The Trippy Bus Ride Of 67’

The Trippy Bus Ride Of 67’

8:35 PM Boxing day 1967, children across the nation were playing with their recently opened Spirograph’s, but for the rest of the population their entertainment relied on either radio or television. For the 16.4 million television owners, they had the choice of watching Titipu: The Mikado brought up to date on BBC 2, The Benny Hill show on ITV, or watch BBC 1 which was about to air the feature length television film, The Beatles magical mystery tour, many chose the latter. The plot for the film consisted of ordinary British citizens taking part of a mystery tour until ‘four or five wizards’ played by the Beatles, begin to make ‘strange things happen’.  

The majority of the film had the persistent theme of complete randomness, with neither the cast nor the Beatles members knowing which direction the film would take, when the idea began to manifest The Beatles gathered together a group of people for the cast and camera crew, and simply told them to ‘be on the coach on Monday morning’without any more information[1] . The ‘strange things’ that the movie consisted of was a series of collected ideas by The Beatles, which Paul McCartney called the ‘scrupt’. The scrupt included a variety of unscripted sketches including a spontaneous race in which each of the passengers uses a different mode of transportation, including a group of passengers using a long bicycle, in the end Starkey (played by Ringo) ends up beating them all with the bus[2].

This unsystematic approach from The Beatles was appropriately intertwined with the youth culture of 1967, especially with growing popularity of psychedelic drugs. The film featured many bright, outrageous colours associated with the effects of psychedelic drugs, the tour bus itself was decorated in bold multi-coloured stars and the words ‘magical mystery tour’ written on the side of the bus was filled with colours of the rainbow, showing that like the psychedelic drugs, the film was an adventure of colour and fun[3].

Despite the majority of the film consisting of strange sketches, The Beatles did include a series of music videos throughout the film, all with a similar psychedelic feel.  During the music video for ‘flying’, there was a prominent psychedelic sequence, this sequence despite being short, proved very intriguing. Dennis O’Dell was the man behind the iconic shot. Dell was production assistant for the bus tour was and was renowned in the film world. Dell managed to obtain outtake aerial shots over Greenland from Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove, a production that Dell had worked on previously. Dell began tinting and colouring the shots in alternating bold primary colours to fit the psychedelic feel of the Magical mystery tour[4].

Despite the magical mystery tour not receiving the mass appreciation from viewers or critics, the Beatles were reasonably pleased with the film with Paul McCartney stating, ‘we don't say it was a good film. It was our first attempt. If we goofed, then we goofed’[5]. This perfectly sums up the magical mystery tour, it’s in the name, The Beatles wanted to create something magical and mysterious, and they certainly did so.

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[1] Brian Roylance, ed. ‘The Beatles Anthology’. (Chronicle Books: 2000). Pg. 272.

[2] Mark Lewisohn. ‘The Complete Beatles Chronicle’. (Harmony Books: 1992).

[3] Larry Lange, ‘The Beatles Way: Fab Wisdom for Everyday Life’. (Simon and Schuster: 2008). Pg. 137.

[4] Walter Everett, ‘The Beatles as musicians: Revolver through the Anthology’. (Oxford University Press: 1999). Pg. 131.

[5] Andy Davis, ‘The Beatles Files’. (MetroBooks: 2000). Pg. 127.