Roll up, roll up for the Magical Mystery Tour, step right this way!
These are the unmistakable opening lyrics of "Magical Mystery Tour" which, like it's predecessors A Hard Day's Night and Help!, shares its title with an album and a film. The studio album, released on Boxing Day of 1967, is actually the soundtrack to the film. The idea came about when, after the success of Sgt. Pepper, Paul (unsurprisingly) suggested that the band make an unscripted film about their music. The ultimate result was a bunch of ordinary people, and the Beatles themselves, traveling on a coach going on different 'magical' adventures - all in all equating to a lot of nonsense. Whilst the film was not admired by critics (or many people, really), it's still a favourite amongst diehard Beatles fans.
The film contained six Beatles compositions including "The Fool on the Hill", "Blue Jay Way" (Harrison's only contribution to the film/album), "Your Mother Should Know", "Flying" (an instrumental piece credited to Lennon/McCartney/Harrison/Starkey), well-known favourite "I Am the Walrus" and, of course, the titular track, opening the film. These six songs make up the first side of the soundtrack/LP, which is the shortest album for the group, totalling only 11 songs.
The remaining five songs released on the soundtrack were not written with the film (or an album) in mind and were, in fact, 1967's singles thrown onto the record. "Hello, Goodbye", "Baby You're a Rich Man", "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" were the singles the group released in 1967 and are, of course, well-known and liked. Ah, but we can't forget perhaps The Beatles' most universally-known and quoted song - "All You Need is Love", of course, was the fifth single for 1967 and the final track on the record. The song was actually performed on a live broadcast via satellite to 26 different countries.
Whilst Magical Mystery Tour is considered one of The Beatles' thirteen studio albums, the 11-tracked soundtrack version was actually initially only released in the US whilst in the UK a double EP was released consisting only of the six songs actually in the film.
Unique to this Beatles album: technically it's not one of their studio albums as the LP was only released in America.
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