The Beatles by Steve Turner Read Free Book Online Page B

cinema and now Paul was keen to make films himself, working with an 8mm camera and composing electronic soundtracks.
    Encouraged by the experimental mood of the times, Paul envisaged making an unscripted film where characters and locations were chosen in advance , but the story was improvised on camera. His plan was to put the Beatles alongside an assorted collection of actors and colourful characters on a strange coach journey through the English countryside.
    As Hunter Davies reported in the Sunday Times the day before Magical Mystery Tour was shown on British television: “(They had decided that the film) would be Magical, so that they could do any ideas which came to them, and Mysterious in that neither they nor the rest of the passengers would know what they were going to donext… ‘The whole thing will be a mystery to everyone,’ Paul told the rest of the Beatles, ‘including us.’”
    There were two main inspirations behind Magical Mystery Tour. The first was the British working-class custom of the ‘mystery tour’, an organized day trip by coach, where only the driver knows the destination. The second was American novelist Ken Kesey’s idea of driving through America on a psychedelically painted bus. The sign on the front of Kesey’s bus read ‘Furthur’ (sic) and the one on the back – ‘Caution. Weird load’. The bus was full of counter-culture ‘freaks’ who Kesey fed loud music and copious amounts of drugs just to see what would happen. His driver was Neal Cassady, the model for Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. The story of their adventures was eventually told in Tom Wolfe’s book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
    The Beatles were aware of Kesey’s activities and later, when the Apple record label was founded, Kesey visited the office in Savile Row to record a spoken-word album.
    On April 25, Paul arrived at Abbey Road studios with nothing more than the song title, the first line and a general idea for the tune. He said he wanted his new song to be like a commercial for the television programme, letting viewers know what was in store. Mal Evans was dispatched to find some real mystery tour posters from which they could lift phrases but, after visiting coach stations, returned empty-handed. When the backing track had been recorded, Paul asked everyone to shout out words connected with mystery tours which Mal wrote down. They came up with ‘invitation’, ‘reservation’, ‘trip of a lifetime’ and ‘satisfaction guaranteed’, but it wasn’t enough and so the vocal track was filled with gobbledy-gook until Paul returned two days later with a completed lyric.
    Paul’s words were a mixture of traditional fairground barking and contemporary drug references. To the majority of the audience ‘roll up, roll up’ was the ringmasters invitation to the circus. To Paul it was also an invitation to roll up a joint. The Magical Mystery Tour was going to ‘take you away’, on a trip. Even the phrase ‘dying to take you away’ was a conscious reference to the Tibetan Book Of The Dead.
    The track was used over an opening sequence made up of scenes from the film with an additional spoken section which declared: “When a man buys a ticket for a magical mystery tour, he knows what to expect. We guarantee him the trip of a lifetime, and that’s just what he gets – the incredible Magical Mystery Tour.”

FOOL ON THE HILL
    Paul started work on ‘Fool On The Hill’ in March 1967 while he was writing ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’, although it wasn’t recorded until September.
    Hunter Davies observed Paul singing and playing “a very slow, beautiful song about a foolish man sitting on the hill”, while John listened staring blankly out of the window at Cavendish Avenue. “Paul sang it many times, la la-ing words he hadn’t thought of yet. When at last he finished, John said he’d better write the words down or he’d forget them. Paul said it was OK. He wouldn’t