Magical Mystery Tour

Part 3 - Release and Reception

The critical reception of Magical Mystery Tour was (and still is) unprecedented in the Beatles’ career. The film was almost unanimously savaged by critics and audiences alike and, for the first and only time in their career, the Beatles had to defend their work before a bewildered and angry British media. As Philip Norman puts it, ‘For the first time in their existence, the Beatles were unpopular.’49 If anything, ‘unpopular’ is an understatement. Almost all the ‘serious’ and tabloid press ran cover stories such as ‘Beatles’ Mystery Tour Baffles Viewers’,50 and according to the Daily Mirror,both the newspapers' and the BBC's switchboards were jammed by complaints from fans and impartial viewers alike.51 Even Melody Maker (a magazine whose youthful readership extended beyond the usual conservatism of the press) received letters of complaint from bemused viewers, one of whom described it as the ‘biggest disappointment of 1967’.52

The scale of the film's critical failure in Britain had serious commercial consequences for its overseas release, not least with the wealthy American television networks, who, besides being potentially high-paying buyers, also held the key to the film's largest affluent audience. On 28 December 1967, the Los Angeles Times ran a headline which read ‘Beatles Produce First Flop with Yule Film’, and although the television rights were sold to Japan, Australia and some European countries, the American networks, discouraged by the film’s unfavourable British reception, backed out of lucrative sales negotiations at the eleventh hour, which meant that the film was not even seen by its most important target audience.53 However, one wonders if this was actually a blessing in disguise. After all, although the group reputedly lost around $lmillion in exhibition fees,54 the American soundtrack became one of the fastest sellers in Capitol's history, grossing an enormous $8 million within just ten days,55 in a country where the accompanying film went unseen. By comparison, the ‘advertised’ double EP set was less successful (by Beatles standards56) in Britain, becoming one of their few recordings which failed to top the Record Retailer charts. Considering the film as part of a package intended to generate ‘direct’ and related revenue, one would therefore have to concede that by the standards of their previous excursions into film, its critical and commercial failure was nothing short of monumental. Indeed, while ‘relative’ is clearly the operative word when discussing the film's economic failure (obviously American soundtrack royalties alone would easily have covered the modest production budget), one might argue that its singularly paradoxical commercial ‘success’ was that it was not shown in a country which I suspect would have reacted in much the same manner as the British audiences and critics.

Why, then, did critics and audiences despise the film so much? On a superficial level, the most obvious answer is that the form was simply too radical for its audiences’ expectations, and it is certainly true that a considerable number of the criticisms and complaints arose from its unconventional narrative and anti-institutional plot. As a Daily Mirror story explained, ‘By the thousand, viewers protested to the BBC who screened the fifty-minute film. What was it all about? they asked.’57 TV pundits such as James Thomas of the Daily Express were also perplexed and angered by its form, complaining that ‘the confusion was horrific’.58 It is clearly evident, then, that both public and critics fatally attempted to judge the film in relation to the more conventional narrative entertainment they would normally expect from the group, and were either unable or unwilling to sympathize with the experimental nature of the film on its own terms. Indeed, the press, armed with the knowledge that the film had been assembled hastily and largely without a large professional production crew, seemed to misconstrue experimentalism as amateurism, with critics from papers such as the Daily Mirror and the Daily Express implying that the avant-garde nature of the film’s form was born out of the group’s lack of film-making expertise and contempt for the public rather than any deliberate attempt to create something ‘different’.59 Jumping to the film’s defence, McCartney attempted to explain its experimental nature in an intense series of press interviews and television appearances. Speaking to the Daily Express on 28 December, he protested that ‘the mistake was that too many people tried to understand it. There was no plot, so it was pointless trying to find one. It is like an abstract painting.60 To the Daily Mirror he added, ‘Everybody was looking for a plot but purposely it wasn’t there. The more people kept seeking a plot the worse it must have become for them. We did it as a series of disconnected, unconnected events.’61

Unsurprisingly, because they failed to comprehend the nature of the film’s form, critics and public largely failed to grasp (perhaps mercifully) the acerbic mockery of its surreal satire, gut-reacting to its imagery as if it were intended as naively literal entertainment as opposed to a part satire of the concept. As a result, the stripshow sequence predictably engendered particular aversion, the Daily Mirror conceding that ‘there were protests too, about a striptease scene, though no-one had grasped its meaning.’62 Perhaps more surprisingly, critics also attacked the Beatles’ soundtrack to the film, the Daily Express describing the songs as ‘quite unmemorable’.63

Even when one considers the film’s radical nature, it is truly amazing that it received such derogatory reactions from a press and public who had previously lauded the Beatles as the darlings of British pop culture. After all, although Ray Connolly suggests that critics were ‘not yet ready to see their family favourites step over into the avant-garde’,64 both press and public had, as I have noted, been prepared to let the group experiment with new and frequently experimental fashions and musical forms prior to the film's conception. Faced with this evidence, one has to look beyond the formal style of the film and question whether there were any other direct or indirect factors which also contributed to its vituperative reception and commercial failure.

The answer to this is a resounding ‘yes’, and there are several factors which one could posit as contributing to its unfavourable reaction. First, it must be said that, as a multi-media sales campaign which comprised a record and a film, Magical Mystery Tour was beset by organizational problems. Prior to its release, previous Beatles soundtrack albums had been released concurrently with their films, creating a dual hysteria and an anticipated build-up for their release. However, possibly sensing that the highly experimental nature of both the songs and the double EP package needed more time to ‘catch’ than their predecessors, NEMS sensibly planned to rush-release the EP on 1 December, four weeks before the film was due to be screened, allowing both audience and critics to build up a familiarity with the musical material.65 However, two major problems affected this strategy from the outset. A hold-up in the printing of the colour booklet meant a delay of over a week66 and, when the record was delivered to stores, dealers were confused by its unprecedented format. As a contemporary Melody Maker item reports, dealers had problems with marketing the release as they were ‘not sure how to treat the record, because it isn't a conventional single or album’.67 It was another week before the confusion was cleared, and the record was properly marketed as a single.

