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Meet the Beatles (Again) - Magical Mystery Tour

Posted at 2:09 AM on September 9, 2009 by The Current
Filed under: Meet the Beatles (Again)

Magical Mystery Tour
Originally released in 1967

By Jacquie Fuller

The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour is just what the name says - a druggy pilgrimage, a fever dream, a band finding its voice within the chaos they'd created. For me, it was a rug pulled out - the first time I was confronted with the complexity of the world outside my pink bedroom. Rock 'n' roll was no longer just about boys and girls and sex.

I was seven, and I knew what chaos looked like. I'd seen a retrospective of Dada art at the museum (think urinals on walls and mannequin parts glued together funny). Dada was, in some ways, a response to the absurdity of war. But at seven, I didn't know that - I just knew it was weird. It inspired a mix of fascination and fear that I just couldn't shake.

I'd soon learn what chaos sounded like when I discovered Magical Mystery Tour while snooping through my big sister's record collection. This was what threw me the most: These were not my mother's Beatles. Where was Help! and A Hard Day's Night? What happened to those clean cut boys who made young girls lose their heads with songs like "I Want to Hold Your Hand"? It was like finding naughty Polaroids of your dependable parents, or when your big e brother gets facial hair and becomes a total stranger. Gone were the mod haircuts and cute suits; these Beatles had shaggy hair. They dressed in weird costumes and sung about "sitting on a cornflake." (And I'd seen enough after-school specials by this point to know that, clearly, they got high.) Like Dada art, The Beatles of Magical Mystery Tour didn't fit into the neat box of what I knew and understood. And they thrilled me.

Released in 1967, Magical Mystery Tour was intended as the soundtrack to a movie of the same name (the third in the Beatles' cinematic repertoire). The movie was a mess and a flop (and downright nightmare-inducing for kids like me) but the soundtrack was a success. At the same time that the Beach Boys were experimenting with a full orchestral sound (Pet Sounds), the Beatles, too, were creating songs that swelled with strings, horns, and flutes (as well as that trippy, huffing orchestra-in-a-box, the Mellotron). Into this orchestral ocean, they dropped exotic elements - Indian instruments from George Harrison's sitar studies in India, vocals played backwards - that gave the songs a psychedelic feel.

The album was released in the UK as an EP, but stateside as an LP with bonus tracks that hadn't found a home on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - big hits like "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever." These songs, with their sweetness and nostalgia, both temper the weirdness of the album, and intensify its dream-like quality.

Magical Mystery Tour and Dada might have more in common than their impact on the young me. It seems too easy, and unfair, to credit Magical Mystery Tour's psychedelia with the band's drug use. There were a lot of factors involved, including Harrison's travels to India. But when I place this album in the context of the era - the escalation of the Vietnam War - I find a new layer of understanding. The Beatles, as a band and as individuals, were seeking answers about what to believe in. They were in the process of figuring out who they were, who they wanted to be. They were siding with the peace movement, and struggling to find words to speak about the unspeakable.

In this context, I get why nonsense songs like "I am the Walrus" scared the crap out of me. I needed, at that age, for the world to make sense. Magical Mystery Tour taught me that it didn't, and never would. And I get why songs like "All You Need is Love" were like a sweet salve on this new knowledge. Magical Mystery Tour was a flop as a movie, and incohesive as a soundtrack, but it was a band questioning the world that was, and presenting a better, Technicolored world in its place.

Jacquie Fuller hosts Saturday mornings on The Current, and is still fascinated by things she can't comprehend, like childbirth, physics, and Lady Gaga.

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