and a bunch of racing motor cyclists), the bit where George sings “Blue Jay Way” sitting cross-legged on a pavement in thick fog, the lengthy and quite spectacular outdoor scene for the song “I Am The Walrus” and the huge Finale involving a couple of hundred “extras” — mostly formation dancers.
By supper time the following Sunday night everything was finished at West Malling. Well, everything except a few linking bits which we did with the bus later on PLUS Paul’s “Fool On The Hill” song sequence (which was not shot until the first week of November) and a bit of outdoor filming with Ringo and Auntie Jessie for the very beginning of the show (shot at the end of October).
Much earlier on we said that The Beatles play other roles in the show. Well, John is the man who sells the tour tickets (with large false moustache!) and he is also a somewhat greasy waiter in “Auntie Jessie’s Nightmare”. Paul plays “Major McCartney” in the Recruiting Office bit and all four Beatles are joined by Mal to play The Five Mysterious Magicians who pop up at odd intervals to make all the magic in the show!
PERHAPS WE’VE BEEN TEASING YOU A BIT BY TELLING YOU LITTLE SCRAPS OF INFORMATION ABOUT DIFFERENT SCENES WITHOUT GIVING YOU THE COMPLETE STORY OF THE SHOW. WELL, THAT’S THE IDEA! YOU’LL HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL YOU SEE THE WHOLE PROGRAMME ON TELLY BEFORE YOU FIND OUT THE WHOLE STORY!
THE EDITING:
Originally The Beatles reckoned it wouldn’t take more than a week or so to edit all the film and make up a 60-minute programme. In fact the job took more than SIX WEEKS. Each day you’d find two or more Beatles busy in a tiny editing room in Old Compton Street, Soho. The work began around ten in the morning and they very seldom knocked off before six or seven in the evening.
Editing is something which could have been left to other people but The Beatles wanted to get everything exactly the way it should be and they know it was well worth spending all the time looking at strips of films and joining up all the scenes. All told there must have been TWENTY OR THIRTY HOURS of colour film to plough through!
THE RECORDING:
Most evenings, after working all day on editing, The Beatles gathered at the EMI studios, to put together all the songs for the soundtrack.
All told there were six “Magical Mystery Tour” numbers including the title song and an instrumental called “Flying”. “I Am The Walrus” and George’s “Blue Jay Way” turned out to be particularly long recordings.
The big problem was to present these recordings to the public in the most suitable way. There was too much music to fit on a 7-inch EP disc and not enough to fill a full-length 12 inch.
At one stage the proposal was to use a 7-inch record at LP speed—rather like the special discs The Beatles have made for Fan Club distribution each Christmas. There was a technical problem here — George Martin advised us that there would be a loss of volume on a 7-inch LP record. In addition some of us were against the idea it would mean that people with autochange record players would have to fiddle about with the speed control or play the “Magical Mystery Tour” disc in a stack of LP albums instead of with singles and EPs.
It was not until the beginning of November that everybody agreed on how the thing should be solved. There would be a set of two EP records inside a special book—plus a single. The production of the special book was, in itself, a big job. It was to be 28 pages, mostly in full colour, plus a heavy cover with pockets built in to contain the two records.
CARTOON STORY
BY THE TIME YOU READ THESE PAGES THE “MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR” RECORDS AND BOOK WILL BE READY FOR RELEASE. IN THE BOOK — APART FROM A LOAD OF COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHS AND THE LYRICS OF ALL THE SONGS — ARE A SERIES OF PAGES DEVOTED TO THE STORY OF “MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR” TOLD IN STRIP CARTOON PICTURES! THE CARTOONS (THEY’RE ALL IN COLOUR TOO, BY THE WAY) HAVE BEEN DRAWN BY BOB GIBSON, THE ARTIST WHO DOES ALL THE DRAWINGS YOU SEE IN THE BEATLES MONTHLY BOOK. THE WORDS WHICH TELL THE STORY UNDERNEATH EACH OF BOB’S FANTASTIC CARTOONS HAVE BEEN WRITTEN BY TONY BARROW.
From The Beatles Monthly Book, December 1967
One million dollars for Beatles’ ‘Mystery’ tour
AT LEAST one million dollars (over £300,000) will be paid for the Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour” spectacular to be shown on TV!
Companies all over the world are bidding for the TV rights. Among them are the three major American TV networks, plus independent US programme sponsors. There are also more than 40 offers flooding in from many other countries, among them Germany, Japan, Australia, South Africa and Mexico.
The spectacular will also, of course, be seen on British TV, but it was not known at presstime whether it would be on ITV or the BBC. NEMS Enterprises press office Tony Barrow denied on Tuesday a rumour that the spectacular would be seen both on independent TV and the BBC.
