Part of
Recording the "Magical Mystery Tour" soundtrack
Apr 25 - May 3 and Aug 22 - Nov 17, 1967 • Songs recorded during this session appear on Magical Mystery Tour (US LP - Mono)
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- Album Songs recorded during this session officially appear on the Magical Mystery Tour (US LP - Mono) LP.
- Studio:
- EMI Studios, Studio Three, Abbey Road
Timeline
More from year 1967
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About
In April of 1967, Paul McCartney spent two weeks vacationing in the United States before boarding a flight back to London on April 12. During the flight, he borrowed a notepad from a stewardess and defined a rough plan for a Beatles television film. Later, on April 25, the Beatles recorded the basic track of the theme song for their upcoming project “Magical Mystery Tour,” although the writing of the song was still unfinished. On April 26, they added various overdubs to the song.
The Beatles continued working on “Magical Mystery Tour” from 7 pm to 12:45 am that day, focusing on vocals added onto Take 9. Paul recorded his lead vocals, while John Lennon and George Harrison contributed additional backing vocals. To achieve a higher pitch on playback, they recorded the backing vocals at a slower than normal speed with frequency control.
All that ‘Roll up, roll up for the Magical Mystery Tour’ bit was taped very slow so that it played back very fast. They really wanted those voices to sound different.
Richard Lush – From “The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions” by Mark Lewisohn, 1988
Four mono mixes (labelled Remix Mono 1 to 4) were then made for demo purposes and cut onto acetates, presumably for George Martin to write a score for trumpets, in anticipation of the May 3 session. Those mixes treated Paul’s vocals with artificial double tracking.
Last updated on April 16, 2023
Songs recorded
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Staff
Musicians on "Magical Mystery Tour"
Production staff
Going further
The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions • Mark Lewisohn
The definitive guide for every Beatles recording sessions from 1962 to 1970.
We owe a lot to Mark Lewisohn for the creation of those session pages, but you really have to buy this book to get all the details - the number of takes for each song, who contributed what, a description of the context and how each session went, various photographies... And an introductory interview with Paul McCartney!
The third book of this critically - acclaimed series, nominated for the 2019 Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) award for Excellence In Historical Recorded Sound, "The Beatles Recording Reference Manual: Volume 3: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band through Magical Mystery Tour (late 1966-1967)" captures the band's most innovative era in its entirety. From the first take to the final remix, discover the making of the greatest recordings of all time. Through extensive, fully-documented research, these books fill an important gap left by all other Beatles books published to date and provide a unique view into the recordings of the world's most successful pop music act.
If we like to think, in all modesty, that the Paul McCartney Project is the best online ressource for everything Paul McCartney, The Beatles Bible is for sure the definitive online site focused on the Beatles. There are obviously some overlap in terms of content between the two sites, but also some major differences in terms of approach.
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