Yellow Submarine

Part 3 - Release and Reception

The film was premiered at the London Pavilion on 17 July 1968. Again the Beatles attended personally and the traffic around Piccadilly Circus once more came to a standstill as thousands of fans swarmed across central London. Outside the theatre, costumed characters from the film entertained the crowds, and fans also caught glimpses of contemporary celebrities, including members of the Rolling Stones and Cream, James Taylor and Twiggy. All had been requested by the group to wear something yellow, and after the screening around 200 VIP guests made their way to the Royal Lancaster Hotel on Bayswater Road, where the hotel's newly built disco, ‘The Yellow Submarine’, had just opened.

The film was of course accompanied by a soundtrack album, although there were two important differences from the Beatles' other film-oriented material. First, it was the first British-issued film soundtrack album to include material which was not performed or written by the group. Although side one of the LP comprised the four ‘new’ songs mentioned earlier (plus the previously released title track and ‘All You Need Is Love’), the second side contained nothing but extracts from George Martin's powerful instrumental score. Secondly, the album was not concurrently released with the film; it was released on 13 January 1969, seven months after the premiere, possibly because the group felt that the film soundtrack should not coincide with their most ambitious White Album project, which was released in Britain on 22 November 1968. On a more practical level, Mark Lewisohn, in his authoratitive Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, notes that George Martin wanted to re-record his instrumental side of the album, which he did (with the aid of a forty-one piece orchestra) in two three-hour sessions at Abbey Road on 22 and 23 October 1968.24

The critics were by and large kind to the film, their reception in marked contrast to the venomous response which greeted Magical Mystery Tour just seven months earlier. However, before they had actually seen the film, many reviewers were no more enamoured of the idea of a full-length cartoon film than the group themselves. Indeed, just three days after the first broadcast of Magical Mystery Tour, the Daily Mail ran an article titled ‘After That Flop the Cartoon Beatles’, which complained that ‘the Beatles stubbornly continue to experiment’.25 Despite these fears, the film received generally positive reviews. The tabloids were generally ecstatic, with the Daily Mail’s Cecil Wilson running a headline which simply stated ‘Dazzled by That Yellow Submarine’, his review enthusiastically comparing the character of Jeremy Hilary Boob (the ‘Nowhere Man’) with Disney characters.26 The quality press were also impressed, with reviews from Patrick Gibb and John Russell Taylor respectively describing the film as ‘brilliantly inventive’ and proudly announcing the arrival of ‘a British cartoon film that’s sure to please everyone’.27 Nigel Gosling of the Observer was also enthusiastic, maintaining that the film ‘packs in more stimulation, sly art-references and pure joy into ninety minutes than a mile of exhibitions of op and pop and all the mod cons’.28 Specialist film magazines were no less enthralled, with Gavin Millar of Sight and Sound picking up on the scope of the film's formal eclecticism and describing it as both a ‘pleasure and surprise’.29 More importantly for the Beatles’ underground following, Joel W. Finler of IT also gave the film a very favourable notice.30 However, there were some minor complaints about the film's drug-induced imagery in certain British and American publications. While Esquire referred to the iconography as an ‘LSD zoo’,31 Felix Barker of the Evening News wrote an extremely scathing piece which maintained that ‘you won’t be able to get near the box office for hippies, flower people, Beatle-crushers, love-inners and sit-downers. And in every ten thousand teenagers, one elderly person of over twenty-five will join in vaguely hoping to keep with it. Others I predict will hate every five thousand two hundred and twenty seconds of this cartoon.’32 Fortunately for the Beatles, Felix Barker was wrong, although this did not stop the film from undergoing some very unfortunate complications in Britain.

