The Magical Mystery Tour
“I’m not sure whose idea Magical Mystery Tour was. It could have been mine, but I’m not sure whether I want to take the blame for it! We were all in on it — but a lot of the material at that time could have been my idea.”
- Paul McCartney
“When it came out originally on British television, it was a colour film shown in black and white, because they didn’t have colour on BBC1 in those days. It looked awful and was a disaster.”
- George Martin
It’s not all bad. I wouldn’t post it here if it was. It is pretty weird, but all of the musical sequences are solid. It’s easy to see this as the blueprint for nearly every self-made music film ever produced. It’s crudely made, confusing and self-indulgent. But if you’re a fan, it’ll do nicely.
“I mean, the scene that to me that stands out is the one of John shoveling the spaghetti on the fat woman’s plate. I mean, that was the best bit of the movie for me.”
- George Harrison
“…and of course they showed it in black and white and so it was hated. Now they all had their chance then to say, ‘They’ve gone too far! Who do they think they are?! What does it all mean?’ So that was really slated, but of course, when people started seeing it in color, they realized that it was a lot of fun.”
- Ringo Star
“You know, looking back on it, it’s how you learn kind of thing, by your mistakes…but I think, you know, in the end it came out, I think it’s quite interesting now, looking back on it as a period piece. And people like Spielberg, 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. But of course, we then released it and got it shown on the BBC on Boxing Day.”
- Paul McCartney
One more telling fact about the film:
It is not included in the Beatles catalog, nor is is mentioned on the band’s official site.
