Magical Mystery Tour Review

Treat this as a compilation, because that is what it is, and it becomes much easier to grade. The film songs are uneven. The title track is a fairground bark, Your Mother Should Know is a music hall pastiche, and Blue Jay Way is a genuinely strange piece of fog that works better than its reputation. I Am the Walrus is the great one on that side, a nonsense lyric written partly to frustrate people who analysed lyrics, sitting on a cello line and a radio broadcast of King Lear bled in live from the airwaves.

The other half is where the record earns its place. Strawberry Fields Forever was assembled from two takes in different keys and at different tempos, spliced anyway, and it still sounds like it was recorded inside a memory. Penny Lane answers it in bright daylight with a piccolo trumpet. All You Need Is Love was broadcast to the world live and is slighter than its fame. Not an album in any meaningful sense, but four or five permanent songs.