The Fool on the Hill is an odd song lyrically. It’s psychedelic, sure, but it’s so English. I’ve always heard bits and pieces of Tommy here.
The opening without the vocals sounds like a Link Wray song with strummed chords and an insistent 4/4 beat. The title track, like the song Sgt Pepper invites you into the album in a humorously magisterial way. This was, after all, the extended EP that was originally released in the UK. It’s psychedelic, sure, but it’s so English.īut let’s take the album on its own merits, the first six songs that they recorded for the soundtrack of the film. Paul’s bass provides a melodic counterpoint to the drums and Lennon’s swinging rhythm guitar keeps it in the rock and roll frame. He’s in a parade, he’s sounding the war drums, he’s simulating an urgent heartbeat. Anyone who thinks Ringo is somehow the weak link instrumentally in the band should listen to this one on good headphones. George Martin provides a slightly bassy underwater sound that creates the dream like atmosphere evoked in the lyrics. The song has the mystical quality that characterises the Beatles’ best music, and a melody that is timeless. It was inspired by a real orphanage in Liverpool and it is hard not imagine the young near-orphan Lennon looking wistfully at its gates. I think it is John Lennon’s finest moment and one of the Beatles’ best songs. It was a double sided single with Penny Lane that appeared long before Magical Mystery Tour was released. Let’s get Strawberry Fields out of the way immediately. Only the first six songs were originals after all, the others were from 45s and EPs. Perhaps the album seemed like an afterthought, something thrown together to cash in.
#MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR FLYING TV#
At this late date it’s hard to imagine how anyone ever found this album disappointing, even though the now largely forgotten TV special that begot it was a total flop. All of the other Beatles studio albums had five. Magical Mystery Tour had only four stars in the Rolling Stone Record Guide that I studied like a Dead Sea Scroll when I was a teenager. They might be disappointing, but they are records that you need to hear.
#MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR FLYING SERIES#
“ On e thing must be made clear,” he says, “ this is not a series about terrible albums. Each week TONY THOMPSON discusses a ‘disappointing album’: why it’s disappointing, what that means in the context of the band or musician’s career, and what that says about changing critical tastes.
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