The Beatles' 'disaster' Paul McCartney didn't want to 'take the blame' for

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The Beatles' 'disaster' Paul McCartney didn't want to 'take the blame' for

The band were on top of the world in 1967 but their first failure soon arrived

By  Dan Haygarth 

Liverpool Daily Post Editor and Regeneration Reporter

26 Dec 2024

John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr during filming of the film 'Magical Mystery Tour'(Image: David Redfern/Redferns)

In 1967 The Beatles were at the peak of their powers. The band had released the masterpiece 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' that May, revolutionising popular music and topping the UK charts for 23 consecutive weeks.

The ground-breaking album was the soundtrack to the so-called 'Summer of Love', capturing the psychedelic zeitgeist. The band's next move continued with the experimental sound they had been developing since 1966's 'Revolver' and became 'Magical Mystery Tour', which was released as a double EP in December 1967.

Its initial US release included the classic tracks 'Hello, Goodbye', 'Strawberry Fields Forever', 'Penny Lane' and 'All You Need Is Love' and the album was loved by fans while garnering critical acclaim. However, the film of the same name it served as the soundtrack for was considerably less adored.

The 'Magical Mystery Tour' film aired on BBC1 in black and white on Boxing Day 1967. It was the third Beatles film, following 'A Hard Day's Night' and 'Help', which were released in 1964 and 1965 respectively.

Much of 'Magical Mystery Tour' was improvised and its story follows a group of people on a coach trip who then start to experience strange and surreal things. About its production, Ringo Starr said: "Paul had a great piece of paper – just a blank piece of white paper with a circle on it. The plan was: 'We start here, and we've got to do something here'. We filled it in as we went along."

After it aired, it was not well received and is viewed as the band's first critical failure. In The Express' review, James Thomas wrote: " "The bigger they are, the harder they fall. And what a fall it was.". Meanwhile, the Daily Mail called the film "appalling".

Paul McCartney beside the Bedford VAL Panorama 1 coach used during filming of The Beatles 'Magical Mystery Tour' (Image: Colleen Hayward/Redferns)

Part of the problem was it was meant to be a psychedelic explosion of colour, but BBC1 could only broadcast in black and white. About that, The Beatles' producer George Martin later said: "When it came out originally on British television, it was a colour film but shown in black and white, because they didn't have colour on BBC1 in those days. So it looked awful and was a disaster."

John Lennon believed that decision impacted its critical standing as well. He said: "They (the critics) reviewed it in black and white. It's like reviewing a mono version of a stereo record."

Plans to show the film on US television were shelved after its critical battering in the UK. Paul was sent out onto the David Frost Programme on December 27 to defend it and he later said: "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 agreed on it – but a lot of the material at that time could have been my idea."

Hoping to salvage the film's reputation, it was screened in colour in January 1968 but there were only about 200,000 colour TVs in the UK at that point. However, it has been broadcast in colour several times since and had a cinema release in 2012.

Despite the film's failure, the album remains a favourite of Beatles fans. You can take a two hour trip around Liverpool's Beatles landmarks in buses designed like those from the film.