Although the film was a critical triumph, its potential commercial success in Britain was hampered by problems of exhibition. Rank, the film's British exhibitors, refused to screen the movie at all their 200 cinemas; contemporary reports show that the film was dropped from about half their outlets shortly after its release. On 6 August 1968 the Daily Express ran an article titled ‘Beatles Yellow Submarine Dropped bv Cinemas’, in which a spokesman for Rank maintained that the film's takings in the first three weeks of exhibition had been lower than expected and it would therefore receive only a limited release.33 According to Bill Harry, the box-office receipts showed that this had been a miscalculation by Rank, but by then ‘the damage had been done and Rank's decision to withdraw the film from more than half of their cinemas drastically affected its potential box office income in Britain’.34 Despite this setback, the film is still regarded by Peter Brown and Steven Gaines as a commercial success35 and, as Bill Harry notes, no such problems occurred with the American release, where the cartoon did exceptionally good business.36

However, the soundtrack album shifted fewer units than previous Beatle albums, no doubt because of its delayed release and lack of original material. Indeed, as Mark Lewisohn maintains, the Beatles were ‘mildly criticized’37 at the time for providing fans with less than their usual good value, and for the first time in Britain an ‘original’ Beatles album failed to make the number one spot, peaking at number three in the Record Retailer charts and faring little better in America. Interestingly, Lewisohn notes that the group probably also felt that fans had been somewhat ‘cheated’ by the lack of original material on the album release, noting that the EMI library contains a master tape for a seven-inch mono EP of the group’s four original compositions for the film (plus an early mix of Lennon's haunting ‘Across the Universe’) which dates back to 13 March 1969.38 This 33!/3 rpm EP, which was no doubt intended to restore goodwill amongst fans was of course never released, and Lewisohn suggests that the group, who weren't particularly pleased with their musical contribution to the film, simply decided upon ‘washing their hands of the whole affair’.39

Yet despite the Beatles' relative unhappiness and ambivalent attitude to their musical numbers for the film's score, there can be no doubting its quality. Although the Yellow Submarine album was much criticized by fans for its poor value, George Martin's soundtrack still retains an extraordinary freshness and, whatever their production history, the Beatles' contributions to the record are never less than first-class. Indeed, although fans had every right to complain about the inclusion of two pre-released numbers, the two Harrison numbers alone are worth the admission price. Although continually disregarded by the majority of critics, and much later, in 1999, largely superseded by the release of the all Beatles ‘Songtrack’ album, ‘It’s All Too Much’ must surely be the most underrated song in the Beatles' psychedelic canon. With its extraordinary tape loops and dense barrage of background effects, the song's production took the psychedelic aesthetic to its logical conclusion, and the integration of classical music (trumpets lifted from Jeramiah Clarke's ‘Prince of Denmark's March’) and contemporary pop (the use of a verse from the Merseys' 1966 hit ‘Sorrow’) anticipated the age of sampling with a far greater vengeance than anything they had previously committed to disc. Add to this Harrison's wonderfully mysterious ‘Only a Northern Song’ (one can only speculate as to why it was discarded from Sergeant Pepper) and one of Lennon's most powerful acid-rock songs to date (‘Hey Bulldog’), and one begins to wonder why the album performed less well than its predecessors.

Thereis, however, another possible reason for the album's comparatively poor performance in the marketplace. Prior to its release, in November and December 1968, the first two solo Beatles projects, Harrison's brilliant Wonderwall Music film soundtrack and Lennon and Yoko Ono's avant-garde sound collages, Unfinished Music No.l - TwoVirgins, had been released to hostile reviews from the British and American music press and extremely poor sales, the latter record causing furore in some corners because of its provocative cover, which showed Lennon and his new lover/collaborator glaring at the camera in full-frontal nudity.40 Although agreeing to manufacture the record, EMI refused to distribute it, the job finally being given to the Who's label, Track, who ensured against legal liabilities by packaging the original cover in plain brown wrappers before distributing it. Whilst doubtless appealing to underground factions, neither the cover (which was perceived by many to be pornographic), nor the material it contained impressed the Beatles' mainstream followers, and it is quite possible that the Yellow Submarine soundtrack suffered as a result of the hostility generated by these releases. As if this weren’t enough, the period between the film and album release was also marked by Lennon's arrest on 18 October 1968 for possession of marijuana. He was released on bail, and in November he was fined £150 at Marylebone Magistrates Court. Although he claimed the incident to have been a set-up, it again fuelled the establishment's disenchantment with the Beatles, who seemed, in the heady months following the film's release, to have destroyed forever their relationship with mainstream followers. As Lennon himself maintained, ‘The trouble is, I suppose, I've spoiled my image. People want me to stay in their own bag. They want me to be loveable. But I was never that. Even at school I was just "Lennon". Nobody ever thought of me as cuddly.’41

