Review: 'Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine'

Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine are somewhat less conventional than Sgt. Pepper's or Abbey Road because the former soundtrack was intended to be released as a double-EP set and the latter was split between Beatles recordings and George Martin's incidental music. However, the latest entry in Bruce Spizer's "Beatles Album" series is as worthwhile as any of the others. Perhaps it is more so since Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine are the rare Beatles projects to actually receive some negative criticism. Spizer allows the critics to speak their piece via excerpts from period reviews (a particularly nasty assessment of the Magical Mystery Tour record comes from Rex Reed, the film critic famous for hating absolutely everything... and starring in the infamous stink-bomb Myra Breckenridge. A-hem). However, the tone is mostly informational and celebratory. 20-pages of fan recollections are suitably rapturous. More worthwhile is the welter of full-color photos of record sleeves and labels, period adverts, promo materials, and magazine covers and the wealth of information about the recordings and releases of the discs Spizer provides. 

Spizer also sweeps the period recordings "Lady Madonna", "The Inner Light", "Across the Universe", and "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)", as well as all of the singles included on the Magical Mystery Tour L.P. released in the U.S., into the conversation. He even makes room for details about George Martin's Yellow Submarine orchestrations, the incidental music used in Magical Mystery Tour, and the Beatles Saturday morning cartoon that was a somewhat misleading precursor to the far finer Yellow Submarine feature film. Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine also hosts some guest essays, though I generally prefer Spizer's contributions. He humbly credits himself as "compiler" on the book's cover, but he is most definitely an author and sincerely fab one at that. 

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 355

The Date: September 19

The Movie: Magical Mystery Tour (1967)

What Is It?: 45 years on from Beatlemania’s initial intensity, Magical Mystery Tour plays surprisingly well. It is, as the critics charged, indulgent, but that can be forgiven at a tight little 53 minutes well divided by six Beatle tunes. There’s no story to speak of, and the tour isn’t particularly magical or mysterious, but it’s hard to get bored, what with Victor Spinetti’s babbling sergeant, The Bonzo Dog Doodah Band’s uproarious performance of “Death Cab for Cutie”, John Lennon’s (disgustingly overcooked) spaghetti serving, Jessie Robins’s scene-stealing bickering with Nephew Ringo, and the precious opportunity to spend some time with the Fabs in their Sgt. Pepper’s-era psychedelic splendor.

Why Today?: On this day in 1967, The Beatles began filming the “I Am the Walrus” and “Blue Jay Way” sequences.

Review: 'Magical Mystery Tour' DVD

The Beatles were so naïve when they filmed Magical Mystery Tour that a pie chart sufficed as a script. They weren’t even aware they needed to use clapboards! That error caused its share of troubles while editing their home movie, as Paul McCartney says in his director’s commentary on this new DVD. That naïveté was also the target of the merciless critical drubbing the film received upon its airing as a BBC1 Boxing Day special in 1967. How could such creators of quality music think they could pass of such crap on their loyal public? What charlatans!

 45 years on from Beatlemania’s initial intensity, Magical Mystery Tour plays surprisingly well. It is, as the critics charged, indulgent, but that can be forgiven at a tight little 53 minutes well divided by six Beatle tunes. There’s no story to speak of, and the tour isn’t particularly magical or mysterious, but it’s hard to get bored, what with Victor Spinetti’s babbling sergeant, The Bonzo Dog Doodah Band’s uproarious performance of “Death Cab for Cutie”, Jan Carson’s stripping, Jessie Robins’s scene-stealing bickering with Nephew Ringo, and the precious opportunity to spend some time with the Fabs in their post-Sgt. Pepper’s psychedelic splendor. The five-minute romp bookended by Spinetti’s capering and “Flying” is the only spot that really sags. Otherwise, Magical Mystery Tour is a nice collage of music video randomness and 1967 weirdness.

Since the film is so brief, it’s only good value that this DVD should be fattened up with a generous selection of extras. The most substantial is Paul’s commentary, and it’s interesting to hear him talk so much about such an odd item in The Beatle’s overly familiar bag of tricks. There’s a 20-minute documentary with new interviews with Paul and Ringo, Bonzo Dog Neil Innes, and others who were along for the ride. The doc is neat, though it whitewashes the negative reaction that met the film. There’s a video for Traffic’s “Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush” not included in the film that would have been preferable to the aforementioned romp. There are alternate edits of three musical sequences, a short featurette in which Ringo watches the film on his laptop, and a couple of cut scenes, one of which was directed by Lennon and plays like a Benny Hill bit. The most fascinating extra may be the 11-minute “Meet the Supporting Cast” in which we see Jessie Robins playing some jazzy drums. A smiling Ringo deems her kit-work “far out” and “pretty hot.” He isn’t wrong.