'Magical Mystery Tour' Out On BluRay

Once upon a time, in the land of Beatles, there lived a man named Paul McCartney. He and his three very cute, charismatic and talented friends wrote terrific music, wore amazing clothes, took the best, most mind expanding drugs and helped change the world from black and white to color. This man named Paul came up with an idea for a film. It would be weird, avant guard, most likely concocted out of a fevered LSD trip where everyone would go off on a bus and have a magical time.

The result - Magical Mystery Tour, which premiered on BBC1 on Boxing Day 1967. It was the closest The Beatles ever came to a flop. The critics hated it, and it left their fans confused. However, don't despair. This "flop" had some of the most terrific, iconic songs ever. "I am the Walrus", "Strawberry Fields Forever", "All You Need is Love", "Fool on the Hill" - we should all fail with such beauty.

The film is a curiosity no matter what you may think of it. The boys were just coming off the success of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and probably felt they had more juice left in the engine to break down a few more walls.  It's a confusing, mind boggling bad film, but as far as I'm concerned, any time spent with the Beatles is time well spent. Period.

Magical Mystery Tour is out on BluRay for your eyes to enjoy. It comes complete with extras, such as deleted scenes and commentary by Macca himself.  The Collector's Edition offers some other goodies such as a 60 page booklet, both BluRay and DVD discs and the album on vinyl.

And here's one of my favorite performances off the promotion of this flick. When the Beatles stopped touring and spent all their time in the studio, they would use the medium of video/film to continue to perform for an audience without actually having to travel. They would periodically send a music video of their latest songs to their old friend Ed Sullivan, who would show them on his show.
 


It's possible the official video of "Hello Goodbye" was edited to contain the original video in color. Since Ed Sullivan's show was still in black and white at the time, it's likely this colorful, joyful song was as black and white as Ed is at the end of the clip.

'Lady Lazarus'

"Dying...Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. " Sylvia Plath 

Don Pushes an elevator button. The bell rings. He goes to the sliding doors to step inside, but the car is not there. Instead, he sees the deep, steep elevator shaft of the Time Life Building as the cables rattle down into the abyss. Could this be Don's downfall? A foreshadowing of a possible suicide? The tumbling silouette of Draper falling, falling, falling in the now iconic show opening? Don was letting go of Megan, and letting her go after a dream as he looked down into the void.

And then there's Pete Campbell. He's been a little jerk with a sex drive like a rapist, and the heart of a wounded child brat all wrapped up in a grown up suit. He's trapped. Coddled in wealth, molded to be the suited, Metro North riding ad executive with a house in the suburbs - just like Don, the man he strives to be. But Pete never had dirt under his nails, never drove a car, nor did he have to stumble to an outhouse in the freezing night like Dick Whitman. Nor did he have to hustle to get a job with Roger Sterling. Nope. Pete had uncle Roger and Bertie cut him out like a cookie to be an ad man. Then he wanted to be Don Draper. But Don Draper isn't even Don Draper anymore. He's moved on from the fucking, the blonde wife, the Ossining House to a young brunette and a lush life in his apartment on 72nd and Park, trying, at the age of 40, to hang on to what is real, what is hip, what makes humanity key in.

There's Peggy. She's a trailblazer whose succeeding in becoming Draper. Tirelessly working herself into a nub to achieve her status, she has to deal with Megan throwing away the same opportunity that was so easily handed to her. Joan has it right. These are the girls who marry the wealth, who become the ex-actress and never has to work again.

Alone in his swanky upper east side apartment, Don mulls over The Beatles Revolver album. He takes it out of its prestine cover and skips to side 2 - last song, "Tomorrow Never Knows". "Lay Down all thoughts, surrender to the void." Hmmm...could we connect the elevator shaft to this?  "It is dying...it is dying."  He lays back in his designer chair, still in dress shirt and loosened tie. Weird sounds and off beat drums fill the room. Revolver, being the transitional album that was on the precipice of the Beatles breakthrough before Sgt. Pepper, the album that turned the 60's from black and white into color. Just like the Chevalier cologne ad pitch.

Don should take a word from a scene from a Hard Days Night, when George Harrison stumbled into the office of a smarmy image maker who jabbered fashion talk to the clueless quiet one. As George leaves, fashion man said to his bored assistant, "Could he be it?" Assistant, "You mean an early clue to a new direction?"

Don listens to the tape loops and the tabula and Ringo's drums. The turns it off.

How did Matthew Weiner get a master recording of The Beatles on television? NYTimes.com has the answer.