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slaner
Magical Mystery Tour is a record by the English rock band The Beatles, first released as an 11-track LP in the US on 27 November 1967 and on 8 December 1967 in the UK as a 6-song double-extended play disk (EP). Both the US and UK records feature the 6-song soundtrack to a one-hour television film of the same name originally aired in 1967. The US release expanded the record to a full album, with the soundtrack on the A-side, and the two sides of the band's three 1967 singles on the album's B-side (other than "I Am The Walrus" which was already on the A-side).
The US album was later adopted by Apple and EMI as the preferred version of the record when The Beatles' discography was being updated for the Compact Disc format; this is the only US release for which this was done.
After Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Paul McCartney wanted to create a film based upon The Beatles and their music. The film was to be unscripted: various "ordinary" people (including John Lennon's uncle Charlie) were to travel on a charabanc bus and have unspecified "magical" adventures, in the manner of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters.
The Magical Mystery Tour movie was made, but the hoped-for "magical" adventures never happened. During the filming, an ever greater number of cars followed the hand-lettered bus, hoping to see what its passengers were up to, until a running traffic jam developed. The spectacle ended after Lennon angrily tore the lettering off the sides of the bus.
Magical Mystery Tour was the first Beatles film project following the death of manager Brian Epstein in August 1967, and there has been much speculation that the absence of Epstein's judgment contributed to its undisciplined production, as seen, for instance, in the absence of a screenplay and professional direction. The film originally appeared twice on BBC-TV over the 1967 Christmas holidays (first in black and white on BBC 1 on Boxing Day, then in colour on BBC2 a few days later), but was savaged by critics on its release;[1] it was, however, noted by Steven Spielberg in film school (according to McCartney in one of the interviews for The Beatles Anthology: "I've read that people like him have sort of said, 'When I was in school that was a film we really took notice of…' like an art film, you know, rather than a proper film.")
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