Despite the LP fiasco, the film spawned a wave of other film-related merchandise in Britain and America with a range of goods which far surpassed the records and novelizations released to coincide with their previous screen incarnations. These products were largely targeted at younger children and, according to Richard Buskin, were launched by over twenty-five licensed merchandisers.42 As Buskin's book Beatle Crazy! illustrates, there was a vast range of children's products, including jigsaws, snowdomes, Halloween costumes, alarm clocks, mobiles, watches and badges.43 Indeed, on the day of the film's British premiere, the Evening News carried an advertisement feature (presumably financed through King Features) titled ‘How the Beatles Brought Love Back into Our Funny World’, which, as well as advertising the film itself, also contained publicity for Marshall Dee's official Yellow Submarine T-shirts (for adults and children) and the New English Library's paperback novelization-cum-picture book, which was proudly proclaimed to be the world's first ever full-colour paperback.44 Interestingly, the accompanying article claimed that ‘John Lennon and Paul McCartney made sizeable contributions to the script of Yellow Submarine,’45 which, while a gross exaggeration, supports Barrow’s earlier comments that, upon seeing the finished product, the Beatles were happy not only to publicize the film by attending its premiere, but also to put their creative reputations on the line by lending their names to the project.

Beyond its commercial implications, the critical success of Yellow Submarine was of great importance to the group since, for all its drug-induced imagery, it presented the public with the cosy, safe and affable Beatles they knew and loved, deflecting, albeit briefly, the hostility garnered by Magical Mystery Tour, the LSD controversy of 1967, and the derision which, in the month of the film’s release, had met Lennon and Ono’s ‘You Are Here’ exhibition at the Robert Fraser gallery.46 As the Daily Telegraph nostalgically proclaimed, ‘The Beatles spirit is here if not the flesh - their good-natured gusto, their kindly curiosity, their sympathy with their fellow men and their lack of pretentiousness are all summed up here with gaiety.’47 Although, as I mentioned earlier, this goodwill was somewhat shortlived, Yellow Submarine was important to the group's increasingly controversial late sixties image in that it pacified the mainstream press and public by providing a tonic for the group's increasingly bewildering and erratic output and behaviour. 1968 had been the strangest year to date in the Beatles' increasingly diverse career, full of huge peaks and sharp inclines. Though the year began badly with the negative response to Magical Mystery Tour still ringing in their ears, they had clawed their way back to mass popularity with the massive-selling ‘Hey Jude’ and ‘Lady Madonna’ singles and had reconciled this success with the Yellow Submarine movie, only to find the year ending on similar bittersweet notes as the winter of 1967. Despite the commercial and critical success which heralded the release of their eclectic if rather patchy double album, The Beatles, Lennon’s arrest and solo activities meant that the year also ended with more artistic, drug-related and (a first for the Beatles) sexual controversy. Worse still, the group’s own personal and musical relationships (perhaps compounded by Yoko's constant presence in the recording studio) were beginning to deteriorate beyond repair. During the recording of The Beatles LP, Ringo quit the group for two weeks following arguments with the other members. While he was away the group simply went on with the recording sessions, with McCartney effortlessly providing the rhythm tracks for ‘Back in the USSR’ and ‘Dear Prudence’.48 Following Lennon's inauguration into the experimental styles of Cage and Stockhausen, McCartney desperately tried to keep Lennon and Ono's avant-garde sound collage, ‘Revolution 9’, off the album, only to meet with Lennon's equally dogged determination for it to remain there. Producer George Martin had recommended that the LP be scaled down to a single but was overruled by the group, and despite the sheer enormity of its eclectic pastiche (hardly a single musical style, contemporary or modern, went unnoticed), the album was essentially the work of four separate musicians working on their own solo numbers. Despite the tally of thirty songs, the recording sessions were frequently conducted in the absence of a complete line-up and, although largely unnoticed at the time, Lennon and McCartney's waning collaborative urge had all but disappeared.