Yet while these factors can be attributed to bad luck, it must be said that the marketing of the release was unconventional to say the least. With their eye on the profitable Christmas number one slot, EMI had released a new Beatles single, ‘Hello, Goodbye’ just two weeks earlier, thus over-saturating the market with Beatles product, and restricting the potential air play of the Magical Mystery Tour material. There is considerable irony in the notion that the EP was at least partially denied the Christmas number one spot by another Beatles single. On top of this, the film and EP’s centrepiece, CI Am the Walrus’ had, as I have noted, been banned from Radio 1 by the station’s bosses. With the ‘pirate’ radio stations recently banned, the song had no alternative outlet of promotion. As a result of these developments, public and critics had been given less exposure to the soundtrack songs than they may have needed to appreciate the unconventional nature of the material. George Melly, writing about the film in Revolt into Style, believes that this was certainly central to the hostile reaction, maintaining that the songs were ‘admirable’ but that if they ‘had had time to become familiar, the film might well have aroused less irritation.’ 68

Another possible reason for the public and critics' hostility could be the broadcasting slot allotted to the film. The film was screened at 8.35 p.m. on BBC1 at a time usually reserved for more conventional films or light entertainment. As we have established, Magical Mystery Tour did not fit into such a category, and its radical style would have seemed especially frustrating to a public who would naturally have expected something more conventional (even from the Beatles) at this time in the evening. As Peter Black of The Listener commented, ‘Slotted into one of the arts programmes’ times, the Beatles film would hardly have raised a whisper.’69 However, there were significant reasons why this did not happen. First, the Beatles' music was, until Magical Mystery Tour,a phenomenon which, at least for the last two or three years, had appealed across ages, cultures and classes. Everything they produced created massive popular interest and although the film was a critical failure, it was watched by a huge audience of around twenty million viewers.70 With such enormous public interest, the BBC would have been ill advised to give it anything other than a prime-time slot. Moreover, apart from being given an aesthetically unsuitable slot, the film was also first broadcast in black and white, and as Gavrik Losey rightly argues, ‘It had to be seen in colour to make any sense at all.’71 Although the reason for this decision has never been fully revealed, there is no doubt that it was completely insensitive to the brightly coloured psychedelic aesthetic of such sequences as the ‘Flying’ extravaganza. Devoid of its startling colour-filtered effects, the entire raison d’etre of its aesthetic and meaning is completely undermined.

Finally, there is another important yet totally external factor which could possibly have contributed to the film's negative reception, this being the timing of the hostile reaction which greeted McCartney's public admission that he had taken LSD and endorsed the experience. In June 1967, articles in Queen magazine in Britain and Life in America featured interviews with McCartney in which he admitted having used the drug and included comments regarding the possibilities of LSD as a universal cure for social evils. Here, McCartney explained that LSD had opened his eyes to a greater understanding of the human condition, claiming that ‘we only use one tenth of our brain. Just think of all that we could accomplish if we could only tap that hidden part. It would mean a whole new world. If the politicians would take LSD, there wouldn't be any more war, or poverty or famine.’72 Whether or not his comments were intended to promote sensationalist controversy, or whether he just wanted to use his cultural influence to popularize a substance which he personally endorsed at the time, is a debatable issue. However, according to Peter Brown, director of NEMS, the statement was made in a ‘moment of unsurpassed folly’,73 causing a storm of outrage when discovered by the British press and making the previously ‘wholesome’ Beatles for a time personally unpopular, not only with most of the disapproving press, but also with mainstream youth magazines such as Melody Maker.

When Epstein (previously regarded as Britain's most admirable and exemplary impresario) had leapt to McCartney's defence and maintained that he also endorsed the drug, the controversy ballooned to new proportions, with both group and manager caught in a crossfire of public scorn. Epstein was ‘widely criticized in newspaper editorials, TV commentaries, and by parent and church groups for his confession. It was discussed at length on the floor of the House of Commons, and the Home Office released an official statement saying that it was "horrified" at Epstein's attitude towards this dangerous drug.’74 The LSD incident, which mirrored Lennon’s 1966 faux-pas about being

‘bigger than Jesus’,75 changed consensus attitudes towards the Beatles. Their music (which had, at least on a populist level, long been considered as ‘beyond reproach’) was still universally loved and adored (and bought!), but while the admission helped to clarify their godhead status within factions of the underground (who also presumably loved the film), it did little for their larger, and more ‘mainstream’, following. Indeed, while most of the press and public were prepared to enjoy a superficial appreciation of the fashions and music of ‘flower power’, it is clear that their fundamental conservatism meant that they were largely unprepared to accept the more serious ramifications of a flourishing drug culture. Singles releases notwithstanding, the group's next major project after the LSD furore was Magical Mystery Tour.76 Although it is impossible to garner any concrete evidence that the press reaction to the film was coloured by any sense of moral ‘revenge’, it is clearly an interesting possibility. What is certain is that Magical Mystery Tour, with its combination of blatantly drug-induced imagery, simulated ‘trips’ and verite footage of a frequently ‘stoned’ looking group, could not, in the light of these developments, have been timed more badly.

© Bob Neaverson 1997 - 2008