"Paul
thought they could just turn up at Shepperton Studios to shoot the big
scenes, not realising that such places have to be booked up years in
advance"
The Magical Mystery Tour was sold to the BBC for, I think,
around £10,000 and got shown on Boxing Day 1967, shoved between a Petula
Clark show and the Norman Wisdom film The Square Peg. It got well and
truly slaughtered by the critics. The Daily Express called it “blatant
rubbish” and Paul went on the David Frost show the next day to defend
the film, though he admitted it had no point or aim.
I think one reason for the criticism was that, after five years of
Beatlemania, worldwide adulation, and the band being the best-known
people on the planet, blah blah, a lot of the media was looking for a
chance to take the Beatles down a peg or two, especially when they
appeared to have been condoning drugs.
Before the TV audience got to see it, I’d been to a private viewing
for friends and family at London’s Royal Lancaster Hotel on 21 December.
We had been told to come in fancy dress, which I moaned about. My wife
and I went as a girl guide and boy scout, wearing stuff borrowed from
some kids in our street, which didn’t fit.
Everyone
else had hired really expensive costumes. Paul and Jane Asher, his
girlfriend at the time, came as a Pearly King and Queen (left) and
looked sweet. John was dressed as a Teddy Boy and looked menacing. He
wore a drape jacket, drainpipe trousers and brothel creepers, and had
his hair greased back. John appeared rather distant, switched off, not
much interested, which is how he had been during most of the filming.
Later he tried to disown it, saying it was all Paul’s doing; he was just
dragged along.
For a year, they had put off doing a third Beatles film, after A Hard
Day’s Night (1964) and Help! (1965), then on a flight back from the USA
with Jane, Paul had thought of this idea of doing an hour-long TV film
in which they would all get on a bus, shoot stuff, see what happens. It
would be mysterious, as no one would know where they were going. And
magical, so that they could do what they wanted.
The “Mystery Tour” notion harked back to their childhood, something
very common in the 1950s, which you hardly see today, and was popular
with working-class families in the North who didn’t have a car. In
Carlisle, when I was growing up, you always ended up in the Lakes, so it
was never a huge mystery. A crate of beer would be taken by the dads
and everyone would sing on the way home.
It was another six months before Paul firmed up the idea, by which
time Brian Epstein was dead. They now had no manager to calm them down
or give back-up from an office. So they really did set off with little
planning and no proper script, just asking some character actors – whom
they admired, but didn’t audition – to come along.
Paul,
in his naivety, thought they could just turn up at Shepperton Studios
to shoot the big scenes, not realising that such places have to be
booked up months if not years in advance. Instead, they had to mock it
up in an old airfield at West Malling in Kent.
When it came to the editing, Paul set aside two weeks – but in the
event it took 11 weeks, hacking down ten hours of film into 50 minutes.
I used to go to see him in an editing studio in Old Compton Street in
Soho, up some stairs above a dodgy club. Outside there was often an old
drunken tramp with carnations behind his ears who did a funny dance on
the pavement. Paul was amused and would invite him up the stairs – which
led to more delays as they couldn’t get rid of him. His party piece was
Bless ‘Em All, with obscene words substituted.
At the time, watching Paul directing the film – which in essence he
did – and then editing it, I thought how amazing it was that this young
lad, with no training in film technique, was working it out all for
himself, doing it his way.
They had, of course, written all those songs without being able to
read or write a note of music, and made all those records with no studio
experience. This was their philosophy. You could do these things if you
really wanted. No need to follow the rules or be bossed around. A very
modern concept. Though it did help to be multimillionaires.
They should, of course, have worked harder on the script beforehand
and planned all the scenes in advance, but the idea was to make it
spontaneous, and provide family amusement over the festive season.
As a Beatles fan, then and now, I greatly enjoyed it. It was a
modest, short film, done on a budget. I couldn’t see why the
clever-clogs critics were so beastly. And of course it does have some
great Beatles tunes, such as I Am the Walrus, which has survived the
test of time and Russell Brand mucking it up at the Olympics.
Then there is The Fool on the Hill and Your Mother Should Know, both
written by Paul. The way the songs were shot was ahead of their time,
self-contained little rock videos. Over the decades the film has
acquired a bit of a cult following. It’s shown on Monday for the first
time in 33 years, after an Arena assessment of it – it has improved with
age, as we all do, tra la…
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