LOS ANGELES - Give four pop stars turned hippies a movie camera in
1967 and what do you get? The Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour" film,
which will receive its long-awaited U.S. broadcast television debut on
Friday on PBS.
Long a curiosity in the United
States, the film will be accompanied by a new documentary about its
making. A restored version was released on DVD and blu-ray in October.
The third film for The Fab Four, after a "A Hard Day's Night" in 1964
and "Help!" a year later, "Magical Mystery Tour" is a shambolic trip
through the English countryside on a bus filled with odd characters, but
thin on plot. It first aired on BBC television the day after Christmas
1967.
Although it was initially panned by
British critics, time has delivered some justice to the project,
Jonathan Clyde, the producer of the documentary, told Reuters.
"'Magical Mystery Tour' has always been the black sheep of the Beatles
family, but I think it's been rehabilitated into the Beatles canon,"
Clyde said. "It's no longer the 'mad uncle in the attic' that nobody
wants to talk about. It's been let out."
In the United States, little was known about the film at the time of its release.
Beatles fans only had the album of music, or saw a poor print of the
film in a double-feature midnight showing with "Reefer Madness," a 1936
anti-marijuana propaganda film often screened decades later for comedic
effect.
"I first saw it in 1974 at a
university," Bill King, the longtime publisher of Beatles fanzine
Beatlefan, said of "Magical Mystery Tour." "By then, though, it had
taken on mythic status. I loved it."
At the time
of its making, The Beatles were arguably at their creative peak on the
heels of a seminal album, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," and
their summer of love anthem "All You Need Is Love," which debuted on
global TV.
Script wanted
But even before "Sgt. Pepper's" release in June 1967, Paul McCartney
had already conceived of the film project. The only thing he was
missing: a script.
"Paul had drawn out a pie
chart," said Clyde, also a longtime consultant for The Beatles' company,
Apple Corps. "It just said things like 'Get on coach,' 'Dreams,' 'End
Song.' They really had no idea what it was going to be like."
The group hired a bus, a film crew, and a handful of extras and set out
around England, creating scenes with everything from magicians to Ringo
Starr's oversized Aunt Jessie being stuffed with spaghetti by waiter
John Lennon.
McCartney did most of the directing.
"It really had something for everyone, which is something I like about
it," Clyde said. "It was really a nod not only to the younger people
watching, but to their parents' generation, as well."
The film also was loaded with six new Beatles songs, presented as what now would be considered music videos.
The music itself, including songs "I Am the Walrus" and "The Fool on
the Hill," was as innovative as any of the band's music that year - and
mostly recorded just before filming started.
"The Beatles were driven and inspired by having a deadline," said Giles
Martin, son of Beatles producer George Martin. The younger Martin
remixed the songs at the legendary Abbey Road studios for the DVD and
broadcast.
"And songs like 'Walrus' are a
brilliant mix of both The Beatles as a rock and roll band and as masters
of groundbreaking experimental recording," Martin added. — Reuters
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