Though it may be a soundtrack, there is an argument to be made for The Beatles’ film tie-ins. A Hard Day’s Night is the best piece from their pre-Rubber Soul days, Help! gave us Yesterday, and Magical Mystery Tour is better than Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Should we disqualify the album for a B-side filled with hit singles? It is a nonsense question. Do we lop off the bits of an album we dislike when it comes time to ascertain its quality? Magical Mystery Tour may be given the cheat sheet, but until this point, The Beatles had not used it effectively enough in the psychedelic fields. They had performed strongly enough with efforts like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and beat out competition from The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys, but their flutter with the LSD-induced imagery still fell a little flat. Magical Mystery Tour does not.
Well, except for Flying, that is. We can forgive that, can we not? Those playful, psychedelic tones which dominate Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band are in full swing here. In the absence of a connection to news stories and familiar faces in the real world is a complete A-side adaptation to a band on the run, heading on tour. This suggestion of magic and mystery is the closest the band would get to touring together again. It carries over well to The Fool on the Hill, a slice of life with a character whose aim, as is the case for many Paul McCartney songs of the time, is to escape the world around him. He succeeds. It provides contrast to She’s Leaving Home. Though the latter is based on the specific story of Melanie Coe, The Fool on the Hill has a broader lyrical route, a self-insert waiting to happen. Two strong songs before a rare bit of instrumental noodling from The Beatles on the underwhelmed Flying instrumental.
Magical Mystery Tour, even without the obvious strengths of its B-side, has some sinister brilliance. Blue Jay Way toys with the Indian music George Harrison would explore further on Within You Without You, though his contribution to Blue Jay Way feels for a straightforward and unnerving purpose. This momentum carries the repetitive, meditative heart of the song; such is its purpose. A ghostly voice is not so much a warning to listeners as it is a connection with the spirit realm. Pair it with Your Mother Should Know, a track where McCartney puts his pop classical sound in the spotlight to pay tribute to the previous generation and their music, which influenced him, and Magical Mystery Tour walks the fine line between floaty fiction and honest memories.
If Magical Mystery Tour is directly compared to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, then the made-for-TV soundtrack wins out. I Am the Walrus has vivid imagery infecting its metaphors, but at least John Lennon has more for us here than the vapid but still thrilling Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Some of the very best Beatles songs from this period the defining moments of psychedelic glory, can be found on the B-side. Hello Goodbye, Strawberry Fields Forever, and All You Need is Love are the best of their efforts during this period, and the likes of Penny Lane and Baby You’re a Rich Man push for the next steps of their sound. This is another monumental stop-off for The Beatles, and Magical Mystery Tour, while not as effective as a narrative piece, sheds the clawing and often cheesy wordplay for the sake of solid songwriting. Magical Mystery Tour may be a collection of songs without theme, but this is a freedom which serves the fundamentals of psychedelic sound well.
