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Britons adored The Beatles — until Boxing Day in 1967 when the BBC aired a little movie called “Magical Mystery Tour” that was filmed in concert with the Fab Four’s album on the same name.
“The BBC bought it sight unseen,” says Jonathan Clyde, director of production of Apple Corps. “When you heard it was a Beatles film, it was worthwhile by extension.”
Nineteen sixty-seven was a golden year for the quartet. They had three No. 1 hits in America: “Penny Lane,” “All You Need Is Love” and “Hello, Goodbye.” In Hollywood, their low-budget movies, “A Hard Day’s Night” (1964) and “Help!” (1965) grossed millions. There was no reason to think your average Brit wouldn’t salivate over the Beatles’ next offering.
But when “Magical Mystery Tour” aired, as part of the BBC Christmas Programme, viewers were confused by the film’s experimental nature and very loose structure. Then they were upset. Their vehemence prompted Paul McCartney to defend the film on David Frost’s talk show the next day.
“I think a lot of people were looking for a plot. And there wasn’t one,” McCartney said.
Speaking to the producers of a “Magical Mystery Tour” documentary, a contemporary McCartney says the people who were expecting Morecambe & Wise or a British variety show wouldn’t get it and would quite rightly be annoyed.
“The entire nation had been let down by the Beatles,” says director Terry Gilliam, one of the documentary’s commentators.
To be sure, “Magical Mystery Tour” is a zany affair. The only narrative thread concerns The Beatles’ trip aboard a coach bus as it drives north to Blackpool, the Lancashire “equivalent of Atlantic City,” with a bunch of ordinary English citizens. (Clyde says the passengers on the bus include McCartney’s brother, Mike, Starr’s aunt, Jessie Robins, various characters actors and two Beatles’ fan club presidents.) While the bus travels north, psychedelic images appear outside the window as songs from album, such as “Fool on the Hill,” play. The bus stops here and there and The Beatles eat at a fish-and-chips shop.
“People would be amazed when they got off and chatted with people,” Clyde says. “There was no security. Just a roadie. It was another age. An age of innocence.”
Clyde oversaw the restoration of the original “Magical Mystery Tour” film and produce the documentary about it. To help explain the public’s bewilderment on Boxing Day, Clyde uses footage from the BBC archive to show that even though 1967 may have been the Summer of Love, England was still a “deeply conventional” place where “Edwardian entertainments” were still popular. On television, Petula Clark primly sang “The In- Crowd” on “Top of the Pops.”
“She was the face of the Unswinging ’60s,” says Clyde.
The film came together shortly after the shocking drug overdose death of Beatles manager Brian Epstein at age 32. “One would have thought they were in some sort of shock,” Clyde says. “It seems to have been decided that ‘We’re going to do this anyway.’ Get out of town for two weeks and head off into the West country.”
The controversy about “Magical Mystery Tour” died pretty quickly the next year. “They got such a hammering from the establishment media,” says Clyde, “and it passed. ‘Yellow Submarine’ came next and blew people away.”
MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR REVISITED
Friday, 9 p.m., PBS
THE BEATLES’ MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR
Friday, 10 p.m., PBS