“The Beatles will not show the production to TV executives until the film editing and sound recording is completed,” he told Disc on Tuesday.
“They are now working on this, and may have to postpone their pending trip to India until the New Year.”
Beatles were flying to India to study meditation under the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi for three months from the beginning of November.
The “Magical Mystery Tour” spectacular should be completed by the end of October and ready for sale to the various TV vidders by the beginning of November. It should be screened in Britain on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day and simultaneously in many other countries.
From Disc And Music Echo – October 21, 1967
THE MYSTERY PARTLY EXPLAINED
There’s never been a Television Show quite like it! And I doubt if there will be again until The Beatles make another TV film NEXT year !
The story begins with RINGO and his Auntie Jessie (played by heavyweight actress JESSIE ROBINS) deciding to go on a Mystery Tour. They buy their tickets from a little shop where the sales assistant is a jolly chap with a ridiculous R.A.F. moustache and a distinct resemblance to JOHN ! While all this is happening the soundtrack is brimming over with brand-new Beatle sounds in the form of the show’s fast-rocking title number “Magical Mystery Tour.”
The MAGIC bit means that the film is never limited to realistic happenings. With MAGIC around the most fantastic scenes can be pounced upon the amazed viewer at a moment’s notice. Incidentally we ARE allowed to see where all the magic is made. Now and again the cameras leave the coach tour to show us the bubbling test-tubes, mysterious maps and magical telescopes of The Magicians’ Secret Laboratory — manned by five extraordinary folk in bright red and yellow gowns and high pointed hats. Five? Yes, the big guy in the background looks suspiciously like MAL EVANS!
So the coach tour begins and we’re introduced to the bus driver (Alf), the Hostess (MANDY WEET), the Courier (DEREK ROYLE) and passenger-type people ranging from comedians NAT JACKLEY and IVOR CUTLER to actress MAGGIE WRIGHT and “Little Man” GEORGE CLAYDON. What a marvellous bunch of Magical Mystery Tour companions!
The second song we hear is PAUL’S simple, very tuneful ballad “The Fool On The Hill.” Later there’s a special spot for GEORGE’S “Blue Jay way” (he’s seen sitting cross-legged on a pavement in thick fog!) and all the other numbers including the Twenties-tinted finale song “Your Mother Should Know.”
MOST SPECTACULAR
Perhaps the most spectacular of all the song sequences is that which has The Beatles plus the entire cast involved in “l Am The Walrus.” In last month’s Book I expect you saw the Competition Page which showed a photograph of all four Beatles covered from head to toe in furry animal suits. THAT is just one small part of the “Walrus” scene. But you mustn’t get the impression that “Magical Mystery Tour” is just a long parade of songs. There are plenty of strong comedy items. For me one of the most hilarious is set in a curiously out-of-date Army Recruiting Office where a smartly uniformed Major McCartney(!) watches VICTOR SPINETTI giving a fair impression of a parade-ground sergeant who demonstrates (amongst other things) the right way to defend yourself against an aggressive cow.
There’s a beautiful touch of “human interest” in a scene in which JOHN and GEORGE are sitting on the bus talking to a bright little 5-year-old girl named Nicola. This — and most of the dialogue involving The Beatles with professional actors and actresses — is unscripted. Instead of demanding that the cast should learn written lines, The Beatles discussed each bit of talking with the people concerned, told them what they were supposed to be doing and what their various reactions should be AND THEN LEFT THE ACTUAL WORDING TO THEM.
The lack of a script let all the actors relax because it didn’t matter too much what they came out with and they hadn’t got to keep stiffening up and remembering precise sentences to say. You’ll see how well this approach works when you watch Ringo having an argument with Auntie Jessie or Little George taking photographs of Maggie The Lovely Starlet. And the late-night homeward-bound sing-song on the bus couldn’t have been rehearsed to such perfection in a month of blue moons! Nice touch to include accordionist SHIRLEY EVANS in the cast for this and various other scenes! I could tell you much more — but I’m not supposed to give away TOO MANY secrets. For the rest — well, “Magical Mystery Tour” will be on your home screens in just a few weeks from now and (as the boys have said themselves) it has Something For Everybody. Dream sequences, a Hollywood-scale Finale, a load of great songs, a marvellous guest appearance of THE BONZO DOG DOO DAH BAND in a Strip Club scene, and (wait for THIS) a marathon race which includes RINGO DRIVING THE “MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR” BUS!
Don’t know about YOU but I’m booking my seat for NEXT year’s tour right now before the rush!
FREDERICK JAMES
From The Beatles Monthly Book, December 1967
Last updated on May 24, 2023
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