How The Bea­t­les’ Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour pio­neered the visu­al album

Among the end­less inno­va­tions which may be attrib­uted to The Bea­t­les is the mar­riage of pop music with video. While ear­li­er rock-’n’-roll acts like Elvis Pres­ley and Cliff Richard had made (large­ly for­get­table) movies at the behest of their man­age­ment, The Fab Four embraced film as a means of artis­tic expres­sion in its own right.

Most influ­en­tial were their appear­ances on the small screen in short musi­cal pro­mo­tion films which laid the ground­work for the mod­ern music video. But more ambi­tious was their self-pro­duced 1967 TV movie Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour. Sav­aged by crit­ics at the time, it is often regard­ed as one of the band’s few mis­fires – an indul­gent and incom­pre­hen­si­ble spasm of drug-induced absurdity.

While con­tem­po­rary audi­ences may have been con­fused by the film’s ama­teur­ish pro­duc­tion and lack of a con­ven­tion­al nar­ra­tive, the film has become more acces­si­ble over time. Run­ning just under an hour and anchored by a series of extrav­a­gant musi­cal sequences, Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour is essen­tial­ly the blue­print for the mod­ern visu­al album pop­u­larised by the likes of Bey­on­cé and Janelle Monáe.

Influ­ences of ​’60s coun­ter­cul­ture and ciné­ma vérité, once con­demned as inex­plic­a­ble, now seem ahead of their time. As a work of mul­ti­me­dia pop art, Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour chal­lenged the pre­con­cep­tions of an enter­tain­ment estab­lish­ment which The Bea­t­les had already out­run, and their vision was lat­er vin­di­cat­ed by the emer­gence of MTV and the lav­ish music videos which have become so ubiquitous.

Arriv­ing just months after the release of their sem­i­nal con­cept album ​‘Sgt Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band’ and the sub­se­quent death of their man­ag­er Bri­an Epstein, Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour was the first project over which the band exert­ed full cre­ative con­trol, serv­ing as their own pro­duc­ers, writ­ers and direc­tors (although Ringo Starr receives sole cred­it as direc­tor of pho­tog­ra­phy). Film­ing com­menced with­out a script – all the band had were six songs, a bright­ly-paint­ed coach, and a cast of dis­tinc­tive sup­port­ing actors. As Paul McCart­ney put it, ​“We made it up as we went along.”

To begin shoot­ing with so lit­tle prepa­ra­tion was not sim­ply an exer­cise in fol­ly, but rather grew from a sin­cere desire to make an unfil­tered artis­tic state­ment, free from the shack­les of con­ven­tion. McCart­ney sum­marised, ​“We were fed up of every­thing tak­ing so long and being such a fuss,” while George Har­ri­son was grate­ful the film pro­vid­ed a joint focus fol­low­ing Epstein’s death, stat­ing, ​“It got us out and got us together.”

The film’s songs, nat­u­ral­ly the high­light of any Bea­t­les project, are ren­dered in a num­ber of fan­tas­ti­cal­ly con­ceived musi­cal chap­ters, which stand up superbly as self-con­tained music videos. Build­ing on The Bea­t­les’ ear­li­er pro­mo films for sin­gles includ­ing ​‘Paper­back Writer’ and ​‘Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er’, these short seg­ments illus­trate their psy­che­del­ic melodies to tran­scen­dent effect.

The trip­py instru­men­tal track ​‘Fly­ing’ is accom­pa­nied by hyp­not­ic aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy, orig­i­nal­ly shot for Stan­ley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove, while oth­er tunes play over abstract mon­tages and pre­pos­ter­ous mimed per­for­mances – all shot and edit­ed with an eye on the avant-garde.

Accord­ing to Steven Cock­roft and Jason Car­ty, hosts of Bea­t­les pod­cast Noth­ing Is Real, these musi­cal sequences set a bench­mark which gen­er­a­tions of pop stars would fol­low. ​“The pro­mo­tion­al films con­tained with­in the film do not make any attempt to depict the band play­ing live – Paul walks around some moun­tains, George plays a key­board chalked on the road and ​‘I Am The Wal­rus’ deliv­ers an absur­dist take on a con­cert set­ting,” Cock­roft tells LWLies. ​“They are redefin­ing what a pro­mo­tion­al film is.”