In this sense, The Beatles can be seen as something of a watershed album for the group, the first album which contained no collaborative equivalent to ‘A Day in the Life’ or ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’, and which highlighted the increasing differences of style of two songwriters who had effectively outgrown the healthy competition which had previously driven them. Whilst Lennon's songs had become increasingly lyrical, personal, and, in the case of ‘Revolution 9’, avant-garde, McCartney retained and developed his extraordinary melodic skills and uncanny aptitude for musical pastiche. Indeed, while the alburn's eclecticism and emphasis on the personal and the avant-garde justly won the approval of critics and consumers, there can be little doubt that many of the songs on The Beatles lacked the melodic polish they had come to love. Indeed, although the album was a fascinating scrapbook of material (in some ways the group's most ‘interesting’ piece), many of the numbers lacked the stirring middle-eights and meticulously crafted arrangements so apparent in their more collaborative work, giving credence to George Martin’s belief that the record would have been more memorable if scaled down to single-album length.

Worse still, many of the divisions of their recently founded Apple Corps, business were in a mess. Apart from its record division (which, besides the Beatles, had under its supervision such profitable artists as Mary Hopkin), the company's multiplicity of other sections had produced virtually nothing of serious financial worth, and the openhanded ideals to which it aspired were being increasingly exploited from inside and out. On 31 July 1968, just seven months after its opening, the Apple boutique on Baker Street closed down, and its remaining stock was given away to the public. Magical Mystery Tour had met with vehement criticism, and Apple Electronics, headed by Lennon's Greek inventor friend ‘magic’ Alexis Mardas, had failed to produce any viable prototypes, despite the fact that the Beatles had channelled thousands of pounds into providing a working laboratory for the eccentric inventor. Indeed, by the end of the year, Mardas had designed nothing more than an electronic apple which pulsated to light and sound, and a ‘nothing box’, a construction which, equipped with twelve lights programmed to flash randomly for five years, did - as its name suggested - absolutely nothing of any practical purpose.

The Beatles had initially intended the Apple venture to be a form of ‘western communism’ in which the ‘bosses aren't in it for profit’,49 and on 11 May 1968 Lennon and McCartney had gone to New York to appear on the Johnny Carson Show, where they announced their plans to patronize artists from all cultural disciplines. As McCartney had maintained at an American press conference, ‘If you come to me and say, "I’ve had such and such a dream," I will say, "Here’s so much money. Go away and do it." We've already bought all our dreams, so now we want to share that possibility with others.’50 Two weeks earlier, full-page advertisements had appeared in the British music press, urging would-be recording artists to send in tapes to the Apple Music offices, and within days the London offices were flooded by a tidal wave of tapes, poems, film scripts and novels. At one point Denis O’Dell had five full-time readers wading through piles of unsolicited film scripts,51 and, despite the best efforts of managing director Neil Aspinall and press officer Derek Taylor, it was impossible to deal with the endless onslaught of applications for funding. As Taylor remembers, ‘We tried to do what we promised, to help people realize their dreams, but it was impossible. There weren't sufficient hours in the day or sufficient resources.’52 The Beatles, for all their extraordinary mastery of musical genres, were not businessmen, and it showed. The Apple was beginning to rot.

© Bob Neaverson 1997 - 2008