Tonight’s Pet Sounds: The Beatles, ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ [VIDEO]

Kids, tonight at 9 p.m. on the Pet Sounds special, we're going to do an album by one of my favorite Bands, The Beatles.  Hold on tight now, we're going on a 'Magical Mystery Tour.'

While the youngins may not know it, this album was conceived as a film at first.   The Beatles had just done one of their biggest, most critically successful albums, 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.'  They'd grown up from the kids they had been, of 20 and 21 in the early sixties.  Now they were adults on drugs!  Okay, so it wasn't all drugs, but I'm sure some of it was.

Anyway, they were at their creative height and were commercially and critically more successful than ever. They had no manager (their manager Brian Epstein had died earlier in the year), and they were in charge of their next project. So they could do whatever they wanted. They decided to make a free form, hour long Christmas special for television following the tradition of going on a "Charabanc" trip.

What is a "Charabanc" trip?  I'll tell you!  Firstly, what does the actual word mean?  It's pretty simple. It's slang for those large, two decker coach buses. Liverpool (where The Beatles are from) is in the north of England, and about a half an hour to an hour's drive from a place called Blackpool.  Blackpool is famous in England for having lots of attractions and parks, casinos and the famous Blackpool Lights that line up the main thoroughfare.  So people would go on a bus with all their friends and family, have some drinks and see the Lights.  Its generally considered just a fun little evening and most everyone has done it* or does it regularly in the north.  It's warm, it's jolly and nobody has to drive.  People generally tell stories or sing and joke  for the entire journey.  It especially happens at the Christmas Season, when the official Blackpool Illuminations are unveiled every year.

Looks like good fun, doesn't it?  Well, that was supposed to be what Magical Mystery Tour, the film, was in a nutshell.  It was supposed to be a fun little jaunt with good songs in bright, happy colors. What it turned into was a confusing mess that wasn't as much fun as the music.  It had a loose plot about wizards and Ringo and his Aunt Jessie on a trip, and something about someone falling in love.  And there are midgets singing and dancing.

It probably didn't help that initial showing on the BBC was in black and white.  Not only were the costumes not well seen,  but there was one sequence where the whole point of the scenery was the changing colors.  All the audience saw for "Flying" was a shot of a mountain for four minutes, because the colors didn't change.  Here's the trailer for the official DVD re-release this week.

So anyway, the album was initially meant as the soundtrack to the film.  Then, since the special (which was to be shown the day after Christmas) was an hour - and the songs for the special wouldn't be long enough for an LP,  they decided to round out the disk.  They put all the singles from the previous year, which were not available on a long play album, on this one.

This album really has no cohesive theme to it, but it does have an evocative fun aspect.  The important part is you have a lot of material that was not on an album before.  So, you have classics like "The Fool on the Hill," "I Am The Walrus," "Penny Lane," "Strawberry Fields Forever," and more on one album - and it's not even really a greatest hits.

So, I hope you'll join me tonight at 9 p.m.and enjoy our next segment of Pet Sounds.  Let me know what you think here, or on Facebook.

Magically yours,
Behka

*I did it when I spent my Sophomore year of college in England.  It was not Magical or Mysterious but it did involve a lot of Carling's.