The large­ly impro­vised non-musi­cal sec­tions of the film are rougher around the edges, but not with­out their charm. The vein of sur­re­al­ist com­e­dy which runs through­out takes influ­ence from The Goon Show and clear­ly pre­dicts Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus, par­tic­u­lar­ly the car­i­ca­tures of author­i­ty fig­ures like army offi­cers and vic­ars. A grotesque dream sequence fea­tures John Lennon lit­er­al­ly shov­el­ling food onto the plate of a glut­to­nous woman, from which a straight line may be drawn to the Mr Cre­osote scene in Mon­ty Python’s 1983 film The Mean­ing of Life.

These comedic vignettes serve as whim­si­cal con­nect­ing tis­sue between the songs, but are also a qui­et­ly provoca­tive trea­tise on The Bea­t­les’ world­view. As Cock­roft argues, ​“The film satiris­es reli­gion, con­sumerism, the army, cen­sor­ship and atti­tudes to sex, and per­haps most sub­ver­sive­ly its own audience.”

The 15 mil­lion peo­ple who even­tu­al­ly watched the film dur­ing BBC One’s Box­ing Day trans­mis­sion, how­ev­er, were not impressed by these post­mod­ern flour­ish­es. The black-and-white broad­cast effec­tive­ly neutered the colour­ful visu­als, and audi­ences were fur­ther thrown by the plot­less, mean­der­ing nar­ra­tive. The head­line of the Dai­ly Mir­ror ran ​‘Bea­t­les Mys­tery Tour Baf­fles View­ers,’ while the US trans­mis­sion was swift­ly cancelled.

Such was the inten­si­ty of the crit­i­cal maul­ing that McCart­ney was hauled onto ITV’s Frost Pro­gramme the fol­low­ing evening to answer for the appar­ent dis­as­ter. Most telling­ly, his defence stressed that the film should be approached more like an album of music than a tra­di­tion­al nar­ra­tive film. ​“If you watch it a sec­ond time it does grow on you. And this is one thing we for­got, because when you make a record a lot of peo­ple lis­ten and say, ​‘Well, I don’t like that one.’ But the sec­ond time round they say, ​‘Not bad’.”

McCart­ney has con­tin­ued to stand by the project over sub­se­quent decades. In a 1984 inter­view defend­ing anoth­er cin­e­mat­ic flop, Give My Regards to Broad Street, he argued, ​“If you remem­ber back to Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour, that got even worse reviews than this had, and if you watch that film now, I think it’s damn good to see John Lennon up there singing ​‘I Am The Walrus’.”

And there­in lies the crux of Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour’s endur­ing influ­ence. It lacks the thor­ough­ly script­ed and lav­ish­ly bud­get­ed struc­ture of The Bea­t­les’ ear­li­er fea­ture films, but it tri­umphs as a cin­e­mat­ic com­pan­ion to their music, visu­al­is­ing the bril­liant psy­che­delia of their aur­al inno­va­tion as had nev­er been attempt­ed before. As Car­ty explains, ​“music videos as we would come to know them were not the norm, pop music and abstract visu­als was not the norm and long form video projects/​video albums didn’t have a frame of ref­er­ence yet with the gen­er­al public.”

Indeed, McCart­ney lat­er con­ced­ed, ​“It was cer­tain­ly shown at the wrong time to the wrong audi­ence.” Even so, The Bea­t­les’ pio­neer­ing mul­ti­me­dia approach would even­tu­al­ly become stan­dard across the music industry.

Rep­re­sent­ing the last gasp of 1967’s so-called Sum­mer of Love, Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour remains an intox­i­cat­ing slice of coun­ter­cul­tur­al excess, serv­ing up The Bea­t­les at their most exper­i­men­tal – even if these art­house stylings proved too rich for fam­i­lies gath­ered around mono­chrome tele­vi­sion sets. ​“It wasn’t the worst pro­gramme over Christ­mas,” McCart­ney reflect­ed. ​“I mean, you couldn’t call the Queen’s Speech a gas either, could you?”