Fact #105883
When:
Short story:
While in America, Paul McCartney of The Beatles has an idea to create a tv film about a madcap bus journey, which will eventually emerge as Magical Mystery Tour.
Full article:
THE MAKING OF The Beatles' MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR FILM
By Johnny Black
If The Beatles' career was laid out in the form of a massive Blackpool rollercoaster, Brian Epstein would be seen to meet his maker just as the carriage hit the top of the highest point on the track. There were peaks still to come, but the general direction from that moment on was downhill, and the biggest, most stomach-churning drop of all was imminent. It was while barrelling down into that dip that Paul McCartney sold the other three Beatles their tickets for the Magical Mystery Tour.
On 7 April, 1967, two days after joining his girlfriend, the actress Jane Asher , for her 21st birthday party at The Quorum Restaurant in Denver, Colorado, McCartney began to reflect on the stories he'd been hearing about California's acid-guru Ken Kesey and his hippy cohort, the Merry Pranksters. Their crazed bus-to-nowhere adventures were fast acquiring the status of modern myths, and McCartney reasoned that a similar trip, translated into the somewhat more British context of a Mystery Tour by coach, might serve as a good basic structure for The Beatles' next project.
High over the Atlantic on a return flight to London on the 9th, McCartney borrowed a pad of scrap paper from a stewardess and used it to scribble down ideas and start working out the title song, Magical Mystery Tour.
He stepped off the plane at Heathrow with a rough plan of a sixty minute tv show, described by Ringo as, "one sheet of paper with a circle drawn on it, and it was marked like a clock, except there was only one o'clock, five o'clock, nine o'clock and eleven o'clock. The rest, we had to fill in."
Lennon, perceiving himself as at least an equal partner in The Beatles, didn't take it well when Paul offered him a segment and instructed him to write something for it. In Lennon's own words, "I thought, 'Bloody hell!'" Although he and Harrison grumbled openly about the project, Lennon felt that the band "owed it to the public to do these things" and buckled down to work.
Before the month was out, work had started in Abbey Road on recording Magical Mystery Tour but, before much could be done, a more pressing project took precedence. John and Paul had both written songs to be used on a history-making BBC world-wide satellite broadcast, Our World, in late June. John's contribution, All You Need Is Love, was deemed ideal for the broadcast, leaving Paul's offering, Your Mother Should Know, up for grabs. Almost inevitably, it was incorporated into the Mystery Tour soundtrack.
Between promoting All You Need Is Love, taking Summer Holidays and hanging out with the Maharishi, The Beatles made little further progress on Mystery Tour before Brian Epstein died in on 27 August. Then, just five days later the quartet came together at McCartney's St John's Wood home, to discuss the way forward. McCartney seized the moment to convince the others that they must maintain their momentum, and that the way to do it was to press on immediately with Magical Mystery Tour.
Whether the others liked it or not, Paul was now running the show, although Denis O'Dell, the associate producer of Lennon's solo film project How I Won the War, was drafted in to look after the nuts and bolts. From the start, the production was notable for its lack of not only a script, but anything resembling a coherent vision of what it should be. Richard Lester (who directed both A Hard Day's Night and Help!) recalls how, "I would hear Denis on the phone to Paul, saying, 'I've found a great place
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By Johnny Black
If The Beatles' career was laid out in the form of a massive Blackpool rollercoaster, Brian Epstein would be seen to meet his maker just as the carriage hit the top of the highest point on the track. There were peaks still to come, but the general direction from that moment on was downhill, and the biggest, most stomach-churning drop of all was imminent. It was while barrelling down into that dip that Paul McCartney sold the other three Beatles their tickets for the Magical Mystery Tour.
On 7 April, 1967, two days after joining his girlfriend, the actress Jane Asher , for her 21st birthday party at The Quorum Restaurant in Denver, Colorado, McCartney began to reflect on the stories he'd been hearing about California's acid-guru Ken Kesey and his hippy cohort, the Merry Pranksters. Their crazed bus-to-nowhere adventures were fast acquiring the status of modern myths, and McCartney reasoned that a similar trip, translated into the somewhat more British context of a Mystery Tour by coach, might serve as a good basic structure for The Beatles' next project.
High over the Atlantic on a return flight to London on the 9th, McCartney borrowed a pad of scrap paper from a stewardess and used it to scribble down ideas and start working out the title song, Magical Mystery Tour.
He stepped off the plane at Heathrow with a rough plan of a sixty minute tv show, described by Ringo as, "one sheet of paper with a circle drawn on it, and it was marked like a clock, except there was only one o'clock, five o'clock, nine o'clock and eleven o'clock. The rest, we had to fill in."
Lennon, perceiving himself as at least an equal partner in The Beatles, didn't take it well when Paul offered him a segment and instructed him to write something for it. In Lennon's own words, "I thought, 'Bloody hell!'" Although he and Harrison grumbled openly about the project, Lennon felt that the band "owed it to the public to do these things" and buckled down to work.
Before the month was out, work had started in Abbey Road on recording Magical Mystery Tour but, before much could be done, a more pressing project took precedence. John and Paul had both written songs to be used on a history-making BBC world-wide satellite broadcast, Our World, in late June. John's contribution, All You Need Is Love, was deemed ideal for the broadcast, leaving Paul's offering, Your Mother Should Know, up for grabs. Almost inevitably, it was incorporated into the Mystery Tour soundtrack.
Between promoting All You Need Is Love, taking Summer Holidays and hanging out with the Maharishi, The Beatles made little further progress on Mystery Tour before Brian Epstein died in on 27 August. Then, just five days later the quartet came together at McCartney's St John's Wood home, to discuss the way forward. McCartney seized the moment to convince the others that they must maintain their momentum, and that the way to do it was to press on immediately with Magical Mystery Tour.
Whether the others liked it or not, Paul was now running the show, although Denis O'Dell, the associate producer of Lennon's solo film project How I Won the War, was drafted in to look after the nuts and bolts. From the start, the production was notable for its lack of not only a script, but anything resembling a coherent vision of what it should be. Richard Lester (who directed both A Hard Day's Night and Help!) recalls how, "I would hear Denis on the phone to Paul, saying, 'I've found a great place